[HN Gopher] Electricity Maps
___________________________________________________________________
Electricity Maps
Author : fulafel
Score : 174 points
Date : 2023-08-20 10:48 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (app.electricitymaps.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (app.electricitymaps.com)
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Hmm, maybe this is a "bug" or some intentional way this
| measurement is made, but when you view the carbon production over
| time, you can see that some low-carbon sources like wind & solar
| seem to vary in proportion to the energy being produced. So these
| aren't exactly zero-carbon because of production and maintenance
| and whatnot, but it's obviously very low. However, wouldn't this
| carbon production be annualised at a constant rate - solar power
| doesn't produce more carbon the brighter the sun shines (does
| it?)
|
| It makes sense that there's some lookup of X energy source being
| Y tons co2 per mwh, and this is probably correct when the vast
| majority of the co2 is coming from the fuel, and the construction
| + maintenance etc are a rounding error, but this wouldn't be the
| case for solar, wind, etc.
| midasuni wrote:
| The source likely says "x g of co2 per kWh", and doesn't break
| that into fixed and variable.
|
| I suspect the sources would typically underestimate legacy
| sources (meausiring the co2 from burning gas but not the co2
| from maintaining the oil rig)
| jodrellblank wrote:
| That UK -- Norway link is (or was) the longest undersea
| electricity cable in the world[1] at 450 miles (720km).
|
| How do the exports and imports balance; Finland is importing
| 800MW from Sweden then exporting 400MW to Estonia, is it possible
| some of that is the same power? Norway is importing 425MW from
| The Netherlands and exporting 1.2GW to the UK and 200MW to
| Denmark?
|
| Why does the UK export 73MW to Northern Ireland but then import
| 286MW from the Republic of Ireland, i.e. why doesn't Northern
| Ireland import from Republic of Ireland and skip the overseas
| bit?
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58772572
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| There is currently only one small interconnect between Ireland
| and Northern Ireland. Another one (1500MW) is being built. This
| will allow Northern Ireland to benefit from Ireland's
| substantial wind resources (~2GW).
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czdvj4dv2pyo
|
| > Procurement for the supply of materials for the construction
| of the overhead line is underway. Testing of the final pylon
| designs is being undertaken, with a view to construction
| beginning next year in order to have the project fully
| operational by 2026.
|
| https://www.soni.ltd.uk/the-grid/projects/tyrone-cavan/the-p...
| martinald wrote:
| Keep in mind this is a very 'zoomed out' view of the power
| grid. In reality every country is going to have grid limits
| internally and different sources of demand in different places.
|
| For example, in your Finland observation it may be
| cheaper/easier to supply the north of Finland from Sweden
| rather than send the power that could otherwise go to Estonia
| to the other side of the country, probably not a lot of north
| south distribution internally in Finland because of terrain (I
| know Norway really struggles with this, you can see huge price
| differences in the north of Norway vs south of Norway on EPEX
| Spot - https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-data), so I would
| assume Finland is the same.
|
| The UK also has huge bottlenecks north/south in distributing
| power. There's 4GW of HVDC planned to transmit power from
| Scotland to England, for example. Probably much more is going
| to be needed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_HVDC
| henriks wrote:
| As it happens this has been in the news quite a bit, and
| we've been told that the Finnish trunk lines are built for
| this [1]. Finland isn't split up into multiple electricity
| price areas unlike its neighbors.
|
| [1] https://www.fingrid.fi/en/pages/company/information-for-
| cons...
| ben_w wrote:
| Wow, Cyprus is doing much worse than I'd have guessed, 870g/kWh
| as I write this.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| These kind of world maps with 'live' data are some of the coolest
| things in the modern internet. This kind of electricity map,
| windy.com the weather site and other sites linked when that came
| up on HN yesterday[1], https://www.lightningmaps.org/ and
| https://www.flightradar24.com/ and
| https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
|
| Is there a collection like an "awesome maps" list anywhere?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37187760
| thenewarrakis wrote:
| I fucking love maps.
