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Every time there's a thread on the topic, I like to share this fantastic realtime map of the carbon intensity of electricity production in various countries :

Every time there's a thread on the topic, I like to share this fantastic realtime map of the carbon intensity of electricity production in various countries : https://www.electricitymap.org/map https://www.electricitymap.org/map As I write this, the UK's intensity is 326 gCO₂eq/kWh, which is nothing to write home about. This is better than the worst European offender (coal-loving Poland : 652g) as well as Baltic countries, the Netherlands and Germany (373). But it's far from the best in class : Nordic countries (around 20-30, thanks to hydro) or for a more comparable country, France (around 60, thanks to nuclear) Germany is interesting because it consistently has one of the worst carbon intensity figures of all developed countries, in spite of a record-setting share of renewables that its green activists like to boast about, and hundreds of billions of € in subsidies poured into them in the past 20 years. That's of course the consequence of its decision to phase out nuclear power in the early 2000s. Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough). That leaves 4 options for handling the base load : nuclear, hydro, gas or coal. Only 2 of those are low-carbon. And if you don't have the geography for hydro (like the Nordics do) but still decide to go nuclear-free for political reasons, guess what you're left with ? IIRC, German coal power plants have 7 spots in the top 10 worst air pollution emitters across the EU. Coal-related air pollution causes an estimated 10.000 extra deaths each year across the continent. Radiation caused one direct death in Fukushima. Thanks, Die Grüne.

