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ElectricityMap – Live CO₂ emissions of electricity production and consumption

224 points by jka 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pbsds 6y ago
🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴 Woooo!!! 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴 Go Norway! We are the best! 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴 Woooo!!! 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴
- dang 6y ago
  I realize you're just being enthusiastic, but please don't use visual gimmicks in HN comments. Those are supposed to be text.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I've always been curious what the emoji blacklist is for comments, since a couple seem to get through whatever filter there is…
    - dang 6y ago
      It's not that interesting. If you email hn@ycombinator.com we can send it to you. I probably shouldn't post it here.
martincollignon 6y ago
Thanks so much for sharing! The map couldn't be what it is today without the help of the great open source community:https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib We're also super proud that the data is being used by Google to ensure that they use their data centers more when the electricity is greener and to help them in goal to make their electricity usage 24/7 carbon free in 2030 (https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/247-carbon-free-energy.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/247-carbon-fr...) Martin from Tomorrow (behind electricityMap)
dang 6y ago
If curious see also 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17772529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17772529 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15998650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15998650
- fulafel 6y ago
  Interesting how the opinions of the traditionally emission-happy HN comment section seems to have shifted: in 2017 the top comment pooh poohs renewables. in 2018 the top comment is kind of neutral (talks about showing differences between countries). And in this threads the current top comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24749472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24749472 is clearly coal-critical. This reflects my own experiences, eg questioning frequent air travel no longer gets you barrages of downvotes.
  - the_cramer 6y ago
    It's important to understand that not only the opinion changes, but the situation in itself. Producing renewables is now much cheaper than a few years ago. Production processes are getting more efficient, thus less co2 intensive and energy conversion rates are getting better. A few years ago it maybe was not clear that people had a legitimate interest in renewables. The producing companies probably do not care about the environment outside of laws, but if the request for renewables is high enough, a market can emerge and prosper. This is very hard to predict even for smart economy people unlike me.
sebmellen 6y ago
What's going on in Queensland, Australia? "793g Carbon intensity" seems insanely high, especially as compared with Norway/France/Sweden (at 24-41g carbon intensity). Does anyone have insight into this? I've never pictured Australia as a big contributor to pollution.
- _Microft 6y ago
  Australia is one of the worst offenders (per capita), let me get the numbers. Edit: Here are the per-capita emissions of a few countries for comparison. It's interactive, you can add and remove (click "+ Add country" for this as well) countries from the graph as you like: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?tab=chart&time=earliest..latest&country=AUS~FRA~NOR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?... Article on this: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/australia?country=USA~AUS~NOR~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/australia?country=USA...
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Consider also posting Aus renewables pipeline data. They’re on track to replace a large component of their fossil generation in the next 3-5 years (South Australia already has no coal) due to the amount of wind and solar ready to be (and currently being) built. Edit: https://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/resources/project-tracker https://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/resources/project-trac...
    - _Microft 6y ago
      I do not follow australian development closely, feel free to give details yourself. Edit: thanks
  - DarthGhandi 6y ago
    The thing never mentioned in these data points is the sheer amount of fossil fuel exports either. The numbers are staggering when you include them.
- jka 6y ago
fghorow 6y ago
I particularly like seeing the flow values on the interconnects. Well done!!!
black3r 6y ago
it's sad for me to look at maps like this, because my country could be greener if Austria didn't force us into closing our oldest nuclear plant. Now more than half of our electricity emissions are imported.
krick 6y ago
Huh, I didn't expect for Australia to be anti-record holder. Why is that the case?
- hannob 6y ago