|
| Open Infra Map; shows major electrical lines, power plants, gas
| & oil lines, and telecom/data centers. Gets its data from Open
| Street Map: https://openinframap.org/
|
| Open Railway Map; shows railroad lines. Also gets its data from
| OSM: https://www.openrailwaymap.org/
|
| Also Sentinel Hub has satellite imagery that although it has
| less resolution than ie Google Maps, it is updated daily:
| https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/
| anonporridge wrote:
| A few more.
|
| Light Pollution - https://www.lightpollutionmap.info
|
| Fire and Smoke - https://fire.airnow.gov/ (US)
| https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/ (Canada)
|
| Earthquakes - https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
|
| Ship traffic - https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/
| contingencies wrote:
| Flights @ http://globe.adsbexchange.com/
|
| Ships @ https://www.vesselfinder.com/#map
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > These kind of world maps with 'live' data
|
| I agree. And I'm glad you put quotes around live. Much of the
| data for the US is _estimated_ , not actually sourced from the
| grid operator. It'll be _great_ when we have realtime data
| everywhere.
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| Here's one for tracking satellites and debris:
| http://astria.tacc.utexas.edu/AstriaGraph/
| mrtksn wrote:
| True, unfortunately lightning maps doesn't seem to be accurate
| - at least I had 0 luck with it.
|
| On the other hands flightradar24 and similar are so fascinating
| if you are on a busy plane route. The observation time is so
| perfect to speculate over the plane and destinations, chat
| about interesting facts or recent developments at destinations.
|
| A few years ago I visited a small village where a relative of
| mine lives and happen to show a kid the app. Next year, I heard
| that the all the kids there made it a hobby to do plane
| spotting.
| user6723 wrote:
| What is a Birkeland current?
| pard68 wrote:
| Website is somewhat inaccurate. The Appalachian Power (AEP) for
| central VA is 100% hydro, yet the whole of Virginia is colored
| like coal.
| walleeee wrote:
| Do you have a reference for AEP's coverage? I can't find
| anything on their website.
| luuurker wrote:
| No idea what's happening, but is it possible that they're
| importing electricity from dirty sources? That would change the
| colour from green to brown.
| pard68 wrote:
| Ah that could be it. They state that they generate 100% of
| all their power needs with hydro, but I know power markets
| are weird black magic entities. It's possible they could
| really generate all their power needs with hydro, but then
| sell that power to another company and then buy-in coal for
| less.
| angst_ridden wrote:
| I wonder if this might be misleading. A lot of Los Angeles'
| (LADWP) electricity has traditionally been generated generated by
| coal-fired plants in other states. I'd have to dig into more
| recent sources to see if that's still the case, and whether
| that's reflected in this dataset.
|
| (Edit: read the sources list, and that should be reflected, but
| the map is not displaying heavy imports to SoCal. If I had to
| hazard a guess, I'd suspect LADWP obscuring sources in the
| published data).
| api wrote:
| Navajo shut down, so I think it's substantially less today.
| Solar is also way way up in the entire Southwest.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Been a few years so things may have changed. But California
| no longer has long term contracts with coal fired plants. But
| probably is buying it on the spot market. With California
| it's natural gas -> solar -> everything else.
| acc_297 wrote:
| That's interesting yeah like a tonne of Quebec hydro gets sold
| to New England it might or might not get counted
|
| But I also can't tell where the data is coming from why are so
| many Canadian provinces gray? I'm sure the website had
| citations somewhere but it was pretty slow in mobile safari so
| I didn't bother to check
| conradev wrote:
| It is open source and they generally scrape it from the most
| direct source:
| https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib
|
| It started as an open source project and it became an entire
| company
| [deleted]
| sturmbraut wrote:
| I'm German and I'm wondering. I have never really looked up the
| data but the general impression is the following: Germany is
| doing a lot to reduce CO_2 emissions. At least you have the
| impression when listening to politicians and reading newspapers.
