9 ms·

Electricity Map – Live CO2 emissions of electricity consumption

129 points by robin_reala 8y ago

mrweasel 8y ago
With the exception of Denmark, the areas that are in the "green" either have hydro og nuclear. I understand the issues with nuclear waste, but it seems that's the current trade-off, if you want lower CO2 emissions and don't have access to large rivers.
- realusername 8y ago
  Even the colour scale does not really show how big the difference is between countries regarding clean energy. Germany is producing 8x more CO2/Kwh than France, Poland 16 times more and Estonia 24 times more.
  - Tade0 8y ago
    France is pretty special in this regard. If my numbers aren't off it makes more environmental sense to carpool in an EV in France than to cycle to work - even assuming everyone is vegan.
    - ancarda 8y ago
      How is that possible? Wouldn’t there be more CO2 involved in producing the car compared to a few bikes? Edit: Slight amend to point out there’s several bikes to each car (as it’s a carpool)
      - mrweasel 8y ago
        I'm not sure that point revolves around the manufacturing of the car and bikes, even though that should be included. There was a study, that sadly eludes me, that suggested that if you need to travel more than 2km to do you grocery shopping, then it would produce less CO2 to get in your car and drive, compared to walking. The reasoning is that you need to consume some amount of food to generate the energy required to walk to the store and back. The amount of CO2 used to generate that food, and the additional CO2 you exhale, would be larger than what a modern car would produce, traveling the same distance. I believe that the same argument that would make multiple people in an EV carpool more environmentally friendly than bikes. But that's also the case with regular cars.
      - Tade0 8y ago
        > Wouldn’t there be more CO2 involved in producing the car compared to a few bikes? Crazily enough there's generally less CO2 involved in producing the car than having each of a few people ride bicycles a distance equal to a typical car's life-cycle mileage. Here's my math: For lack of a better source I'm using Renault's own environmental assessment for the Fluence Z.E[0], which puts its production-related emissions at ~8 metric tonnes of CO2. Over 150k km (which is not a lot for a car, but we want a number achievable by a cyclist over their lifetime) that results in ~53.3g/km of CO2. As for driving let's assume that a fully loaded EV requires 200Wh/km to move around - In France that amounts to 10.6g/km[1]. So overall we have a well-to-wheels footprint of 63.9g/km. Now here's the fun part: A typical Vegan will be responsible for 1.5 metric tonnes of CO2 annualy @ 2600kcal daily, so 1kcal = ~1.57g of CO2 - This is the most environmentally friendly diet. Cycling can vary greatly in intensity[3], but let's say 250kcal/h at 10km/h is a reasonable estimate. Given these figures a single vegan on a bicycle going 10km/h is responsible for 39.25g/km of CO2. According to some sources[4] my numbers aren't that far off. CONCLUSION (caps for visibility): Two vegans on bicycles having a 17km commute are responsible for 78.5g/km, while the same two vegans in an EV in France produce only 63.9g/km. Bump that to four vegans and we're getting awkwardly close to a typical combustion engine car's emissions. Meanwhile environmentally conscious(heh) meat-eaters should probably stay off bicycles, eat less and carpool in a compact car. [0] Page 91 of: https://group.renault.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fluence-acv-2011.pdf https://group.renault.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fluence... [1] http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-electricity-was-nearly-10-times-dirtier-than-frances-in-2016 http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-e... [2] http://www.greeneatz.com/foods-carbon-footprint.html http://www.greeneatz.com/foods-carbon-footprint.html [3] https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1350958587 https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1350958587 [4] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/08/carbon-footprint-cycling https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/08/carbon-f... EDIT: formatting.
        morsch 8y ago
        This is orthogonal to your point, but: people usually limit their commute by bike to, say, less than 5 to 10 km one way. On the other hand, people think nothing of commuting 50 to 100 km one way by car.
- skrause 8y ago
  The problem with nuclear power is that it's too expensive unless you choose to simply ignore the long-term cost of the nuclear waste problem. At this point it makes more sense to invest in solar, wind power and energy storage capacity to reduce CO2 emissions.
  - realusername 8y ago
    Solar & wind + batteries isn't enough, you also need a stable source of energy to compensate when the production is going down (those are not stable sources), if you are a country without good hydro possibilities, your only option for that is nuclear.
    - Tade0 8y ago
      There's natural gas for that. Sure, it's pretty CO2-intensive, but with enough overprovisioning of renewables and some storage it will rarely be used - if at all. Cheaper than having an inflexible nuclear plant.
      - jabl 8y ago