jasoncartwright 6y ago
>As I write this, the UK's intensity is 326 gCO₂eq/kWh, which is nothing to write home about. Yeah, that's true, but you've taken a reading there at the worst time of day whilst it's not windy here. The other week we achieved the second lowest carbon intensity daily average ever (the lowest was in the summer last year). Here's what the UK carbon intensity of electricity looks over a larger time scale (8yrs) https://electricityproduction.uk/carbon-intensity/?t=8y https://electricityproduction.uk/carbon-intensity/?t=8y Also, I don't believe that (whilst I love their visualisation) the Electricity Map UK gCO2/kWh measurement is very accurate. For starters, they don't appear to separate out different types of gas plants. The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT.
- deleted 6y ago
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- bearbin 6y ago
  Not that I have any stake in the accuracy of electricitymap's statistics, but I don't think there's any point seperating out OCGT from CCGT generation. OCGT makes up a negligible share of realised generation (and indeed, even generation capacity is rather limited). The few plants that are still in operation need very specific market conditions to make their operation worthwhile, especially considering that 3x CO2 output means 3X fuel input, and 3x fuel costs. It's better to think of them as grid-stability mechanisms, like diesel generators, or the industrial load-shedding schemes.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  > For starters, they don't appear to separate out different types of gas plants. The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT. What makes you believe that? They list CCGT and OCGT separately, it's just that (unless every site I've seen about UK energy is wrong) there isn't a lot of OCGT generation in the UK because it's uncompetitive. Which would be for the same reason it increases CO2 intensity - it's inefficient to run. In the UK market it doesn't make up for that enough by being cheap to build and fast to spin up so as to create an incentive to build a lot more.
- mhandley 6y ago
  Electricity Map is using 490 gCO2/kWh for UK gas, which is pretty much exclusively CCGT. This does seem high. The US average [1] seems to be around 418 gCO2/kWh whereas electricityinfo.org [2] seems to be using 394 gCO2/kWh and so gets a rather different value for current UK carbon intensity. [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 [2] http://electricityinfo.org/real-time-british-electricity-supply/ http://electricityinfo.org/real-time-british-electricity-sup...
- pfdietz 6y ago
  > The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT. The efficiency of OCGT is about 40%. The efficiency of CCGT is about 60%. So, no, the CO2 intensity is not "3x".
somedudetbh 6y ago
> Coal-related air pollution causes an estimated 10.000 extra deaths each year across the continent. Radiation caused one direct death in Fukushima. What's the rationale for comparing indirect deaths from coal to direct deaths from radiation?
- boustrophedon 6y ago
  What other direct or indirect sources of deaths are there from nuclear power?
  - Ma8ee 6y ago
    Mining and transport of uranium ore, processed fuel and nuclear waste. I don’t know how significant those are. My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t know the full actual cost of the energy.
    - glogla 6y ago
      > My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t know the full actual cost of the energy. That's a red herring. The "waste" has a lot of energy remaining (otherwise, it would not be radioactive [1]). There are reactor designs that can use "waste" from current reactors as fuel. Only, we're not building them. Because coal is better or whatever. [1]: that's bit of a shortcut, but elements that undergo radioactive decay on timescales that make them dangerous are unstable enough, you can put them in a reactor and poke them to undergo that decay faster and get you electricity.
      - alex_young 6y ago
        > That's a red herring. The "waste" has a lot of energy remaining (otherwise, it would not be radioactive [1]). There are reactor designs that can use "waste" from current reactors as fuel. Don't these reactors produce nuclear weapons products? Seems like that may be a reason we don't want a lot of them around.
clomond 6y ago
Minor nitpicks here - battery storage is already reaching deployment ready maturity (its not as far away as you think), but the key attribute that needs solving is not 'baseload' power, but rather 'dispatchabilty'. Baseload power in the traditional sense (its always on) isn't always a great think either, what you really want is the ability to have it on, or off, or in between depending on the gap in demand that changes and needs to be filled. By this metric, combined cycle gas plants and hydro are the dispatchable options. While the French have figured out rampable/dispatchable nuclear - it is not the standard in reactor designs and the actual desired attribute here is the ability to dispatch energy on demand. (also, another reason why German electricity emissions are so bad are those plants use lignite (brown coal) - the least efficient and most polluting form of generating electricity (lots of Poland is dependent on brown coal too).
- renaudg 6y ago
  That was very insightful, thanks !
- manfredo 6y ago
  Battery storage gas great dispatchability. It's scale that it lacks. It's estimated that a country needs 3 days worth of energy storage for solar and wind to work. The US would require 7 years worth of Global battery production: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-battery-planned-capacity-update-9-growth-in-a-single-month-march-charts/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-batt...
  - clomond 6y ago
    Not sure if I missed it but didn’t see anything in your source to back up this 7 years worth of battery production requirement for what the US needs in stationary storage. Without seeing how we got to the number, I’m skeptical. Things worth considering: 1) decommissioned battery packs from electric cars will eventually have 2nd lives on the grid 2) the manufacturing capacity of li-ion globally today is paltry compared what’s needed just in the batteries for mobility, let alone grid storage. Just like underestimations done for solar and wind, I expect current projections to be undershooting where we’ll end up 3) effective demand response (ramping up and down variable loads like commercial refrigeration, heating water, among others) based on renewable generation levels can effectively replace large chunks of battery storage requirements. 4) wind and solar generation profiles compliment each other - when it is usually sunny, it’s not too windy and when it’s colder (night, winter) wind generates more. Add in negative energy prices in periods of excess generation / curtailment - that is economic opportunity for energy storage to come in and capture value 5) li-ion batteries as they are today are effective for “peak shifting” applications of moving energy across a few hours, but not across weeks or even across seasons. Where it is applicable, pumped hydro and other tech can better fill those other spaces - but we can still make lots of progress prior to those ramping up. 6)Investing in broadening the connectedness of grids across states / countries / continents is another way to reduce generation variability with renewables as across, say North America - it may not be very windy in one state at a given moment but 1000mi away it could be either sunny or windy elsewhere. Smoothing the generation across geographies and types ( connecting hydro and nuclear to more grids) is another way to reduce the amount of energy storage required on a grid.