| E.g. a few months ago it was announced that Germany is on track
| with the goals posed by the government (e.g. see
| https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschland-klimaziele-erfu...).
| Also in many statistics you can see that already around 50% of
| the electricity consumed in Germany is from renawble sources. How
| comes that on electricitymaps.com Germany is on the higher side
| of carbon intensity? Is it because the German industry and
| population is much bigger?
| pelorat wrote:
| Because you closed your nuclear reactors and started burning
| even more natural gas.
| Kyro38 wrote:
| Coal burning has increased in Germany, even more since the
| russian gas crisis (resulting from the Ukraine War).
| Krasnol wrote:
| This is not true
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37199842
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| This is actually not true (or was only very briefly true)
| [1] Germany has added a lot of renewables over the last
| couple years. And more than compensated their nuclear
| plants, which only played a minor role in Germany's
| electricity production at that point anyway. Of course
| Germany could have reduced the CO2 output even more if the
| nuclear plants hadn't been turned off. However, when the
| discussion heated up again last year it was basically
| already a moot point. Planning to decommission the plants
| was already too advanced. There was no personal, no company
| that wanted to operate the plants, no fuel, etc.
|
| [1] https://www.energy-
| charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c...
| troupo wrote:
| > And more than compensated their nuclear plants
|
| The moment they shut down their last nuclear plant they
| had several quiet nice in a row. The total output of
| renewables was about 4% of the installed capacity.
|
| So Germany had to burn copious amount of coal, and gas,
| and buy energy from France
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Indeed, but this "too late to change course" just
| emphasizes Germany's poor (and fear/emotional based) long
| term energy strategy.
| phtrivier wrote:
| > Germany is doing a lot to reduce CO_2 emissions. At least you
| have the impression when listening to politicians and reading
| newspapers. E.g. a few months ago it was announced that Germany
| is on track with the goals posed by the government (e.g. see
| https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschland-klimaziele-
| erfu...).
|
| For one thing, it's not absolutely obvious that germany will
| reach its CO2 reduction goals, from they own saying [1], but
| they might not shoot too far: [2]. (It's not very far from them
| in many sectors, but energy got a bad 2022.) However, I don't
| know how "ambitious" those objectives are.
|
| > Also in many statistics you can see that already around 50%
| of the electricity consumed in Germany is from renewable
| sources. How comes that on electricitymaps.com Germany is on
| the higher side of carbon intensity? Is it because the German
| industry and population is much bigger?
|
| The problem is, basically, that the other 50% is _very_ CO2
| heavy , and it only got worse in 2022-2023 because the last
| nuclear plants closed, and gas got more expensive so more coal
| got used. [3]
|
| This explains the vast difference between Germany and France on
| the electricity map: France hardly gets 20% of its electricity
| from solar panels and wind farms, but the other 80% are from
| atoms and water drops instead of lignite, which just makes a
| huuuge difference.
|
| Also, remember that electricity-maps only looks at, well,
| electricity - which only accounts for roughly 1/4th of the
| emissions [4]. Germany still has a large industry, and it's
| building... petroleum cars. (I was surprised to read that as
| far as "Industry" emissions are concerned, Germany and France
| are actually rather close, at ~25Mt/y. But I suppose the cars
| go in to the "Manufactoring" category, where Germany is clearly
| on top....)
|
| All in all, the per-capita CO2 emission of France ends up being
| almost twice as low as Germany. Which is maybe why it's easier
| to reach reduction goal: "all" Germany has to do to get a
| massive reduction is to clean-up its grid. The country kinda-
| sovereignly decided to make it harder by ditching nuclear, but
| it's actually the "easy" part (in the sense that it's
| transparent for most people when they switch on their TV if the
| electricity is" clean" or not. The only consideration is
| whether it is "cheap" or not.)
|
| France is at the stage where it has to reduce the other not-
| low-hanging-at-all fruit: transport emissions. (Because the
| current technology forces people to trade relatively cheap,
| comfortable and versatile gas-powered cars for EVs that are
| none of those three things - at the moment - and they'll
| understandably kick and scream to avoid that.)
|
| In a different world, Germany would have invested in R&D to
| build small and affordable electric cars, while France would
| have invested in R&D to build smaller and safer nuclear
| reactors.
|
| Instead, Germany paid software engineers to make car cheat
| tests [6], and France paid consultants to make the electricity
| market undecipharable while 1970's nuclear plants where rotting
| in place [7] ... and then 2022 happened !