  I guess the combination of having a lot of coal and widespread climate denialism (the current prime minister basically rejects climate science) is a bad combination.
- fghorow 6y ago
  If I understand the visualization correctly, it is real time. There is a lot of solar PV (rooftops especially) in Oz. Wait for the sun to come up and look again...
- ezzaf 6y ago
  The site is missing a large amount of Australian renewable generation. Compare it to http://nemlog.com.au/gen/co2e/ http://nemlog.com.au/gen/co2e/ for example.
- discordance 6y ago
  Australia is addicted to coal, both in consumption and export. It's been a politically hot debate here for 20 years, with mining and resource companies having a heavy hand in our politics. With Australia's commitment to the Paris Agreement and rapidly dropping prices of wind & solar generation (LCOE now less than coal derived electricity generation [0]), I hope this will change very soon! Also worth noting that China, where Australia sends a lot of coal, has committed to becoming carbon neutral before 2060 [1]. 0: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/12/wind-and-solar-plants-will-soon-be-cheaper-than-coal-in-all-big-markets-around-world-analysis-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/12/wind-and... 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/22/china-pledges-to-reach-carbon-neutrality-before-2060 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/22/china-pl...
legulere 6y ago
I wonder how this will look in the next decades. France is struggling with the replacement of their crumbling nuclear reactors, while Germany slowly but steadily increases renewables.
- kd913 6y ago
  This year Germany is looking to remove more wind turbines than it adds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr5PEAK1t3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr5PEAK1t3U
- polote 6y ago
  in the last ten years the exact opposite happened https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out
  - legulere 6y ago
    How is that the exact opposite? Nuclear is usually not counted as renewable. Renewables are increasing in Germany replacing both nuclear and fossil: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei%3AEnergiemix_Deutschland.svg https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei%3AEn...
- steeve 6y ago
  And yet at this very moment, Germany is 10x the CO2 output of France (36g vs 390g), after spending 500 billion euros.
montzark 6y ago
Estonia looks bad, but taking into account that we only produce 0.5GWh (1100g per kwh) compared to Sweden's 15 (40g per kwh), we produce about the same amount of carbon. Kind of misleading in that sense.
- wasmitnetzen 6y ago
  Huh? Sweden also has about 10x the inhabitants than Estonia. Why would you not take that into account?
  - reducesuffering 6y ago
    The per-capita point is brought up a lot, but there's a serious flaw that I don't think is very often addressed. If a country has runaway population growth, they can keep their per-capita emissions low, while in total growing their emissions catastrophically as a country. If the rest of the world is able to get their emissions per-capita under control, it doesn't matter if this overpopulating country also has low emissions per-capita if they continue to exponentially increase their emissions, while the rest of world stalls their total emissions. Because of this, I think it's important to keep in mind that both total and per-capita emissions are important.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Which country is that? I'm not sure I know of a country with runaway population growth.
      - reducesuffering 6y ago
        The runaway example is more of a thought experiment to illustrate why emissions per-capita, in isolation, is flawed and can still lead to devastating climate change effects. In reality, there probably won’t be countries with unlimited population growth, but India, Nigeria, and other African countries will be adding several billion people to the planet in the future decades while most of the rest of the world will be even or decline. As climate change effects become increasingly real over the next couple decades, I don’t see the rest of world being amenable to decreased standards of living while other countries add people to developed standards of living. It’s likely countries will try to coalesce around existing populations being assigned a per-capita total emissions limit for their current population. Where a country’s additional population will come at the expense of the existing country’s population’s ability to emit.
Tade0 6y ago
I found this map very helpful in internet disputes about electricity sources in my country(Poland), because it shows some lesser known facts like: - We import electricity at an average rate of 1.2GW - mostly from Germany and Sweden - and this number keeps growing. - Not 95% of our electricity comes from coal(as it's often assumed here), but 75% at most. - Wholesale electricity prices in Poland are actually higher than in e.g. Germany. - Solar reached a point where it registers in the mix - single digit percentages so far, but capacity is growing sharply.
- fyfy18 6y ago