        If we're going to have any chance of hitting the 2C climate targets, electricity production must be more or less completely emissions-free by mid-century (preferably ASAP). So, any non-trivial amount of natural gas usage is out. Also, there's the rough rule of thumb saying that when variable sources (like wind or solar) approach a fraction of total generation in the grid equal to the capacity factor of said source, system integration costs start to rise rapidly (because that's, at the latest, the point where you'll start needing large amounts of storage, curtailment, or long-range transmission). Thus, in most grids wind+solar will unlikely see much larger than 50% of total generation without massive extra investment and/or breakthroughs in storage costs. If we're going for lowest-cost deep decarbonization, it looks like the share of nuclear will start to rise when we go deep enough, see e.g. slide 41 in https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/Getting_to_Zero.pdf https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/Getting...
      - nickik 8y ago
dcahill-ieee 8y ago
This doesn’t show CO2 emissions. It just lists each country generation type and what that generation type produces per kWh. Where is the actual volume of CO2 per hour or per day? This site would show 1 family on a little island with a coal furnace as worse than an entire nation burning gas.
- corradio 8y ago
  Hi, electricityMap author here. When clicking on a country, just click "Emissions" and then you will see total volumes (tCO2/h) instead of intensity :) EDIT: It's actually by minute. - Olivier
- jabl 8y ago
  You can see the total generation for each country by clicking on the country, then hovering the mouse cursor over, for instance, the "origin of electricity over the last 24 hours". So you can see that e.g. France at the moment generates (or uses? This calculation might be slightly off due to imports/exports...) 51.5 GW with a carbon intensity of 44 gCO2/kWh. Which means that currently France in total emits about 44 x 1e6 x 51.5 / 1e6 = 2266 metric tons of CO2 per hour. By comparison, with the same kind of calculation Energiewende poster boy Germany generates 64.6 GW with a carbon intensity of 375 gCO2/kWh, leading to total emissions of 24225 tons of CO2 per hour. Ouch! EDIT: As pointed out by the author below, you can click on the "emissions" tab and see total CO2 emissions (per minute though, not per hour) directly if you don't want to do the above calculations yourself!
tralarpa 8y ago
It's great how much public real-time information is available on energy production and consumption. Some other links: France: https://www.rte-france.com/fr/eco2mix/eco2mix https://www.rte-france.com/fr/eco2mix/eco2mix Data from the Irish grid: http://www.eirgridgroup.com/__uuid/2e0badb7-e18f-47bd-8eff-865a716a3197/ http://www.eirgridgroup.com/__uuid/2e0badb7-e18f-47bd-8eff-8... Grid in Denmark (scroll down to the map): https://en.energinet.dk/ https://en.energinet.dk/ Visualization of the networks, no real-time information: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/infrastructure/transparency_platform/map-viewer/main.html http://ec.europa.eu/energy/infrastructure/transparency_platf... Finished this posting, and noticed that they already have a nice page explaining their data sources: https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#real-time-electricity-data-sources https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#real-time-...
trzeci 8y ago
This page shows that some countries produce electric power in cleaner way than other. This projects only one point of view, and congratulations for countries that are shifting towards green sources. But, title is misleading: This map doesn't show consumption or total production. Moreover an option "Show wind" emphasis that countries with less green electricity poison other countries. Which is false. From this map it looks that Europe suffers from Estonia and Poland being there. If we'll consider total production from http://world.bymap.org/ElectricityProduction.html http://world.bymap.org/ElectricityProduction.html we have following data: - Estonia: 12900000 (tons / year) - Poland: 108750000 (tons / year) - Germany: 228717000 (tons / year) Without having total numbers there, my feeling is that this page tries to manipulate.
- corradio 8y ago
  Hi @trzeci, Author of the electricityMap here. The point of the app is to display how much CO2 is emitted when you consume from your power plug (hence the consumption point of view, and hence why we emphasise intensity and not volume). We're trying to give people an idea of when it is the best time to consume electricity, and what strategies are best to decarbonise rapidly. Total volumes are also interesting (the climate cares about total volumes), but if you want to look at strategies you have to look at per kWh values (coal in a small volume is still a bad strategy). - Olivier
  - aurelwu 8y ago
    I'm a bit confused with estonia, from all what I know - Oil is "cleaner" than lignite, why is the value so high for Estonia? just as one example showing emissons of oil vs coal: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d666/1a01ee6a54f86fad283e4650e1074c795b7b.pdf#page=14 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d666/1a01ee6a54f86fad283e46...
    - corradio 8y ago
      See https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/blob/master/config/co2eq_parameters.js#L71 https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/blob/maste... - Olivier
gravelc 8y ago