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://phys.org/news/2023-06-germany-climate-narrow-
| fully-c...
|
| [2] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greenhouse-gas-emissions-
| progr...
|
| [3] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-
| energy-c...
|
| [4] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany
|
| [5] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/france
|
| [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
|
| [7]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...
| oakesm9 wrote:
| Closing all the nuclear plants and replacing them with
| increased coal usage, mainly. Compared to France where nuclear
| makes up a huge proportion of generation capacity and the UK
| where gas is the main source (not low carbon, but much lower
| than coal).
| midasuni wrote:
| UK is a varied mix so hard to say _the_ main source. gas,
| coal and oil (almost entirely gas) together are about 40% of
| generation. The other 60% is imports, biomass, wind, solar,
| hydro etc.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > Closing all the nuclear plants and replacing them with
| increased coal usage, mainly.
|
| This is not accurate. What was lost from commercial nuclear
| was replaced with renewables.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36599124
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36598618 (Thread)
|
| https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-
| releases/...
| midasuni wrote:
| Imagine instead if the coal and gas burners had been
| replaced by renewables instead
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| While nuclear is low carbon, it is not cheap and does not
| like to load follow (whereas renewables can simply
| curtail and shut down when there is insufficient load or
| transmission for their generation). If there are
| consistent excess renewables on a grid, it seriously
| impairs the economics of nuclear. France's nuclear
| reactors load follow but are hard on the mechanicals
| attempting to do so, and France has some serious issues
| with reactor maintenance and refurbishment.
|
| Coal and nuclear are the first to be driven out of the
| generation mix due to their poor economics (or sometimes
| air pollution regulation as is the case with coal), and
| remaining coal and natural gas will be driven out over
| the next decade. Natural gas competes with renewables and
| batteries, both of which continually decline in cost.
| Peaking natural gas (vs more efficient combined cycle gas
| turbine) is already no longer competitive with batteries,
| and those generators are quickly being replaced.
|
| Tangentially, Germany has twelve interconnectors with
| neighboring electrical grids. They need not stand up all
| of this low carbon generation themselves. They also have
| almost 10GW of hydro storage and almost 5GW of battery
| storage (so far).
| troupo wrote:
| > and does not like to load follow
|
| It really does like load follow. Educate yourself:
| https://www.oecd-
| nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...
|
| Renewables on the other hand definitely do not like load
| following: they are slow to start up and are severely
| impacted by regular weather conditions like night and no
| wind
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Citations below, it really comes down to it being
| uneconomical to load follow when capacity factor declines
| below a sustainable threshold, which will surely comes as
| renewables scale up. You can see this today on the daily
| graph for France when solar production ramps over the
| day, pushing down nuclear generation.
|
| https://www.renewable-
| ei.org/en/activities/column/REupdate/2... ("France's New
| Nuclear Power Plans and Techno-Economic Difficulties")
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00963402124
| 710... ("Nuclear power and the French energy transition:
| It's the economics, stupid!")
|
| https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-revises-up-
| cost-... ("EDF revises up cost of nuclear power plant
| outages")
| troupo wrote:
| > You can see this today on the daily graph for France
| when solar production ramps over the day, pushing down
| nuclear generation.
|
| That.... is exactly what nuclear plants are literally
| designed to do.