  As your neighbour (Lithuania), I'd also like to point out your air pollution affects us a lot. Our air quality is a lot worse on days when there is a south west wind blowing. Now of course not all of that is from burning coal for electricity (Poland had a lot of manufacturing and heavy industry), but if you were to decarbonise in general it would make a big difference to us :-) From next year, all new homes here are required to generate most of their electricity from renewable sources, so we should start to see a big uptake in solar. I think this comes from EU regulations to decarbonise housing, so maybe there is something similar in Poland?
  - Tade0 6y ago
    Oh, I'm painfully aware of that having recently invested in an air purifier - it's a necessity around here. Unfortunately this pollution comes mostly from heating and trust me - I wish it was coal these people were burning. To put this into perspective: last year I was celebrating new year's eve in eastern Poland and met a shopkeeper who was complaining that he can't take wood from a local national reserve. So yeah - sorry about that. A large part of our society is focused mostly on their own convenience.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      It seems like you’re saying that people are burning wood. It’s worth pointing out that wood burning stoves are not all the same. Here in America our environmental agency (EPA) has mandated that all new wood burning stoves meet their new standards for emissions. The result is that a new wood burning stove can produce as little as 1/15th the emissions of what a traditional wood fireplace would emit. For the 2020 models, a wood burning stove should release less particulate than a car without a catalytic converter, while a regular fireplace is roughly as bad as an old diesel truck. It’s still nowhere as clean as even natural gas, but even without switching fuel sources you can do a lot to make wood burn cleaner.
vecinu 6y ago
I took a quick look at the data sources since I was curious where data for Romania and other eastern European countries was coming from [1]. I wonder how accurate and reliable the data is but if it's coming from a central European commission I expect it to be audited and verified. [1] https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/blob/master/DATA_SOURCES.md https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/blob/maste...
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
Very cool idea but data are seriously lacking, Germany shows 0% solar, and has largest installation of solar energy in Europe.
- tiluha 6y ago
  That's the current solar output at night. The listed solar capacity for germany is 52 GW.
- ezzaf 6y ago
  It's showing live data. Being nighttime, there is currently no solar generation. If you click on the country and look at the little last 24 hour visualisation you can see solar production peaking at 23% yesterday in Germany. https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
- steeve 6y ago
  It actually shows live output and total capacity. Solar capacity is listed at 52GW. Wind total capacity is 61 GW, with an mediocre 15% output. That’s not a lot to show for 500 billion euros...
steeve 6y ago
Settles a lot of arguments and removes a lot of BS and preconceived opinions when talking about energy. Case in point: look at France vs Germany (who has now spent 500 billion euros in renewables). Now imagine if that money had been spent elsewhere...
sturmeh 6y ago
There seems to be a lot of "no data available".
Bedon292 6y ago
Definitely cool, but seems to be missing some data. Even in areas that they seem to have coverage. They have PJM covering the Mid Atlantic region, but none of the actual local companies doing it. Dominion Energy has ~1.5GW of Solar in VA alone. But doesn't seem they take it into account. I am sure this is because Dominion doesn't offer the numbers, but it seems like there is incomplete coverage in areas they are showing coverage for.
jaimex2 6y ago
This seems to be completely wrong for Australia. Live dashboard of our country if the creator is interested: http://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/ http://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/
exabrial 6y ago
This USA data seems kind of strange to me. For instance my home state, Kansas, we are fourth in the nation for installed wind capacity, supplying 41% of our energy demand. Our sole nuclear power plant provides an 18% base load. 33% is coal and the rest random crap. We're very population sparse and low population in general. Yet in other areas of the country that are strictly coal and natural gas fired, with a greater population density and higher total population, they're less turd colored. I'm guessing this is a strange interaction between renewable availability or it just might be a lack of available data.
- westurner 6y ago
  From https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#data-sources https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#data-sourc... : > Here are some of the ways you can contribute: > Building a new parser, Fixing a broken parser, Changes to the frontend, Find data sources, Verify data sources, Translating electricitymap.org, Updating region capacities I sent a few tweets and emails about the data in this region but nothing happened here either