Well that's depressing - Queensland currently sitting at 3rd last. Given our agriculture is also a massive emitter (beef cattle the biggest earner), we are really not pulling our weight.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Oh hey, I live in Tasmania currently sitting at number two with 22g of CO₂ per kWh. Tasmania got lucky historically with something like 25 hydroelectric power stations, and more recently three wind farms.¹ Where as Queensland only has six, and most of them quite small.² 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro_Tasmania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro_Tasmania 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hydroelectric_power_stations_in_Queensland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hydroelectric_power_s...
kingosticks 8y ago
Is there a way (or would you consider adding a way) to view historical data so it's possible to see how the map has changed, e.g. over the last 24 hours?
- corradio 8y ago
  Yes we were thinking of making that, but we are a bit afraid of the amount of data that needed to be transmitted. We had an issue opened here: https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/issues/733 https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/issues/733 Feel free to help us at https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib - Olivier
nickik 8y ago
Our civilization is a total disaster. We face a crisis that we can never stop talking about, 'climate change'. There is a easy and simply model to follow to make a massive impact on this problem, but somehow for reasons of pure bias, ignorance and misinformation we do not do this. Nuclear power could have and should have solved this problem by now. Nuclear power was on track to replace older energy technologies faster then any earlier energy transition. But somehow we failed, mostly because of the anti-humans, sometimes called 'environmentalists' who declared war on nuclear above even coal. They declared their goal in terms of anti-nuclear as 'increase regulation to a point where nuclear becomes unprofitable' and they have largely succeeded. Since then the environmental movement has grown, and the problem they fight have grown, but they never went back and ganged their totally flawed assumptions about nuclear and they continue to spread outright lies and misinformation about nuclear energy. I would not blame them alone, but the reality is the whole population now basically believes most of these lies, its tragic. The left often accuses the right of being anti-science but in reality most anti-GMO, anti-Nuclear people are form the left.
- gldalmaso 8y ago
  I don't think environmentalists are nearly as capable of throwing a wrench on nuclear energy development as you say. Seems to me like the real issue here is that if nuclear energy is pushed as the go to modern day energy source, than global politics would be that much harder for the develop nations that "rule" the others. The US has a very clear agenda of freezing the status quo in the nuclear weapons club, they are not accepting new entries at this time. If nations pursue nuclear technology for energy reasons, that is more than enough to get the stare down from the club. There is even specialized cyber weaponry designed exclusively to sabotage nuclear enrichment equipment.
  - nickik 8y ago
    > I don't think environmentalists are nearly as capable of throwing a wrench on nuclear energy development as you say. Maybe in terms of their organised political power. But their lies and propaganda have essentially become common knowledge and are basically capable of always mobilizing a group of uninformed people to protest anything. > Seems to me like the real issue here is that if nuclear energy is pushed as the go to modern day energy source, than global politics would be that much harder for the develop nations that "rule" the others. Its the opposite, those nations that can produce and sell nuclear power stations can gain huge leverage one everybody else. > There is even specialized cyber weaponry designed exclusively to sabotage nuclear enrichment equipment. Yes. That is one of the larger problems, but not a show stopper.
nickcotter 8y ago
Australia, what are you doing?
sol_remmy 8y ago
Why do they list nuclear as "low carbon" when it is actually zero carbon?
- 24gttghh 8y ago
  >Nuclear power is sometimes described as being free of greenhouse gas emissions, and that’s true of the nuclear fission reactions themselves. But here is a list of all the stages of the nuclear power cycle at which greenhouse gases are emitted: uranium mining, uranium milling, conversion of uranium ore to uranium hexafluoride, uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor construction, reactor decommissioning, fuel reprocessing, nuclear waste disposal, mine site rehabilitation, and transport throughout all stages. >During these stages, greenhouse gases are emitted directly (for instance, by trucks) but also indirectly (such as through the use of materials such as steel and cement, which are manufactured using emissions-intensive processes). [0] I would hazard the site simply doesn't want to be disingenuous at all, and provide the facts, which I applaud! I do not consider this an argument against nuclear power per-se, as stated: it is still much lower carbon than burning FF directly as the plant's power source. [0]http://theconversation.com/is-nuclear-power-zero-emission-no-but-it-isnt-high-emission-either-41615 http://theconversation.com/is-nuclear-power-zero-emission-no...