|
| As for "economics". If we don't discuss the _politics_ of
| disregard and underinvestment in nuclear power plants, we
| can 't discuss the economics. The only reason your last
| link exists is precisely because French government sat on
| its ass and did nothing to the most important energy
| source in their country. What do you think will happen to
| your renewable energy after decades of similar disregard?
|
| If we don't discuss where to get energy on a quiet night,
| we can't discuss "economics". The only reason "Germany
| has replaced nuclear with renewables" discource exists is
| because Germany burns insane amounts of coal and imports
| energy from France and Denmark every time there's a dip
| in renewables (aka at least every 12 hours or so).
| ben_w wrote:
| > What do you think will happen to your renewable energy
| after decades of similar disregard?
|
| I hope it's not the governments' mistake to make next
| time, given how much easier it is to scale renewables
| anywhere from multi-gigawatt down to however many
| milliwatts solar powered pocket calculators were.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it is not cheap_
|
| New nuclear isn't cheap. Existing nuclear is cheap
| enough. The fact remains that the answer to OP's question
| is Germany shuttered its plants and began importing dirty
| power.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I believe the question should be, "what is the cost of
| the emissions delta of early turndown of these plants vs
| continuing to run them until retirement (whether due to
| economics or longevity)," in both fiat and emissions. It
| is not as simple as "we should've run them until the
| doors fall off." That is a simple idea for a complex
| problem.
| oaiey wrote:
| Correct. But solar is also very fluctuating (wind also) and
| as a consequence often coal / natural gas has to
| compensate.
|
| As a German totally supporting the renewable agenda but
| there is a reality to face.
| troupo wrote:
| > What was lost from commercial nuclear was replaced with
| renewables.
|
| Until there's a windless night, sure
| ben_w wrote:
| Hydroelectric is generally counted as a renewable, and
| it's also a storage system.
| troupo wrote:
| That's true. Unfortunately it's not feasible to build
| hydroelectric everywhere.
| ben_w wrote:
| Indeed, but we don't need it _everywhere_ -- between
| transmission lines and that most of the good sites in
| Germany are pretty close to the major industry and
| population centres (except Berlin and Brandenburg, which
| is basically marsh and nature reserves, leading back to
| the transmission lines).
| akamaka wrote:
| Germany had a much higher peak in emissions in the 1970s and
| 1980s, unlike the UK which phased out coal early, or France
| which went all in on nuclear.
|
| German emissions have been rapidly declining since 1990 (even
| with nuclear reactors closing, because the investment was
| steered into renewables). They just need a few more years to
| catch up to their neighbours.
| mcjiggerlog wrote:
| > Is it because the German industry and population is much
| bigger?
|
| No, this is CO2 per kwh, so is proportional to population.
|
| What you have just discovered is that Germany does a lot of
| greenwashing. They may have spent trillions on renewables but,
| well look at the graphs, they still burn insane amounts of
| coal.
|
| They chose the politically popular choice of closing nuclear
| and in doing do sabotaged their climate agenda. Turns out
| building a grid of only variable renewables doesn't work yet.
| MoreSEMI wrote:
| This is what REALLY bugs me about Germany in general. There is
| a cultural belief that germans are data driven and unemotional
| in their decision making. That they are the wise leaders who
| run the EU. They do not have the populist issues like the UK
| with brexit or the chaos that france has. They are not like the
| consuming americans who vote for trump. And yet, the reality of
| the energy policy demonstrates that Germany is not immune to
| this kind of traps. They prefer to shut down nuclear power
| plants and yes install many renewables.
|
| They didn't actually do the math. The point is while renewables
| may generate 50% of energy, the other half comes from coal
| which must be turned on when there is no sun or wind, which is
| so polluting even in comparison to natural gas, that it
| destroys the overall mix. You can estimate coal as around
| 700g/kwh(just look at poland when the sun isn't shining) which
| divided in half gets you pretty close to Germany's average of
| 300g. Had Germany switched to natural gas, they would be much
| closer to the UK, which did not have an energy transition.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| The addition of China data would make the legend useless, but it
| still goes to show out sized some things are, while the UK
| continues to chase Net Zero at the expense of its citizen's
| wealth, other countries (India, China, the US) prioritise their
| economy.
|
| Heading towards a clean energy future is great, but it's costing
| our poorer citizens unequally more than our wealthier ones. See:
| ULEZ.
| midasuni wrote:
| Poorer people in the ULEZ area don't own cars, they live in
| flats overlooking car ridden streets. Besides ULEZ is not about
| stopping Co2 emissions or net zero, it's about removing dirty
| smoke from the roads poor people (the ones you see on the bus)
| live on.
| weebull wrote:
| I'm always at a loss with this argument. How does chasing
| cheaper sources of energy that also happen to be renewable hurt
| the poor? Gas generators cost the most per kWh to run. Our
| electricity prices rocketted because of natural gas prices
| rocketing.
|
| If we'd managed to get off gas sooner we'd have clean cheap
| power, and energy independence.
| paganel wrote:
| > Climate Impact by Area
|
| This thing again, with Sweden being all green while one of its
| biggest companies is busy with cutting down trees left, right and
| center, and then there's of course Norway, which have made their
| money on oil and gas, with the latter being extremely lucrative
| especially now, after the war in Ukraine started.
|
| Of course, I know this is "only" about the way they're generating
| electricity, yadayadayada, because I'm sure the only thing
| stopping the African countries from going all "green" when
| generating electricity is the lack of will, not the lack of money
| (which, again, countries like Norway and Sweden acquired on the
| back of very non-green actions).
|
| And then there's a question about how "green" hydro is in the
| first place, as even Khrushchev himself received a lot of critics
| from inside the Party for the environment devastation brought by
| building lots of hydro projects on the Volga [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Hydroelectric_Station
| jiscariot wrote:
| Norway's done an amazing job of convincing the world how green
| they are.
| gonlad_x wrote:
| Could you elaborate ?
| paddim8 wrote:
| Sweden stopped expanding hydro. There's a ton of nuclear and
| wind in the energy mix.
| robotsliketea wrote:
| This is super cool! For California, my understanding (from PG&E
| materials) was that highest demand and carbon intensity was
| around 3pm to 9pm. The graph here seems to show that even though
| demand/supply is smaller at night, we have very little non-solar
| renewables so that carbon intensity is pretty bad all night as
| well... If that's true, I'm curious why PG&E makes it sound like
| electricity use at night is not as bad. Do they anticipate
| bringing more wind online and are trying to get ahead with the
| messaging to the public?
| callalex wrote:
| You have a different definition of "bad" than PG&E. You are
| trying to minimize the release of CO2, they are trying to
| minimize the spending of dollars. As a huge generalization,
| building a power plant is more expensive than running it, so
| being able to run it 24/7 is generally more profitable than
| having to use "peaker" plants that are only running and
| profiting from 4-9pm.
| bbarn wrote:
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-...
|
| In the industry the "duck curve" drives a lot of decision
| making and messaging around the grid in California.
|
| Energy use late at night is not as bad, because there's less of
| it used. It's the 3-9pm (Usually I hear 4-9, but same thing)
| hours when solar supply drops off and demand peaks at the same
| time that they are speaking about. People plugging in cars to
| L2 chargers when they get home, lights all go on, AC on, etc.
| It's usually just talked about in the context of grid
| availability, not so much with GHG emissions, but things are
| changing in that direction as regulations continue to change.
|
| Shameless plug - If anyone is interesting in developing in this
| field, we're hiring at olivineinc.com for C# and node/react
| developers :)
| philjohn wrote:
| The change from NEM 2 to NEM 3 makes getting solar without a
| battery pointless - so looks like stored demand shifting.
| stop50 wrote:
| France emits more co2 with solar power than with its nuclear
| powerplants?