heipei 6y ago
I don't know how any German in their right mind can continue supporting coal (especially lignite) even if you were to ignore all the fancy carbon emission calculations. Lignite is won using strip-mining here, and by here I mean in the most populous state of Germany between the major Ruhr area and Düsseldorf/Cologne, all major population centers. From where I live, I have to drive straight through these mines whenever I want to go to either city, and the experience is surreal. There's a brand new three-lane highway and then open pits, hundreds of meters deep, for miles and miles in either direction, nothing else. It defies the imagination: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinisches_Braunkohlerevier#/media/Datei:Tagebau_Garzweiler_Panorama_2005.jpg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinisches_Braunkohlerevier#/...
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Quickest and most straightforward would be to convert those coal plants to natural gas. But that gas has to come from somewhere, and I don’t think they like knowing that “somewhere” is Russia.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - TwoHeadedBeast 6y ago
    I love the way you say it so casually. In the grand scheme of things you are of course right, but I reckon converting a coal plant to gas is a non-trivial undertaking.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      It's a lot quicker than nuclear. Dunno if it's cheaper to just raze the coal plant and build a natural gas one somewhere. I'll assume any hydro opportunities are tapped out. Conservation is already big in Germany. Wind and solar can only go so far. And natural gas would provide better peaking capacity to balance it out.
      - 6y ago
Retric 6y ago
France imports and exports a lot of electricity, so the used electricity is far less clean than that suggests. Similarly, countries that import from France are cleaner than that suggests. This is an important consideration when looking at the cost of scaling nuclear power as it gets far more expensive the lower the utilization. You can get to around 40% across an electric grid such as Europe or an island, but scaling past that needs truly massive subsidies.
- glogla 6y ago
  The linked page tracks both - production and consumption. For example, at the moment, Germany produces at 415g/kWh but consumes at 382g/kWh, mostly thanks to 3 GW import from France and 2.7 GW import from Switzerland.
  - Retric 6y ago
    The map shows both production and consumption, but it only tracks carbon by production nationwide. PS: It’s not uncommon to see a country export and import electricity at the same time. In that context using nationwide numbers is clearly missing important details.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > This is an important consideration when looking at the cost of scaling nuclear power as it gets far more expensive the lower the utilization. You can get to around 40% across an electric grid such as Europe or an island, but scaling past that needs truly massive subsidies. This is why diversified solutions are best. You get ~40% from nuclear and the same from solar and you're 80% carbon-free. Even using natural gas for the last 20% would put you well ahead of most countries as it is, and as storage or other alternatives improve you can move even that to solar+storage or whatever alternatives.
csours 6y ago
ERCOT aka Texas isn't showing up. It says something like "data not available at this time". Does anyone know if data has ever been available from ERCOT? I know that there have been a very large number of wind turbines added to the Texas grid over the last few years, including some near my home town, which I didn't really expect, as that is central Texas and not west Texas where the big farms are. Edit: I will say, at the other end of my home county there is a coal plant.
aksss 6y ago
Great points, great site. I would just note that those scores are near real-time, so they don't reflect the full picture for a country year-round (summer will have better scores than winter, and thus better than an annual score). For instance, the Yukon Territory in Canada shows on electricitymap.org as 100% hydro with 24g Carbon Intensity score (and 3x that only 12 hours ago). Which is great, but a look during winter surely must be a different story. Having lived at a similar latitude, I know the water powering the hydro plants freezes up at some point during the winter months, at which time the small communities I've been in switch exclusively to diesel generators for part of the year (fuel for which is trucked in). Indeed, quick research of the power suppliers in Yukon (YEC/YECL) indicates several diesel generation facilities probably for exactly this purpose.
- kalenx 6y ago
  Maybe for small hydro plants, but definitely not the major ones. Quebec uses almost only hydro all year long (with the major dams being far in the north), and houses and buildings heating is mostly electrical.
  - aksss 6y ago
    Quebec's hydro plants aren't at the even the lowest latitudes of the Yukon Territory.. are they?
scotty79 6y ago
Poland looks horrible when you count CO2 per kWh. But pretty good if you count CO2 per capita per unit of time. We use so little energy per capita when compared to western world that our CO2 emissions look better than some bit greener countries (for example UK or Germany) despite getting nearly all of energy from coal.
- renaudg 6y ago
  Not really, Poland burns so much coal that even the absolute numbers don't look great : https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-lignite-plants-eus-top-polluters-free-democrats-attack-eeg/german-lignite-dominates-list-most-polluting-european-power-plants https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-lignite-plants-e...
  - scotty79 6y ago
    These seem to be specifically CO2 emissions from coal. When you look at total CO2 from all energy sources Poland fares better also than UK or Czechia I think. We also buy less stuff and are not really into eating cows. I'm not saying it's great. We are bad, but in total not as bad as this map suggests: https://knoema.com/atlas/ranks/CO2-emissions-per-capita https://knoema.com/atlas/ranks/CO2-emissions-per-capita
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
It looks like somebody needs to inform Australia that solar exists and they get a lot of sunlight.
- BLKNSLVR 6y ago
  Australians know. The government, however, behaves as if beholden to the fossil fuel lobby. South Australia installed the largest lithium ion battery in the world[0], and the federal government rubbished it as not fit for purpose and to small too make any difference. Have you ever known the government of any country to play down the installation of the biggest X in the world, in their own country, rather than using it as an advertising opportunity for how technologically progressive and advanced the country is? Australia's Prime Minister compared the usefulness of the battery to "the big banana" in Coffs Harbor, a tourist attraction[1], and the Energy Minister, of all people, compared it to Kim Kardashian. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve [1]https://m.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/news/scott-morrison-mocks-our-big-banana-in-sa-big-batt/3205605/ https://m.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/news/scott-morrison-mock...
  - LilBytes 6y ago
    Australian and former ex-pat of the UK here. I'm happy to see our Government getting rightly ridiculed on an increasing basis in more and more of these types of conversations.
    - stan_rogers 6y ago
      Is there anything like Clarke and Dawe anymore? [1] I'd have thought they'd have a broad chorus started by now. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/ClarkeAndDawe https://www.youtube.com/user/ClarkeAndDawe
      - BLKNSLVR 6y ago
        There are these guys, which are pretty sharp, but totally different style of delivery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CMUtKWubxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CMUtKWubxg Vale John Clarke, yet another great Australian who happened to have been born in New Zealand. and in reply to LilBytes, I think, unfortunately, the increasing ridicule of our Government still resides within an echo chamber. There's a fair way to go before critical mass. The opposition just don't hold them to public account on much other than trivialities.
dmos62 6y ago
The color value is misleading though, since it doesn't account for differences in energy consumption per unit of area. For example Belgium is very densely populated compared to France, so if for example both had the same gCO₂eq/kWh, Belgium would have higher CO₂ intensity per unit of area, but this map would color them the same.
- knuffelbert 6y ago
  One of us is misunderstanding the map. My understanding the color is gram of CO2 (equivalent) per kWh, so not per area, but per unit of electricity consumed.
  - scotty79 6y ago
    Map being a map suggests that some of the geographical information is factored into the displayed data. In case of this map it isn't. This map could be just a list of country names.
    - icebraining 6y ago
      There's one geographical information: the border flows of energy (Portugal imports from Spain, Spain from France, etc).
patall 6y ago
While its not that high (about 5%), Germany also has biogas which is also a baseload capable energy source that is renewable and can use most of the existing gas infrastructure
rb808 6y ago
Would be nice if that chart was g/person instead of kWh
cyberpunk 6y ago
Change is happening, slowly (like everything else in germany) -- I used to take the train from Berlin to frankfurt and would pass 60km2 of solar farms starting within about 10km of west berlin.. Let's not pretend germany is agile in any way, anyone who lives here knows that's not true, but things ARE actually moving.. Slowly.. :}
xvilka 6y ago
Yes, shows the danger of following populist agenda just to please clueless public.
dragontamer 6y ago
> That's of course the consequence of its decision to phase out nuclear power in the early 2000s. Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough). Hmmm, in theory, it seems like overbuilding Wind/Solar might work. Solar continues to generate electricity on cloudy days, its just diminished. Wind works from 5mph all the way to 50mph or so, it makes less energy on 5mph days but the wind almost never truly stops. Overbuilding Solar/Wind to make up for this however, would cost significant amounts of money. Batteries would be best for storing the excess energy, but maybe other plants (ie: Aluminum manufacturing) can also be used (variable amount of Aluminum based on energy demands). Both Solar and Wind can "ramp down". Solar panels can safely generate zero-power if you prevent current from flowing. Wind turbines must continue to move, but you can slow down wind turbines by controlling the angles, and grossly "ramp down" the energy produced. As such, it is safe to overbuild both solar and wind plants... and later "ramp down" if the grid gets too hot. ----------- But overall, I agree with you that nuclear seems like the simplest solution. Its a shame that the world in general is afraid of uranium. Despite the geopolitics involved, I really do think its the simplest solution to worldwide energy problems.
- renaudg 6y ago
  There's the issue of space as well : I seem to recall you'd basically need to cover the whole country in wind/solar farms to make up for the loss of a few nuclear plants.
sitkack 6y ago
Why not use the nordics hydro to store power and run renewables from their sunnier neighbors?
bjelkeman-again 6y ago
Norway is about 95% hydro. Sweden is 40% hydro, 40% nuclear, 10% wind and 7-8% biomass, 2% fossil (the last two an estimate based on a graph). Source Wikipedia.
gm3dmo 6y ago
We must also thank the nuclear industry for Windscale, Three Mile Island and of course Chernobyl. They've also been generous enough to allow us to pay to store their nuclear sewage for thousands of years.
voldacar 6y ago
What's up with estonia and serbia?
- Yaggo 6y ago
  No hydro or nuclear.
simmanian 6y ago
Is there a source to learn more about how wind/solar are "intermittent" solutions? I personally think fission's worst case disaster scenario is much worse than coal's. Imagine living in a tiny country like S. Korea and getting their nuclear plants blown up by N. Korea agents. The whole country might become uninhabitable. That's not even considering the waste.
8bitsrule 6y ago
"Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough)" One way 'around that' is to use gravity storage -- of which dozens of examples already exist around the world. China has at least 21 pumped-hydro facilities (19GW capacity [0], working on 30GW more [1]) and Britain's been using one for 'tea-time' demands for decades. 'Waiting for batteries' is decisively not a useful argument. They're very far from the most economical and environmentally-friendly storage. [0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/chinas-ambitious-plan-to-build-the-worlds-biggest-supergrid https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/chinas-amb... [1] https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201901/09/WS5c353bb7a31068606745f967.html https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201901/09/WS5c353bb7a3106860...

jasoncartwright 6y ago

>As I write this, the UK's intensity is 326 gCO₂eq/kWh, which is nothing to write home about. Yeah, that's true, but you've taken a reading there at the worst time of day whilst it's not windy here. The other week we achieved the second lowest carbon intensity daily average ever (the lowest was in the summer last year). Here's what the UK carbon intensity of electricity looks over a larger time scale (8yrs) https://electricityproduction.uk/carbon-intensity/?t=8y https://electricityproduction.uk/carbon-intensity/?t=8y Also, I don't believe that (whilst I love their visualisation) the Electricity Map UK gCO2/kWh measurement is very accurate. For starters, they don't appear to separate out different types of gas plants. The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bearbin 6y ago
Not that I have any stake in the accuracy of electricitymap's statistics, but I don't think there's any point seperating out OCGT from CCGT generation. OCGT makes up a negligible share of realised generation (and indeed, even generation capacity is rather limited). The few plants that are still in operation need very specific market conditions to make their operation worthwhile, especially considering that 3x CO2 output means 3X fuel input, and 3x fuel costs. It's better to think of them as grid-stability mechanisms, like diesel generators, or the industrial load-shedding schemes.
tialaramex 6y ago
> For starters, they don't appear to separate out different types of gas plants. The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT. What makes you believe that? They list CCGT and OCGT separately, it's just that (unless every site I've seen about UK energy is wrong) there isn't a lot of OCGT generation in the UK because it's uncompetitive. Which would be for the same reason it increases CO2 intensity - it's inefficient to run. In the UK market it doesn't make up for that enough by being cheap to build and fast to spin up so as to create an incentive to build a lot more.
mhandley 6y ago
Electricity Map is using 490 gCO2/kWh for UK gas, which is pretty much exclusively CCGT. This does seem high. The US average [1] seems to be around 418 gCO2/kWh whereas electricityinfo.org [2] seems to be using 394 gCO2/kWh and so gets a rather different value for current UK carbon intensity. [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 [2] http://electricityinfo.org/real-time-british-electricity-supply/ http://electricityinfo.org/real-time-british-electricity-sup...
pfdietz 6y ago
> The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT. The efficiency of OCGT is about 40%. The efficiency of CCGT is about 60%. So, no, the CO2 intensity is not "3x".

somedudetbh 6y ago

> Coal-related air pollution causes an estimated 10.000 extra deaths each year across the continent. Radiation caused one direct death in Fukushima. What's the rationale for comparing indirect deaths from coal to direct deaths from radiation?

boustrophedon 6y ago
What other direct or indirect sources of deaths are there from nuclear power?
- Ma8ee 6y ago
  Mining and transport of uranium ore, processed fuel and nuclear waste. I don’t know how significant those are. My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t know the full actual cost of the energy.
  - glogla 6y ago
    > My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t know the full actual cost of the energy. That's a red herring. The "waste" has a lot of energy remaining (otherwise, it would not be radioactive [1]). There are reactor designs that can use "waste" from current reactors as fuel. Only, we're not building them. Because coal is better or whatever. [1]: that's bit of a shortcut, but elements that undergo radioactive decay on timescales that make them dangerous are unstable enough, you can put them in a reactor and poke them to undergo that decay faster and get you electricity.
    - alex_young 6y ago
      > That's a red herring. The "waste" has a lot of energy remaining (otherwise, it would not be radioactive [1]). There are reactor designs that can use "waste" from current reactors as fuel. Don't these reactors produce nuclear weapons products? Seems like that may be a reason we don't want a lot of them around.

clomond 6y ago

Minor nitpicks here - battery storage is already reaching deployment ready maturity (its not as far away as you think), but the key attribute that needs solving is not 'baseload' power, but rather 'dispatchabilty'. Baseload power in the traditional sense (its always on) isn't always a great think either, what you really want is the ability to have it on, or off, or in between depending on the gap in demand that changes and needs to be filled. By this metric, combined cycle gas plants and hydro are the dispatchable options. While the French have figured out rampable/dispatchable nuclear - it is not the standard in reactor designs and the actual desired attribute here is the ability to dispatch energy on demand. (also, another reason why German electricity emissions are so bad are those plants use lignite (brown coal) - the least efficient and most polluting form of generating electricity (lots of Poland is dependent on brown coal too).

renaudg 6y ago
That was very insightful, thanks !
manfredo 6y ago
Battery storage gas great dispatchability. It's scale that it lacks. It's estimated that a country needs 3 days worth of energy storage for solar and wind to work. The US would require 7 years worth of Global battery production: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-battery-planned-capacity-update-9-growth-in-a-single-month-march-charts/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-batt...
- clomond 6y ago
  Not sure if I missed it but didn’t see anything in your source to back up this 7 years worth of battery production requirement for what the US needs in stationary storage. Without seeing how we got to the number, I’m skeptical. Things worth considering: 1) decommissioned battery packs from electric cars will eventually have 2nd lives on the grid 2) the manufacturing capacity of li-ion globally today is paltry compared what’s needed just in the batteries for mobility, let alone grid storage. Just like underestimations done for solar and wind, I expect current projections to be undershooting where we’ll end up 3) effective demand response (ramping up and down variable loads like commercial refrigeration, heating water, among others) based on renewable generation levels can effectively replace large chunks of battery storage requirements. 4) wind and solar generation profiles compliment each other - when it is usually sunny, it’s not too windy and when it’s colder (night, winter) wind generates more. Add in negative energy prices in periods of excess generation / curtailment - that is economic opportunity for energy storage to come in and capture value 5) li-ion batteries as they are today are effective for “peak shifting” applications of moving energy across a few hours, but not across weeks or even across seasons. Where it is applicable, pumped hydro and other tech can better fill those other spaces - but we can still make lots of progress prior to those ramping up. 6)Investing in broadening the connectedness of grids across states / countries / continents is another way to reduce generation variability with renewables as across, say North America - it may not be very windy in one state at a given moment but 1000mi away it could be either sunny or windy elsewhere. Smoothing the generation across geographies and types ( connecting hydro and nuclear to more grids) is another way to reduce the amount of energy storage required on a grid.

heipei 6y ago

I don't know how any German in their right mind can continue supporting coal (especially lignite) even if you were to ignore all the fancy carbon emission calculations. Lignite is won using strip-mining here, and by here I mean in the most populous state of Germany between the major Ruhr area and Düsseldorf/Cologne, all major population centers. From where I live, I have to drive straight through these mines whenever I want to go to either city, and the experience is surreal. There's a brand new three-lane highway and then open pits, hundreds of meters deep, for miles and miles in either direction, nothing else. It defies the imagination: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinisches_Braunkohlerevier#/media/Datei:Tagebau_Garzweiler_Panorama_2005.jpg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinisches_Braunkohlerevier#/...

Scoundreller 6y ago
Quickest and most straightforward would be to convert those coal plants to natural gas. But that gas has to come from somewhere, and I don’t think they like knowing that “somewhere” is Russia.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- TwoHeadedBeast 6y ago
  I love the way you say it so casually. In the grand scheme of things you are of course right, but I reckon converting a coal plant to gas is a non-trivial undertaking.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    It's a lot quicker than nuclear. Dunno if it's cheaper to just raze the coal plant and build a natural gas one somewhere. I'll assume any hydro opportunities are tapped out. Conservation is already big in Germany. Wind and solar can only go so far. And natural gas would provide better peaking capacity to balance it out.
    - 6y ago

Retric 6y ago

France imports and exports a lot of electricity, so the used electricity is far less clean than that suggests. Similarly, countries that import from France are cleaner than that suggests. This is an important consideration when looking at the cost of scaling nuclear power as it gets far more expensive the lower the utilization. You can get to around 40% across an electric grid such as Europe or an island, but scaling past that needs truly massive subsidies.