- godelski 6y ago
  Let's look at PJM: Gas (39%, 490gCO2eq/kWhr), nuclear (36%, 12gCO2/kWhr), coal (16%, 820gCO2eq/hr), wind (6%, 11gCO2eq/hr). So that's ~327. So despite coal being 16% of the energy production, it is 40% of the emissions and gas is 58% of the emissions. Looking at NYISO we see a different story. Currently there is a lot grayed out in the gas area. Right now gas is 28% of the total electricity generation while peak of the day it is 39%. If you look at CISO (California) you'll see the opposite happen. Mid day solar takes over and emissions drop. The famous Duck Curve. They go from 150gCO2eq/kWhr in the morning to more than double that at night. You'll also see wind die down at times. Interesting thing is how hydro changes. So a lot comes down to how you're providing your base load and what energy sources you are using at what times in the day. If you look around the map a lot you'll see that a lot of countries/areas that have very consistent loads (and hence emissions) export a lot of their energy at those different times. While a lot of people like looking at averages the problem here is substantially complex because there's temporal components (hourly, weekly, seasonly) as well as a lot of environmental factors.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Kosirich 6y ago
Great visualization, great UI, I will share it extensively. It would be great to also get a layer with locations of all major power stations/plants and information on their yearly capacity factors.
phtrivier 6y ago
China: no data available. Most of USA: data "temporarily" unavailable.
sleavey 6y ago
The UK imports and exports at the same time (from/to France and Netherlands), which seems to me to just be creating unnecessary joule heating in underwater cables. Is it some kind of price arbitrage? When I did an undergraduate report on the UK electricity network ~10 years ago this happened then as well, so it's not a new phenomenon.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I would have thought that as the grid de-carbonises the greater the diversity of supply the less storage we will need. It's a bit like food where our wheat crop is down 40% this year but we aren't expecting riots because the rest of the world is up.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    Most electricity infrastructure can't move energy more than 1000 miles without substantial (ie. >20%) losses. Countries with higher voltage distribution systems (there are a few 1 megavolt in China for example) have less losses, but you still don't want to be moving much power across entire continents.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      These are high voltage DC systems and the distance in the case of France is only 45 miles.
- goodcanadian 6y ago
  I think you are (mostly) mistaken. The UK mostly imports from the continent, and occasionally exports. I have never caught an instance of simultaneously importing from France and exporting to the Netherlands (or vice versa). I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it is clearly not common. The direction of flow might change over a relatively short time frame due to changes in the production of solar or wind energy. With these and other production and load changes, some apparently illogical or inefficient things might happen for short periods of time as it is the best way of handling the dynamic grid. Also, I know nothing about the state of interconnects between France and the Netherlands. HVDC under the quite narrow English channel might well be the most efficient route.
Gravityloss 6y ago
Australia and India, two very coal and gas intensive areas on the map have very good potential for solar energy.
- cbmuser 6y ago
  India is building nuclear power plants which are way more effective in slashing greenhouse gas emissions than solar. They just started up their first reactor using a domestic design, the IPHWR-700: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPHWR-700 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPHWR-700
  - Gravityloss 6y ago
    That's great! India also has the world's biggest solar plant and is building more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park https://constructionreviewonline.com/2020/06/india-awards-worlds-largest-solar-project-bid-at-us6bn/ https://constructionreviewonline.com/2020/06/india-awards-wo...
chippy 6y ago
Users might also be interested in a map of the actual power infrastructure e.g. https://openinframap.org/#10.72/51.42/0.6706/0.6706 https://openinframap.org/#10.72/51.42/0.6706/0.6706 all based from data from OpenStreetMap, where you see how and where the connections between countries are.
dcahill-ieee 6y ago
This thing again? The colour is only based on source of energy, not actual quantity of CO2 and hence actual impact on the atmosphere. If I had one family on an island burning a coal stove it would be coloured black. I know the live data is there but it doesn’t affect the colour assessment one little bit. Also since when is black bad? Bit racist no?

224 points by jka 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pbsds 6y ago

🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴 Woooo!!! 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴 Go Norway! We are the best! 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴 Woooo!!! 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴

dang 6y ago
I realize you're just being enthusiastic, but please don't use visual gimmicks in HN comments. Those are supposed to be text.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I've always been curious what the emoji blacklist is for comments, since a couple seem to get through whatever filter there is…
  - dang 6y ago
    It's not that interesting. If you email hn@ycombinator.com we can send it to you. I probably shouldn't post it here.

martincollignon 6y ago

Thanks so much for sharing! The map couldn't be what it is today without the help of the great open source community:https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib We're also super proud that the data is being used by Google to ensure that they use their data centers more when the electricity is greener and to help them in goal to make their electricity usage 24/7 carbon free in 2030 (https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/247-carbon-free-energy.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/247-carbon-fr...) Martin from Tomorrow (behind electricityMap)

dang 6y ago

If curious see also 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17772529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17772529 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15998650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15998650

fulafel 6y ago
Interesting how the opinions of the traditionally emission-happy HN comment section seems to have shifted: in 2017 the top comment pooh poohs renewables. in 2018 the top comment is kind of neutral (talks about showing differences between countries). And in this threads the current top comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24749472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24749472 is clearly coal-critical. This reflects my own experiences, eg questioning frequent air travel no longer gets you barrages of downvotes.
- the_cramer 6y ago
  It's important to understand that not only the opinion changes, but the situation in itself. Producing renewables is now much cheaper than a few years ago. Production processes are getting more efficient, thus less co2 intensive and energy conversion rates are getting better. A few years ago it maybe was not clear that people had a legitimate interest in renewables. The producing companies probably do not care about the environment outside of laws, but if the request for renewables is high enough, a market can emerge and prosper. This is very hard to predict even for smart economy people unlike me.

sebmellen 6y ago

What's going on in Queensland, Australia? "793g Carbon intensity" seems insanely high, especially as compared with Norway/France/Sweden (at 24-41g carbon intensity). Does anyone have insight into this? I've never pictured Australia as a big contributor to pollution.

_Microft 6y ago
Australia is one of the worst offenders (per capita), let me get the numbers. Edit: Here are the per-capita emissions of a few countries for comparison. It's interactive, you can add and remove (click "+ Add country" for this as well) countries from the graph as you like: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?tab=chart&time=earliest..latest&country=AUS~FRA~NOR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?... Article on this: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/australia?country=USA~AUS~NOR~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/australia?country=USA...
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Consider also posting Aus renewables pipeline data. They’re on track to replace a large component of their fossil generation in the next 3-5 years (South Australia already has no coal) due to the amount of wind and solar ready to be (and currently being) built. Edit: https://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/resources/project-tracker https://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/resources/project-trac...
  - _Microft 6y ago
    I do not follow australian development closely, feel free to give details yourself. Edit: thanks
- DarthGhandi 6y ago
  The thing never mentioned in these data points is the sheer amount of fossil fuel exports either. The numbers are staggering when you include them.
jka 6y ago

fghorow 6y ago

I particularly like seeing the flow values on the interconnects. Well done!!!

black3r 6y ago

it's sad for me to look at maps like this, because my country could be greener if Austria didn't force us into closing our oldest nuclear plant. Now more than half of our electricity emissions are imported.

krick 6y ago

Huh, I didn't expect for Australia to be anti-record holder. Why is that the case?

hannob 6y ago
I guess the combination of having a lot of coal and widespread climate denialism (the current prime minister basically rejects climate science) is a bad combination.
fghorow 6y ago
If I understand the visualization correctly, it is real time. There is a lot of solar PV (rooftops especially) in Oz. Wait for the sun to come up and look again...
ezzaf 6y ago
The site is missing a large amount of Australian renewable generation. Compare it to http://nemlog.com.au/gen/co2e/ http://nemlog.com.au/gen/co2e/ for example.
discordance 6y ago
Australia is addicted to coal, both in consumption and export. It's been a politically hot debate here for 20 years, with mining and resource companies having a heavy hand in our politics. With Australia's commitment to the Paris Agreement and rapidly dropping prices of wind & solar generation (LCOE now less than coal derived electricity generation [0]), I hope this will change very soon! Also worth noting that China, where Australia sends a lot of coal, has committed to becoming carbon neutral before 2060 [1]. 0: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/12/wind-and-solar-plants-will-soon-be-cheaper-than-coal-in-all-big-markets-around-world-analysis-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/12/wind-and... 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/22/china-pledges-to-reach-carbon-neutrality-before-2060 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/22/china-pl...