| mbernstein wrote:
| It's the manufacturing process of the solar panels and
| replacement being factored in. Obviously, power generation is
| carbon free during the panels lifecycle but manufacturing today
| produces co2
| oakesm9 wrote:
| I'm not sure of the answer on this website, but if you're
| going that route you'd also need to factor in the carbon cost
| of the building materials for power plants of any type. Steal
| and concrete aren't carbon free either.
| neamar wrote:
| They do. For nuclear, they also include cost of
| decommissioning the power plant completely.
| weebull wrote:
| Their data sources are quoted when you click on the power
| source for each country.
| p_l wrote:
| the averaged total emissions per kWh is higher for solar power
| than for nuclear, yes.
| 404mm wrote:
| Can you please elaborate more on this? I take it this
| includes CO2 released during manufacturing. Is it averaged
| over the expected life span? What about for a nuclear plant?
| Whole I can see how we can estimate CO2 for a panel, I don't
| think we can have good idea of a whole plant.
| Lapha wrote:
| Ideally it's lifecycle carbon footprint averaged over
| expected power production during that time, but the numbers
| aren't always directly comparable and the error bars are
| huge to boot.
|
| With solar, most of the carbon footprint comes from the
| massive energy requirements needed to produce the panels,
| and countries that use coal to produce panels like China
| have a significantly higher carbon footprint than say the
| EU. Then there's the matter of where you install them,
| panels in most of Europe will have a CO2/kWh figure similar
| to to panels installed in north-west Canada, while panels
| installed in the US will have a similar figure to panels
| installed in southern Europe and northern Africa. Newer
| panels generally have a longer lifespan and are more
| efficient so will have a lower number even if the total
| footprint stays the same. Should the albedo effect be
| considered with solar? It matters if you plan to cover a
| light desert with dark panels. How often it rains can also
| ironically have a difference, as rain helps clean the
| panels keeping them running efficiently.
|
| With nuclear, there's the mostly fixed costs of
| constructing and decommissioning the plants, the ongoing
| cost of running and maintaining the plants, disposing of
| spent fuel, and with most of the cost coming from mining
| the fuel. To me nuclear seems a little more straight
| forward to calculate, but there's still variability that
| can come from the availability and difficulty of mining the
| ore. There's also political issues to consider. If your
| country decides to shut down your nuclear plants
| prematurely, like Germany did, the huge upfront cost of
| building the plants can't be recouped by running them for
| an additional 10, 20, 30+ years until it becomes necessary
| to decommission them.
|
| Regardless of how renewables are compared to nuclear, coal
| and gas are the elephants in the room when it comes to CO2
| produced per kWh.
| p_l wrote:
| Note that the "CO2/kWh equivalent emissions" given on the
| page are provided with source to document describing
| methodology: UNECE 2022. Can't link you to specific place
| right now, but quick google gives a bunch of starting
| points like https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/L
| CA_3_FINAL%20...
|
| Inside you will find description of the model for various
| power sources including what total lifecycle sources of
| emissions contribute how much.
|
| Consider also the ridiculous power density of nuclear
| fuels, best visualized IMHO in this good old XKCD comic:
| https://xkcd.com/1162/
| stavros wrote:
| This doesn't seem accurate, it says that Greece uses 0% coal when
| I know that at least 660 MW come from coal.
| ddon wrote:
| According to wikipedia, there are no coal powered power
| stations
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Gree...
| stavros wrote:
| Well, there is one around 2km from me, though I'm not sure if
| it's running right this instant. I can look later, though.
|
| EDIT: It doesn't seem like the specific unit is on the list,
| it's called Ptolemaida 5.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That page lists 7 coal powered plants.
| midasuni wrote:
| Sure there are
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agios_Dimitrios_Power_Statio.
| ..
|
| They just use terms like "thermal" and "lignite" (brown coal)
| to make it sound nicer.
| stavros wrote:
| That one is no longer operational, IIRC.