129 points by robin_reala 8y ago

With the exception of Denmark, the areas that are in the "green" either have hydro og nuclear. I understand the issues with nuclear waste, but it seems that's the current trade-off, if you want lower CO2 emissions and don't have access to large rivers.

realusername 8y ago
Even the colour scale does not really show how big the difference is between countries regarding clean energy. Germany is producing 8x more CO2/Kwh than France, Poland 16 times more and Estonia 24 times more.
- Tade0 8y ago
  France is pretty special in this regard. If my numbers aren't off it makes more environmental sense to carpool in an EV in France than to cycle to work - even assuming everyone is vegan.
  - ancarda 8y ago
    How is that possible? Wouldn’t there be more CO2 involved in producing the car compared to a few bikes? Edit: Slight amend to point out there’s several bikes to each car (as it’s a carpool)
    - mrweasel 8y ago
      I'm not sure that point revolves around the manufacturing of the car and bikes, even though that should be included. There was a study, that sadly eludes me, that suggested that if you need to travel more than 2km to do you grocery shopping, then it would produce less CO2 to get in your car and drive, compared to walking. The reasoning is that you need to consume some amount of food to generate the energy required to walk to the store and back. The amount of CO2 used to generate that food, and the additional CO2 you exhale, would be larger than what a modern car would produce, traveling the same distance. I believe that the same argument that would make multiple people in an EV carpool more environmentally friendly than bikes. But that's also the case with regular cars.
    - Tade0 8y ago
      > Wouldn’t there be more CO2 involved in producing the car compared to a few bikes? Crazily enough there's generally less CO2 involved in producing the car than having each of a few people ride bicycles a distance equal to a typical car's life-cycle mileage. Here's my math: For lack of a better source I'm using Renault's own environmental assessment for the Fluence Z.E[0], which puts its production-related emissions at ~8 metric tonnes of CO2. Over 150k km (which is not a lot for a car, but we want a number achievable by a cyclist over their lifetime) that results in ~53.3g/km of CO2. As for driving let's assume that a fully loaded EV requires 200Wh/km to move around - In France that amounts to 10.6g/km[1]. So overall we have a well-to-wheels footprint of 63.9g/km. Now here's the fun part: A typical Vegan will be responsible for 1.5 metric tonnes of CO2 annualy @ 2600kcal daily, so 1kcal = ~1.57g of CO2 - This is the most environmentally friendly diet. Cycling can vary greatly in intensity[3], but let's say 250kcal/h at 10km/h is a reasonable estimate. Given these figures a single vegan on a bicycle going 10km/h is responsible for 39.25g/km of CO2. According to some sources[4] my numbers aren't that far off. CONCLUSION (caps for visibility): Two vegans on bicycles having a 17km commute are responsible for 78.5g/km, while the same two vegans in an EV in France produce only 63.9g/km. Bump that to four vegans and we're getting awkwardly close to a typical combustion engine car's emissions. Meanwhile environmentally conscious(heh) meat-eaters should probably stay off bicycles, eat less and carpool in a compact car. [0] Page 91 of: https://group.renault.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fluence-acv-2011.pdf https://group.renault.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fluence... [1] http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-electricity-was-nearly-10-times-dirtier-than-frances-in-2016 http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-e... [2] http://www.greeneatz.com/foods-carbon-footprint.html http://www.greeneatz.com/foods-carbon-footprint.html [3] https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1350958587 https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1350958587 [4] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/08/carbon-footprint-cycling https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/08/carbon-f... EDIT: formatting.
      - morsch 8y ago
        This is orthogonal to your point, but: people usually limit their commute by bike to, say, less than 5 to 10 km one way. On the other hand, people think nothing of commuting 50 to 100 km one way by car.
skrause 8y ago
The problem with nuclear power is that it's too expensive unless you choose to simply ignore the long-term cost of the nuclear waste problem. At this point it makes more sense to invest in solar, wind power and energy storage capacity to reduce CO2 emissions.
- realusername 8y ago
  Solar & wind + batteries isn't enough, you also need a stable source of energy to compensate when the production is going down (those are not stable sources), if you are a country without good hydro possibilities, your only option for that is nuclear.
  - Tade0 8y ago
    There's natural gas for that. Sure, it's pretty CO2-intensive, but with enough overprovisioning of renewables and some storage it will rarely be used - if at all. Cheaper than having an inflexible nuclear plant.
    - jabl 8y ago
      If we're going to have any chance of hitting the 2C climate targets, electricity production must be more or less completely emissions-free by mid-century (preferably ASAP). So, any non-trivial amount of natural gas usage is out. Also, there's the rough rule of thumb saying that when variable sources (like wind or solar) approach a fraction of total generation in the grid equal to the capacity factor of said source, system integration costs start to rise rapidly (because that's, at the latest, the point where you'll start needing large amounts of storage, curtailment, or long-range transmission). Thus, in most grids wind+solar will unlikely see much larger than 50% of total generation without massive extra investment and/or breakthroughs in storage costs. If we're going for lowest-cost deep decarbonization, it looks like the share of nuclear will start to rise when we go deep enough, see e.g. slide 41 in https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/Getting_to_Zero.pdf https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/Getting...
    - nickik 8y ago

