4 ms·

Just out of curiosity is grid based green energy available in your area? Here in Germany we can choose providers, and most have fully renewable options. For a

Just out of curiosity is grid based green energy available in your area? Here in Germany we can choose providers, and most have fully renewable options. For a little backup energy autonomy a home solar system is definitely fun but you will probably never offset the sunk carbon from the systems manufacture. I find for me solar definitely drives an awareness that energy isn’t limitless but it’s usually substantially greener to just do that as a mental exercise and buy the power from the grid. That said, having your own setup definitely stokes those nice “I’m autonomous” feelings. :)

hokkos 6y ago
"Green" energy is based on Green certificate that are sold on an exchange, and can be used at anytime during a year, in any connected countries, they are far from real fully renewable or even no marginal carbon. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190523111408.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190523111408.h... https://www.aib-net.org/ https://www.aib-net.org/ https://medium.com/electricitymap/why-green-electricity-contracts-fail-to-deliver-green-electricity-e0d66ca31d88 https://medium.com/electricitymap/why-green-electricity-cont...
- avar 6y ago
  From the last link you cited: > Whoever buys the certificate can then claim that a certain amount of renewable electricity has been produced. Here’s where the problem is: the trade of certificates is not limited in space nor in time. It means that you can buy a certificate from a region disconnected from your electricity grid (space), or from the past (!) without making sure the electricity was stored (time). I've commented before on HN[1] about how this critique of energy certificates doesn't make any sense, the fact that you can time-shift consumption is a feature, not a bug. It helps if you think about it as a subsidy, which it is. You charge your battery on electrons produced at a coal plant and pay for e.g. 1 kWh of solar energy to be produced. That energy is then used to say charge a phone you just bought before it's delivered to you. It's not as superficially emotionally satisfying as imagining that all your electrons are "pure", but they're fungible. Just as you could say emit 1 ton of CO^2 and sequester 2 tons of CO^2 somewhere else at some other time. Did you just undo the pollution you emitted? I think so, but I think using your criteria you'd need to put that "cleanup" effort in another set of scare quotes. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21681772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21681772
  - michaelt 6y ago
    For me, the problem with green energy certificates is as soon as my government set itself a target for green energy, they made a bunch of really sketchy classifications in order to hit their own target.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    If I put a solar panel in a far away desert, and connect it to a resistor, can I sell certificates?
    - avar 6y ago
      Yes, why wouldn't you? To the extent that you can remain solvent while trying to single handedly warm up the planet, it's in the interest of the rest of us to give you an incentive to shift that energy consumption to a sustainable provider. This is a perfect example of exactly the sort of case energy credits excel at, since you can shift the consumption to a different time and location.
      - im3w1l 6y ago
        > you can remain solvent while trying to single handedly warm up the planet, I'm fairly sure we have some kind of misunderstanding, and I don't see exactly what you are getting at. Anyway the point of this whole scheme wouldn't be to warm the planet. It would be to put solar panels in a location with a lot of sun and cheap land, to produce certificates as cheaply as possible. Now having nothing useful to do with the resulting energy, since it's so far away from the grid, just flush it down the drain so to speak, by driving a resistor. The esoteric reader may notice a certain similarity to the practice of a sending a scapegoat to the desert for the purpose of purifying sin.
        avar 6y ago
        I realize what you meant, in practice there's a large amount of legislation around this sort of thing and the people writing it aren't morons and have heard of things like the cobra effect[1]. But maybe I'm wrong and there's lots of investors building power plants purely to waste energy and make a point. We just haven't heard much about them because the joke got tired within a week of operations and they decided they might as well connect it to the grid instead to recoup their investment. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

hokkos 6y ago

"Green" energy is based on Green certificate that are sold on an exchange, and can be used at anytime during a year, in any connected countries, they are far from real fully renewable or even no marginal carbon. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190523111408.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190523111408.h... https://www.aib-net.org/ https://www.aib-net.org/ https://medium.com/electricitymap/why-green-electricity-contracts-fail-to-deliver-green-electricity-e0d66ca31d88 https://medium.com/electricitymap/why-green-electricity-cont...

avar 6y ago
From the last link you cited: > Whoever buys the certificate can then claim that a certain amount of renewable electricity has been produced. Here’s where the problem is: the trade of certificates is not limited in space nor in time. It means that you can buy a certificate from a region disconnected from your electricity grid (space), or from the past (!) without making sure the electricity was stored (time). I've commented before on HN[1] about how this critique of energy certificates doesn't make any sense, the fact that you can time-shift consumption is a feature, not a bug. It helps if you think about it as a subsidy, which it is. You charge your battery on electrons produced at a coal plant and pay for e.g. 1 kWh of solar energy to be produced. That energy is then used to say charge a phone you just bought before it's delivered to you. It's not as superficially emotionally satisfying as imagining that all your electrons are "pure", but they're fungible. Just as you could say emit 1 ton of CO^2 and sequester 2 tons of CO^2 somewhere else at some other time. Did you just undo the pollution you emitted? I think so, but I think using your criteria you'd need to put that "cleanup" effort in another set of scare quotes. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21681772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21681772
- michaelt 6y ago
  For me, the problem with green energy certificates is as soon as my government set itself a target for green energy, they made a bunch of really sketchy classifications in order to hit their own target.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  If I put a solar panel in a far away desert, and connect it to a resistor, can I sell certificates?
  - avar 6y ago
    Yes, why wouldn't you? To the extent that you can remain solvent while trying to single handedly warm up the planet, it's in the interest of the rest of us to give you an incentive to shift that energy consumption to a sustainable provider. This is a perfect example of exactly the sort of case energy credits excel at, since you can shift the consumption to a different time and location.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      > you can remain solvent while trying to single handedly warm up the planet, I'm fairly sure we have some kind of misunderstanding, and I don't see exactly what you are getting at. Anyway the point of this whole scheme wouldn't be to warm the planet. It would be to put solar panels in a location with a lot of sun and cheap land, to produce certificates as cheaply as possible. Now having nothing useful to do with the resulting energy, since it's so far away from the grid, just flush it down the drain so to speak, by driving a resistor. The esoteric reader may notice a certain similarity to the practice of a sending a scapegoat to the desert for the purpose of purifying sin.
      - avar 6y ago
        I realize what you meant, in practice there's a large amount of legislation around this sort of thing and the people writing it aren't morons and have heard of things like the cobra effect[1]. But maybe I'm wrong and there's lots of investors building power plants purely to waste energy and make a point. We just haven't heard much about them because the joke got tired within a week of operations and they decided they might as well connect it to the grid instead to recoup their investment. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect