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Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

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

#141

Post by jsingleton »

sschueller wrote: post #104
noselasd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've noticed that Switzerland, using a lot of hydropower, has a worse intensity than I expected. The carbon intensity on the map seems to be for consumed kWh, not produced kWh. The map indicates Switzerland imports a lot of electricity from Austria and Germany which have a much higher carbon intensity.

Also CERN is currently offline for the winter which gets most of its power from France imports.

I was talking to a CERN physicist once who joked that the reason for the LHC winter shutdown was because France needed heating. It's probably more to do with economics but it's almost true. France has a lot of cheap nuclear power in the summer, and only limited pumped storage capacity to cache it with.

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

#142

Post by masklinn »

machiaweliczny wrote: post #136
masklinn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 p…

Your calculations are wrong: Population: 38.53 / 80.63 ~= 47,7% More coal sourced: 15.5 / 0.477 / 23.4 ~= 38.8% 38.8% vs 65% makes a difference

> Your calculations are wrong:

> 38.8% vs 65% makes a difference

No, it does not according to your number Poland still uses almost 40% more coal per capita than Germany, meaning it still looks bad if you switch to that metric.

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

#143

Post by bckygldstn »

the8472 wrote: post #133

There seems to be lots of wind potential around the scottish isles and iceland. I wonder how feasible it would be to plaster turbines over iceland and then sell that energy to europe.

Iceland already produces much more energy than it needs through geothermal and hydro. Connecting the Icelandic power grid to the rest of the world seems to be currently infeasible [1], so instead they "export" the surplus energy through their aluminium industry: raw ore is shipped in from around the world, and high-energy refined aluminium is shipped out.

Similarly-isolated New Zealand does a similar thing, refining aluminium ore from Australia using abundant hydro power [2].

[1] http://www.landsvirkjun.com/researchdevelopment/research/sub...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwai_Point_Aluminium_Smelter

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

#144

Post by jsingleton »

avar wrote: 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.

Nuclear power stations are surprisingly boring. It's mostly solid state, relatively quiet and inaccessible (for obvious reasons). I went on a trip to Dungeness (Kent) and it looks like you still can[0] along with 6 others.

For pumped storage there is Dinorwig[1] (North Wales) and Cruachan (West Scotland). If you arrive by public transport you can get a free tour of the Cruachan pumped storage hydro plant.

[0]: https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/education/visitor-centres

[1]: http://www.electricmountain.co.uk/

[2]: http://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/

Edit:

There's a photo at the bottom of this blog post from my visit to Cruachan last summer: https://unop.uk/mobile-gb-rail-live-departure-boards

If you're in the French Alps then you could visit Grand'Maison on a bad weather day: http://www.musee-edf-hydrelec.com/

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

#145

Post by algesten »

hnusername wrote: post #134
mixedbit wrote: post #115

Polish right-wing government is blocking any development that could hurt coal industry. They passed the law that significantly constrains where windmills can be located. They also hindered development of solar by reverting the law that allowed individual owners of solar panels to be paid for the overproduced electricity.

Polish government is not right-wing. There may be right wing of it, but it is not right wing per se. Right wing of what? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanation for a better clue about what current polish government may aspire to be like. It may have some right wing parts of what is above all big centrist coalition. Another issue is. How is this government blocking development that could hurt coal industry any dif…

Sanation: a populist political movement for "moral sanation (healing) of the Polish body politic". It's nationalistic, anti-democratic, authoritarian and was gagging/killing/imprisoning the opposition.

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

#146

Post by krzyk »

finchisko wrote: post #95
skocznymroczny wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have coal, so we use it, like other countries did before. Wind/solar farms don't work well here because of the weather and are expensive. Nuclear plants would require foreign technology which is very costly, and so far nuclear plants here are just a dream, a way to drain the public funds into the pockets of "nuclear plant construction" committee, which doesn't do anything useful (it doesn't help that the public op…

Don't be mad at me, but basically what are you saying is: "Screw you all, screw the planet, flood after us...". You should really not use argument: "you did it, so we will also do it", because when "we" did it, there was probably no other way. And now is. It's 2016, you can't burn coal in rate like it was 15th century. It won't help us transition to clean energy anyhow.

You have a point, but you have to also consider the fact that it is hypocritical to say that we are "Screwing the planet". If others were screwing it to build their economy, other countries also should have that ability. Countries that have more money can afford other forms of energy, but coal is abundant in Poland and it would be foolish not to use it.

For solar power, Poland doesn't have good geographical position, similar with wind (it is only in the northern part, while the majority of population is in the south). And hydro is not that environment friendly, but we have those in the south, but it is hard to make more because there is a limit on the amount of water and Poland has less of it than e.g. Egypt.

The only other option is nuclear, but as others have written it is not popular in the public.

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

#147

Post by jsingleton »

davedx wrote: post #116
avar wrote: 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.

Another Scotland recommendation- Ben Cruachan hydro dam has a nice visitor center. Its on the west coast. I work for Vandebron in the Netherlands. Some of our smaller producers are happy to show visitors around. It helps if you are one of the households they are supplying of course ;)

Ben Cruachan is great and free if you come by train. The walk up to the top is good on a nice day but not easy. I went in the summer and there's a photo at the bottom of this blog post: https://unop.uk/mobile-gb-rail-live-departure-boards/

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

#148

Post by ced »

machiaweliczny wrote: post #132
nkkollaw wrote: post #68

Wow, what's wrong with Poland? I guess they use a lot of coal to produce electricity..?

Nothing is wrong with Poland. If something is wrong then your ability to read presented data. It doesn't mean we are emitting more CO2 - for all colored map lovers see[1] CO2 emission per capita for Germany or other European countries before jumping to conclusions. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CO2_per_capita_per_c...

Are you saying that, in spite of high CO2 emissions _for energy_, Poland's per capita emissions are on par with the rest of Europe?

The map's color-scale is not ideal. Germany and France look similar, but Germany's emissions are 500% higher than France. In contrast, Poland is just 35% worse than Germany, but looks like the Death star on the map. It would work better with a single one-color gradient, rather than a green-yellow-black.

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

#149

Post by tehwalrus »

davedx wrote: post #117
tehwalrus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not eating beef will not reduce your "carbon emmisions" (except for transport etc, which would presumably be substituted). They will reduce your "greenhouse gas emissions" though.

Methane is a carbon molecule

But a combustible, rather than an oxidised, one.

Incidentally, while searching for a reference to the assertion that CO2 is and methane is not included in a carbon footprint, I found the opposite:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint

(Methane emmisions are expressed in terms of the equivalent CO2 effect and added with actual CO2, the unit is then written as CO2e.)

My original quibble is therefore much less important.

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

#150

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

Spain right now: solar plants off (OK, that's normal, it's night time here), wind plants off, hydro and gas plants mostly off, but burning coal at near maximum capacity while we import energy from Portugal who are also burning coal like madmen.

I already knew that we had serious problems in our grid, caused by politics (overdimensioned gas, insistence on using coal due to pressure by miners, etc.). That's more or less widely known, but I had no idea it was SO messed up. And why the imports when we have most of the renewable sources sitting idle? Wow.

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