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Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

electricitymap.tmrow.co

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Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#41
post #5

Does anyone know of interesting tours you can take of electricity production in Europe or energy infrastructure in general? I'm in The Netherlands, but would be willing to travel for it. A real tour of a nuclear plant would be awesome (i.e. getting to hear / see the reactor), but tours of wind farms / turbines / dams etc. would also be great. Preferably in English.

[deleted]

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#43
post #34

I think the visualization is misleading, it seems to highlight energy mix rather than absolute numbers. eg Poland looks bad but Germany burns twice the amount of coal that Poland does. (Per head of population its probably about the same) Germany looks better because it has some other sources mixed in there.

I think showing the mix of energy sources is also insightful. Germany has spent a lot of effort into diversifying and upgrading their energy system. Meanwhile, Poland is lagging in investment and relying almost exclusively on one piece of energy source. This piece of knowledge is also insightful.

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#44
post #26
post #5

Does anyone know of interesting tours you can take of electricity production in Europe or energy infrastructure in general? I'm in The Netherlands, but would be willing to travel for it. A real tour of a nuclear plant would be awesome (i.e. getting to hear / see the reactor), but tours of wind farms / turbines / dams etc. would also be great. Preferably in English.

Vilnius has a small Energy and Technology Museum[0] located in the building of the first power plant (opened in 1903) in country. Probably not worth going to Vilnius just for it, but if you happened to be nearby, it's worth its time. 0. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g274951-d18864...

In addition to that, Ignalina (150km-ish from Vilnius) nuclear power plant, which is currently being disassembled, offers tours too.

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#45

Anyone knows what happened to the "ozone layer desctructed" scare out of 20 something years back? Did it die naturally or someone just had to pay someone for it to be silenced?

It did not die naturally; it went away because of international action to reduce emissions that harm ozone layer. Doing the same with CO2 is much harder.

you are obviously too young to remember the propaganda from the days back then :-(

and, no, international communists had nothing to do to fix it. It was by imposing the first global tax -- it's all that it achieved. Proofed it's possible to have a global tax.

There was no problem and as soon as the tax was implemented the problem in the media disappeared too.

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#46
I've noticed that Switzerland, using a lot of hydropower, has a worse intensity than I expected.

The CO2 numbers for the different types of power generation seem to come from Wikipedia [1], where Hydropower has a median gCO2eq/kWh of 24 and a maximum of 2200 – much worse than coal. This seems to be based on the fact that large areas may be flooded when filling the dam initially, and CO2 from rotting plants is released [2]. The numbers vary depending on the amount of vegetation.

According to a study [3] from 2012, "electricity generated in storage hydropower stations in Switzerland causes emissions of 10.8 g CO2-eq/kWh", so it's less than shown in the emissions chart and comparable to nuclear.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emis...

[2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7046-hydroelectric-po...

[3] http://esu-services.ch/fileadmin/download/publicLCI/flury-20... [PDF]

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#47
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you read those conversations, you might notice that people think that - nuclear is very expensive - nuclear has a waste and risk problem - wind and solar are price competitive and very environment friendly

> nuclear is very expensive If you disagree, and have an argument, why are you not providing it? > nuclear has a waste and risk problem Yes, and? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_m... > Thus, Alfvén identified two fundamental prerequisites for effective management of high-level radioactive waste: (1) stable geological formations, and (2) stable human institutions over hundreds of thousands o…

Compared to the blood on the hands of people who don't seriously think about what they defend, I'll take offending people by asking them for arguments. You can prove you have a mind beyond a goldfish. If you just downvote and say nothing, I'll stick with "called it", kthxbai.

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#48
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you read those conversations, you might notice that people think that - nuclear is very expensive - nuclear has a waste and risk problem - wind and solar are price competitive and very environment friendly

> nuclear is very expensive If you disagree, and have an argument, why are you not providing it? > nuclear has a waste and risk problem Yes, and? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_m... > Thus, Alfvén identified two fundamental prerequisites for effective management of high-level radioactive waste: (1) stable geological formations, and (2) stable human institutions over hundreds of thousands o…

It doesn't solve the problem globally, but in Finland, there's been a decision of the method and location of the final disposal of the waste. Once the disposal is finished 50 years after end of waste production, the repository will be sealed in a way that makes the waste inaccessible.

Posiva is the company, owned by the NPP operators, trusted with the task: http://posiva.fi/en/final_disposal

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We took steps to stop damaging it, and it is gradually recovering. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/30/ozone-la...

oh no, lier, lier, pants on fire! It was absolutely unstoppable, don't you know?

We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#50
post #34

I think the visualization is misleading, it seems to highlight energy mix rather than absolute numbers. eg Poland looks bad but Germany burns twice the amount of coal that Poland does. (Per head of population its probably about the same) Germany looks better because it has some other sources mixed in there.

> it seems to highlight energy mix

It's literally a visualisation of how green the country's energy policy is (electricity production sources), the color coding is gCO2/kWh.

> rather than absolute numbers

Absolute numbers would mostly just track population, that's way more misleading as a small country with sparse population but 100% hydrocarbon energy production would appear greener than a large country with dense population on 10% hydrocarbon energy sources.

An other interesting visualisation would be per-capita as it would include consumption patterns rather than just production ones

> Poland looks bad but Germany burns twice the amount of coal that Poland does. (Per head of population its probably about the same)

Poland would still look bad, it has 40% of Germany's population, and according to the site's sources currently produces 15.5GWh from coal while Germany is at 23.4GWh from Coal, that's 65% more coal-sourced electricity per capita than Germany.

And the map is live and it's winter hence the low levels of e.g. solar in countries with large solar capacity (like Belgium, or Austria,… or Germany)

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