glogla 6y ago
The linked page tracks both - production and consumption. For example, at the moment, Germany produces at 415g/kWh but consumes at 382g/kWh, mostly thanks to 3 GW import from France and 2.7 GW import from Switzerland.
- Retric 6y ago
  The map shows both production and consumption, but it only tracks carbon by production nationwide. PS: It’s not uncommon to see a country export and import electricity at the same time. In that context using nationwide numbers is clearly missing important details.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> This is an important consideration when looking at the cost of scaling nuclear power as it gets far more expensive the lower the utilization. You can get to around 40% across an electric grid such as Europe or an island, but scaling past that needs truly massive subsidies. This is why diversified solutions are best. You get ~40% from nuclear and the same from solar and you're 80% carbon-free. Even using natural gas for the last 20% would put you well ahead of most countries as it is, and as storage or other alternatives improve you can move even that to solar+storage or whatever alternatives.

csours 6y ago

ERCOT aka Texas isn't showing up. It says something like "data not available at this time". Does anyone know if data has ever been available from ERCOT? I know that there have been a very large number of wind turbines added to the Texas grid over the last few years, including some near my home town, which I didn't really expect, as that is central Texas and not west Texas where the big farms are. Edit: I will say, at the other end of my home county there is a coal plant.

aksss 6y ago

Great points, great site. I would just note that those scores are near real-time, so they don't reflect the full picture for a country year-round (summer will have better scores than winter, and thus better than an annual score). For instance, the Yukon Territory in Canada shows on electricitymap.org as 100% hydro with 24g Carbon Intensity score (and 3x that only 12 hours ago). Which is great, but a look during winter surely must be a different story. Having lived at a similar latitude, I know the water powering the hydro plants freezes up at some point during the winter months, at which time the small communities I've been in switch exclusively to diesel generators for part of the year (fuel for which is trucked in). Indeed, quick research of the power suppliers in Yukon (YEC/YECL) indicates several diesel generation facilities probably for exactly this purpose.

kalenx 6y ago
Maybe for small hydro plants, but definitely not the major ones. Quebec uses almost only hydro all year long (with the major dams being far in the north), and houses and buildings heating is mostly electrical.
- aksss 6y ago
  Quebec's hydro plants aren't at the even the lowest latitudes of the Yukon Territory.. are they?

scotty79 6y ago

Poland looks horrible when you count CO2 per kWh. But pretty good if you count CO2 per capita per unit of time. We use so little energy per capita when compared to western world that our CO2 emissions look better than some bit greener countries (for example UK or Germany) despite getting nearly all of energy from coal.

renaudg 6y ago
Not really, Poland burns so much coal that even the absolute numbers don't look great : https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-lignite-plants-eus-top-polluters-free-democrats-attack-eeg/german-lignite-dominates-list-most-polluting-european-power-plants https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-lignite-plants-e...
- scotty79 6y ago
  These seem to be specifically CO2 emissions from coal. When you look at total CO2 from all energy sources Poland fares better also than UK or Czechia I think. We also buy less stuff and are not really into eating cows. I'm not saying it's great. We are bad, but in total not as bad as this map suggests: https://knoema.com/atlas/ranks/CO2-emissions-per-capita https://knoema.com/atlas/ranks/CO2-emissions-per-capita

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

It looks like somebody needs to inform Australia that solar exists and they get a lot of sunlight.

BLKNSLVR 6y ago
Australians know. The government, however, behaves as if beholden to the fossil fuel lobby. South Australia installed the largest lithium ion battery in the world[0], and the federal government rubbished it as not fit for purpose and to small too make any difference. Have you ever known the government of any country to play down the installation of the biggest X in the world, in their own country, rather than using it as an advertising opportunity for how technologically progressive and advanced the country is? Australia's Prime Minister compared the usefulness of the battery to "the big banana" in Coffs Harbor, a tourist attraction[1], and the Energy Minister, of all people, compared it to Kim Kardashian. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve [1]https://m.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/news/scott-morrison-mocks-our-big-banana-in-sa-big-batt/3205605/ https://m.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/news/scott-morrison-mock...
- LilBytes 6y ago
  Australian and former ex-pat of the UK here. I'm happy to see our Government getting rightly ridiculed on an increasing basis in more and more of these types of conversations.
  - stan_rogers 6y ago
    Is there anything like Clarke and Dawe anymore? [1] I'd have thought they'd have a broad chorus started by now. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/ClarkeAndDawe https://www.youtube.com/user/ClarkeAndDawe
    - BLKNSLVR 6y ago
      There are these guys, which are pretty sharp, but totally different style of delivery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CMUtKWubxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CMUtKWubxg Vale John Clarke, yet another great Australian who happened to have been born in New Zealand. and in reply to LilBytes, I think, unfortunately, the increasing ridicule of our Government still resides within an echo chamber. There's a fair way to go before critical mass. The opposition just don't hold them to public account on much other than trivialities.