dcahill-ieee 8y ago

This doesn’t show CO2 emissions. It just lists each country generation type and what that generation type produces per kWh. Where is the actual volume of CO2 per hour or per day? This site would show 1 family on a little island with a coal furnace as worse than an entire nation burning gas.

corradio 8y ago
Hi, electricityMap author here. When clicking on a country, just click "Emissions" and then you will see total volumes (tCO2/h) instead of intensity :) EDIT: It's actually by minute. - Olivier
jabl 8y ago
You can see the total generation for each country by clicking on the country, then hovering the mouse cursor over, for instance, the "origin of electricity over the last 24 hours". So you can see that e.g. France at the moment generates (or uses? This calculation might be slightly off due to imports/exports...) 51.5 GW with a carbon intensity of 44 gCO2/kWh. Which means that currently France in total emits about 44 x 1e6 x 51.5 / 1e6 = 2266 metric tons of CO2 per hour. By comparison, with the same kind of calculation Energiewende poster boy Germany generates 64.6 GW with a carbon intensity of 375 gCO2/kWh, leading to total emissions of 24225 tons of CO2 per hour. Ouch! EDIT: As pointed out by the author below, you can click on the "emissions" tab and see total CO2 emissions (per minute though, not per hour) directly if you don't want to do the above calculations yourself!

tralarpa 8y ago

It's great how much public real-time information is available on energy production and consumption. Some other links: France: https://www.rte-france.com/fr/eco2mix/eco2mix https://www.rte-france.com/fr/eco2mix/eco2mix Data from the Irish grid: http://www.eirgridgroup.com/__uuid/2e0badb7-e18f-47bd-8eff-865a716a3197/ http://www.eirgridgroup.com/__uuid/2e0badb7-e18f-47bd-8eff-8... Grid in Denmark (scroll down to the map): https://en.energinet.dk/ https://en.energinet.dk/ Visualization of the networks, no real-time information: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/infrastructure/transparency_platform/map-viewer/main.html http://ec.europa.eu/energy/infrastructure/transparency_platf... Finished this posting, and noticed that they already have a nice page explaining their data sources: https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#real-time-electricity-data-sources https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#real-time-...

trzeci 8y ago

This page shows that some countries produce electric power in cleaner way than other. This projects only one point of view, and congratulations for countries that are shifting towards green sources. But, title is misleading: This map doesn't show consumption or total production. Moreover an option "Show wind" emphasis that countries with less green electricity poison other countries. Which is false. From this map it looks that Europe suffers from Estonia and Poland being there. If we'll consider total production from http://world.bymap.org/ElectricityProduction.html http://world.bymap.org/ElectricityProduction.html we have following data: - Estonia: 12900000 (tons / year) - Poland: 108750000 (tons / year) - Germany: 228717000 (tons / year) Without having total numbers there, my feeling is that this page tries to manipulate.

corradio 8y ago
Hi @trzeci, Author of the electricityMap here. The point of the app is to display how much CO2 is emitted when you consume from your power plug (hence the consumption point of view, and hence why we emphasise intensity and not volume). We're trying to give people an idea of when it is the best time to consume electricity, and what strategies are best to decarbonise rapidly. Total volumes are also interesting (the climate cares about total volumes), but if you want to look at strategies you have to look at per kWh values (coal in a small volume is still a bad strategy). - Olivier
- aurelwu 8y ago
  I'm a bit confused with estonia, from all what I know - Oil is "cleaner" than lignite, why is the value so high for Estonia? just as one example showing emissons of oil vs coal: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d666/1a01ee6a54f86fad283e4650e1074c795b7b.pdf#page=14 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d666/1a01ee6a54f86fad283e46...
  - corradio 8y ago
    See https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/blob/master/config/co2eq_parameters.js#L71 https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/blob/maste... - Olivier