| oakesm9 wrote:
| It's live updating, so 0% of the electricity right now is being
| generated by coal (ie. The coal power plant is off). Note that
| Greece says "estimated" though so I presume they don't have the
| actual live numbers.
|
| You can view averages from the past 30 days, 12 months, and 6
| years though and that shows the percentage of coal generation
| being about 800MW over the past 12 months.
| stavros wrote:
| Hmm, maybe the station isn't operational right now, thanks.
| oaiey wrote:
| Most zones are not accurate. The US also has very doubtful
| numbers.
|
| I guess depends a lot on public sources.
| fuoqi wrote:
| I find it mildly amusing how for all green talk and net zero
| pledges, EU bureaucrats and wide public does not give much notice
| to the third-world-level dirty-as-hell coal-powered generation in
| Poland.
| wcoenen wrote:
| The EU has a cap and trade system ("EU ETS") for large
| industrial installations. So as far as I understand, the Poland
| coal plants are not invisible to the EU. They pay a market
| price for each ton of CO2 emitted.
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...
|
| Poland does try to cancel out the price signal sent by the EU
| ETS with billions of subsidies. I guess that's part of the
| reason why they emit so much. But the emission cap still holds;
| if Poland pays for the right to emit a ton of CO2, then that
| ton cannot be emitted elsewhere in the EU.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/es/ip_22_...
| Retric wrote:
| Unlike most of Europe they have very poor starting point with
| minimal hydroelectric power resources etc which makes things
| look relatively worse. However their current progress if you
| look at the graphs is still fast paced.
|
| "In September 2020, the government and mining unions agreed a
| plan to phase out coal by 2049 which coincides with 100th
| anniversary of Karol Wojtyla being assigned to st. Florian's
| parish in Krakow,[10][11] with coal used in power generation
| falling to negligible levels in 2032"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Poland
| izacus wrote:
| I read your sentences three times and I don't get what exactly
| you're trying to criticize here or what you're raving at?
|
| "All the green talk" is precisely about getting rid of coal-
| powered generation in Poland (and other EU states), so what the
| heck is your complaint here?
| acherion wrote:
| It sounds like to me that the complaint is why Poland hasn't
| switched to green power already. A comment like that
| demonstrates a lack of understanding about the levels of
| effort to make such a change, as if the change to green power
| is as instantaneous and painless as flicking a switch (pun
| half intended).
| Tade0 wrote:
| They do - Poland agreed to the same decarbonization targets and
| participation in the carbon market as the rest of the EU so it
| had to implement policies supporting them - chiefly in the form
| a solar power subsidy program.
|
| The program was more successful than the government anticipated
| and capacity ballooned so much that the grid needs
| modernization if it's to support more renewables.
|
| Also electricity usage per capita per year is like 25% lower
| than say in Germany or France, so emissions in absolute terms
| are lower than they might appear.
|
| There's a long way to go, but the country is on track to meet
| the goals set - partly because it's actually cheaper that way.
| politelemon wrote:
| Is Iceland really 100% renewable, that's pretty amazing!
|
| I also liked the cross border exports and our dependency on each
| other.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Being located on the mid-Atlantic rift means they have lots of
| volcanoes and plentiful geothermal power. So yes, they are 100%
| renewable, but they are also a bit of a special case.
| alias_neo wrote:
| They use Geothermal energy for heating and hot water. I visited
| the power plant outside Reykjavik a few years back, really
| interesting!
|
| They joked (but seriously): "when it gets too warm in the
| house, you just open a window".
| euroderf wrote:
| Altho all the hot water in the country has a slight whiff of
| sulfur.
| midasuni wrote:
| They still import and burn a lot of fuel. 85% of cars are still
| burning fuel and more worryingly nearly 40% of new cars are
| still fuel burners.
| botanical wrote:
| For South Africa it doesn't seem to have nuclear, hydro, wind, or
| any other source except coal for carbon emissions. It's missing
| some data points:
|
| https://www.eskom.co.za/dataportal/supply-side/station-build...
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