dmos62 6y ago

The color value is misleading though, since it doesn't account for differences in energy consumption per unit of area. For example Belgium is very densely populated compared to France, so if for example both had the same gCO₂eq/kWh, Belgium would have higher CO₂ intensity per unit of area, but this map would color them the same.

knuffelbert 6y ago
One of us is misunderstanding the map. My understanding the color is gram of CO2 (equivalent) per kWh, so not per area, but per unit of electricity consumed.
- scotty79 6y ago
  Map being a map suggests that some of the geographical information is factored into the displayed data. In case of this map it isn't. This map could be just a list of country names.
  - icebraining 6y ago
    There's one geographical information: the border flows of energy (Portugal imports from Spain, Spain from France, etc).

patall 6y ago

While its not that high (about 5%), Germany also has biogas which is also a baseload capable energy source that is renewable and can use most of the existing gas infrastructure

rb808 6y ago

Would be nice if that chart was g/person instead of kWh

cyberpunk 6y ago

Change is happening, slowly (like everything else in germany) -- I used to take the train from Berlin to frankfurt and would pass 60km2 of solar farms starting within about 10km of west berlin.. Let's not pretend germany is agile in any way, anyone who lives here knows that's not true, but things ARE actually moving.. Slowly.. :}

xvilka 6y ago

Yes, shows the danger of following populist agenda just to please clueless public.

dragontamer 6y ago

> That's of course the consequence of its decision to phase out nuclear power in the early 2000s. Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough). Hmmm, in theory, it seems like overbuilding Wind/Solar might work. Solar continues to generate electricity on cloudy days, its just diminished. Wind works from 5mph all the way to 50mph or so, it makes less energy on 5mph days but the wind almost never truly stops. Overbuilding Solar/Wind to make up for this however, would cost significant amounts of money. Batteries would be best for storing the excess energy, but maybe other plants (ie: Aluminum manufacturing) can also be used (variable amount of Aluminum based on energy demands). Both Solar and Wind can "ramp down". Solar panels can safely generate zero-power if you prevent current from flowing. Wind turbines must continue to move, but you can slow down wind turbines by controlling the angles, and grossly "ramp down" the energy produced. As such, it is safe to overbuild both solar and wind plants... and later "ramp down" if the grid gets too hot. ----------- But overall, I agree with you that nuclear seems like the simplest solution. Its a shame that the world in general is afraid of uranium. Despite the geopolitics involved, I really do think its the simplest solution to worldwide energy problems.

renaudg 6y ago
There's the issue of space as well : I seem to recall you'd basically need to cover the whole country in wind/solar farms to make up for the loss of a few nuclear plants.

sitkack 6y ago

Why not use the nordics hydro to store power and run renewables from their sunnier neighbors?

bjelkeman-again 6y ago

Norway is about 95% hydro. Sweden is 40% hydro, 40% nuclear, 10% wind and 7-8% biomass, 2% fossil (the last two an estimate based on a graph). Source Wikipedia.

gm3dmo 6y ago

We must also thank the nuclear industry for Windscale, Three Mile Island and of course Chernobyl. They've also been generous enough to allow us to pay to store their nuclear sewage for thousands of years.

voldacar 6y ago

What's up with estonia and serbia?

Yaggo 6y ago
No hydro or nuclear.

simmanian 6y ago

Is there a source to learn more about how wind/solar are "intermittent" solutions? I personally think fission's worst case disaster scenario is much worse than coal's. Imagine living in a tiny country like S. Korea and getting their nuclear plants blown up by N. Korea agents. The whole country might become uninhabitable. That's not even considering the waste.

8bitsrule 6y ago

"Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough)" One way 'around that' is to use gravity storage -- of which dozens of examples already exist around the world. China has at least 21 pumped-hydro facilities (19GW capacity [0], working on 30GW more [1]) and Britain's been using one for 'tea-time' demands for decades. 'Waiting for batteries' is decisively not a useful argument. They're very far from the most economical and environmentally-friendly storage. [0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/chinas-ambitious-plan-to-build-the-worlds-biggest-supergrid https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/chinas-amb... [1] https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201901/09/WS5c353bb7a31068606745f967.html https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201901/09/WS5c353bb7a3106860...