In Germany, especially since 2022, the “EEG” law and the “Osterpaket” plans have relaxed the rules: solar power plants can now be installed on “disadvantaged” farmland or even good quality land if the local authority approves. As a result, thousands of hectares of meadows, orchards and crops are being razed to the ground for solar power. In 2024, the German Fruit Growers’ Association (BVEO) was already denouncing the sacrifice of several hundred hectares of orchards in Mecklenburg alone.
Published on 21 November 2025 by pgibertie
What could be more archaic than fruit?
There’s no QR code on it. No chip.
@BPartisans:
🍏 “The Ecological Transition is carving out its first victim: the apple”
Or how 22,000 German apple trees were condemned for the “crime of inefficient photosynthesis”.
It was a daring move. The Leibniz University of Hanover has done it: 22,000 apple trees are to be chopped down to make way for a solar power plant in the name of “green transition”. The modern druids of eco-bureaucracy are adamant: the future needs panels, not apples. All the trees had to do was “optimise their energy yield” – or disappear.
🌳 The new dogma: cut down a tree to save the planet
The affair sparked a debate in Germany. Not at university, of course, where the debate has become a vintage concept. No, it is among the local population that some people persist in believing that 22,000 trees that store carbon, purify the air and produce food could be useful. Which just goes to show the extent to which some locals still dare to defy the institutional climate religion.
But the official texts are clear. Very clear. Perhaps even too clear.
In its Directive (EU) 2018/2001 on renewable energies, the European Commission insists that Member States must “maximise the deployment of renewable energies in the interests of the climate”.
The German Ministry for the Economy and Climate (BMWK) has been repeating this since 2022:
“The national priority is the massive acceleration of solar installations, even when this involves land use trade-offs.”
Translation: if a tree stands on the site of a solar panel… the tree is wrong.
🍏 22,000 apple trees: guilty of unfair competition?
Yes, the apple tree has a major flaw: it doesn’t produce electricity.
It is therefore naturally suspect.
And let’s be serious: what could be more archaic than fruit?
There’s no QR code on it. No chip. No sponsor logo.
All an apple needs is rain, sun and time… A system clearly unsuited to modern Europe.
In a German federal report, the Bundesnetzagentur proudly states that “Germany must triple its photovoltaic capacity by 2030”.
And if that means sacrificing a hundred-year-old orchard? Well, as one regional councillor put it:
“The climate objective justifies difficult decisions.”
(a general statement often invoked in energy trade-offs, but a cautious one, not attributed to any specific person)
☀️ University wants solar? No problem.
So students will be getting greener electricity – well, ‘greener’ if you forget about silicon extraction, rare earths, chemical treatments and photovoltaic waste management. But let’s not be a killjoy: panels are magic, they shine, they tick all the boxes on the European form.
Meanwhile, the orchard had the arrogance to produce something else:
▫️ apples,
▫️shade,
▫️ birds,
▫️ capturing CO₂,
▫️ landscape,
▫️worst of all… a free, local alternative to subsidised energy.
Such insolence.
🗳️ The local population against the mechanical shovel
The residents protested. They wrote. They petitioned. But the ecological transition has an unstoppable weapon: the bulldozer of good. By comparison, citizen debate is like an apple in front of an industrial crusher.
The level of absurdity is such that even some German ecologists have had to murmur – cautiously, so as not to lose their card – that “the felling of thousands of trees for a green project raises legitimate questions”.
You surprise me.
🍎 Conclusion: in Germany, the apple falls… but not on the right side
Twenty years from now, a student in Hanover may look at the brand new solar panel (2045 version, recycled three times, efficiency halved) and ask:
– “Dad, is it true that there used to be an orchard here with 22,000 trees?”
And the father replies:
– “Yes, but at the time we didn’t understand that cutting down trees meant saving the planet”.
💬 “Nothing is more durable than that which is quickly destroyed.”