gravelc 8y ago

Well that's depressing - Queensland currently sitting at 3rd last. Given our agriculture is also a massive emitter (beef cattle the biggest earner), we are really not pulling our weight.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
Oh hey, I live in Tasmania currently sitting at number two with 22g of CO₂ per kWh. Tasmania got lucky historically with something like 25 hydroelectric power stations, and more recently three wind farms.¹ Where as Queensland only has six, and most of them quite small.² 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro_Tasmania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro_Tasmania 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hydroelectric_power_stations_in_Queensland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hydroelectric_power_s...

kingosticks 8y ago

Is there a way (or would you consider adding a way) to view historical data so it's possible to see how the map has changed, e.g. over the last 24 hours?

corradio 8y ago
Yes we were thinking of making that, but we are a bit afraid of the amount of data that needed to be transmitted. We had an issue opened here: https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/issues/733 https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/issues/733 Feel free to help us at https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib - Olivier

nickik 8y ago

Our civilization is a total disaster. We face a crisis that we can never stop talking about, 'climate change'. There is a easy and simply model to follow to make a massive impact on this problem, but somehow for reasons of pure bias, ignorance and misinformation we do not do this. Nuclear power could have and should have solved this problem by now. Nuclear power was on track to replace older energy technologies faster then any earlier energy transition. But somehow we failed, mostly because of the anti-humans, sometimes called 'environmentalists' who declared war on nuclear above even coal. They declared their goal in terms of anti-nuclear as 'increase regulation to a point where nuclear becomes unprofitable' and they have largely succeeded. Since then the environmental movement has grown, and the problem they fight have grown, but they never went back and ganged their totally flawed assumptions about nuclear and they continue to spread outright lies and misinformation about nuclear energy. I would not blame them alone, but the reality is the whole population now basically believes most of these lies, its tragic. The left often accuses the right of being anti-science but in reality most anti-GMO, anti-Nuclear people are form the left.

gldalmaso 8y ago
I don't think environmentalists are nearly as capable of throwing a wrench on nuclear energy development as you say. Seems to me like the real issue here is that if nuclear energy is pushed as the go to modern day energy source, than global politics would be that much harder for the develop nations that "rule" the others. The US has a very clear agenda of freezing the status quo in the nuclear weapons club, they are not accepting new entries at this time. If nations pursue nuclear technology for energy reasons, that is more than enough to get the stare down from the club. There is even specialized cyber weaponry designed exclusively to sabotage nuclear enrichment equipment.
- nickik 8y ago
  > I don't think environmentalists are nearly as capable of throwing a wrench on nuclear energy development as you say. Maybe in terms of their organised political power. But their lies and propaganda have essentially become common knowledge and are basically capable of always mobilizing a group of uninformed people to protest anything. > Seems to me like the real issue here is that if nuclear energy is pushed as the go to modern day energy source, than global politics would be that much harder for the develop nations that "rule" the others. Its the opposite, those nations that can produce and sell nuclear power stations can gain huge leverage one everybody else. > There is even specialized cyber weaponry designed exclusively to sabotage nuclear enrichment equipment. Yes. That is one of the larger problems, but not a show stopper.

nickcotter 8y ago

Australia, what are you doing?

sol_remmy 8y ago

Why do they list nuclear as "low carbon" when it is actually zero carbon?

24gttghh 8y ago
>Nuclear power is sometimes described as being free of greenhouse gas emissions, and that’s true of the nuclear fission reactions themselves. But here is a list of all the stages of the nuclear power cycle at which greenhouse gases are emitted: uranium mining, uranium milling, conversion of uranium ore to uranium hexafluoride, uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor construction, reactor decommissioning, fuel reprocessing, nuclear waste disposal, mine site rehabilitation, and transport throughout all stages. >During these stages, greenhouse gases are emitted directly (for instance, by trucks) but also indirectly (such as through the use of materials such as steel and cement, which are manufactured using emissions-intensive processes). [0] I would hazard the site simply doesn't want to be disingenuous at all, and provide the facts, which I applaud! I do not consider this an argument against nuclear power per-se, as stated: it is still much lower carbon than burning FF directly as the plant's power source. [0]http://theconversation.com/is-nuclear-power-zero-emission-no-but-it-isnt-high-emission-either-41615 http://theconversation.com/is-nuclear-power-zero-emission-no...