legulere 6y ago

I wonder how this will look in the next decades. France is struggling with the replacement of their crumbling nuclear reactors, while Germany slowly but steadily increases renewables.

kd913 6y ago
This year Germany is looking to remove more wind turbines than it adds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr5PEAK1t3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr5PEAK1t3U
polote 6y ago
in the last ten years the exact opposite happened https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out
- legulere 6y ago
  How is that the exact opposite? Nuclear is usually not counted as renewable. Renewables are increasing in Germany replacing both nuclear and fossil: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei%3AEnergiemix_Deutschland.svg https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei%3AEn...
steeve 6y ago
And yet at this very moment, Germany is 10x the CO2 output of France (36g vs 390g), after spending 500 billion euros.

montzark 6y ago

Estonia looks bad, but taking into account that we only produce 0.5GWh (1100g per kwh) compared to Sweden's 15 (40g per kwh), we produce about the same amount of carbon. Kind of misleading in that sense.

wasmitnetzen 6y ago
Huh? Sweden also has about 10x the inhabitants than Estonia. Why would you not take that into account?
- reducesuffering 6y ago
  The per-capita point is brought up a lot, but there's a serious flaw that I don't think is very often addressed. If a country has runaway population growth, they can keep their per-capita emissions low, while in total growing their emissions catastrophically as a country. If the rest of the world is able to get their emissions per-capita under control, it doesn't matter if this overpopulating country also has low emissions per-capita if they continue to exponentially increase their emissions, while the rest of world stalls their total emissions. Because of this, I think it's important to keep in mind that both total and per-capita emissions are important.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Which country is that? I'm not sure I know of a country with runaway population growth.
    - reducesuffering 6y ago
      The runaway example is more of a thought experiment to illustrate why emissions per-capita, in isolation, is flawed and can still lead to devastating climate change effects. In reality, there probably won’t be countries with unlimited population growth, but India, Nigeria, and other African countries will be adding several billion people to the planet in the future decades while most of the rest of the world will be even or decline. As climate change effects become increasingly real over the next couple decades, I don’t see the rest of world being amenable to decreased standards of living while other countries add people to developed standards of living. It’s likely countries will try to coalesce around existing populations being assigned a per-capita total emissions limit for their current population. Where a country’s additional population will come at the expense of the existing country’s population’s ability to emit.

Tade0 6y ago

I found this map very helpful in internet disputes about electricity sources in my country(Poland), because it shows some lesser known facts like: - We import electricity at an average rate of 1.2GW - mostly from Germany and Sweden - and this number keeps growing. - Not 95% of our electricity comes from coal(as it's often assumed here), but 75% at most. - Wholesale electricity prices in Poland are actually higher than in e.g. Germany. - Solar reached a point where it registers in the mix - single digit percentages so far, but capacity is growing sharply.

fyfy18 6y ago
As your neighbour (Lithuania), I'd also like to point out your air pollution affects us a lot. Our air quality is a lot worse on days when there is a south west wind blowing. Now of course not all of that is from burning coal for electricity (Poland had a lot of manufacturing and heavy industry), but if you were to decarbonise in general it would make a big difference to us :-) From next year, all new homes here are required to generate most of their electricity from renewable sources, so we should start to see a big uptake in solar. I think this comes from EU regulations to decarbonise housing, so maybe there is something similar in Poland?
- Tade0 6y ago
  Oh, I'm painfully aware of that having recently invested in an air purifier - it's a necessity around here. Unfortunately this pollution comes mostly from heating and trust me - I wish it was coal these people were burning. To put this into perspective: last year I was celebrating new year's eve in eastern Poland and met a shopkeeper who was complaining that he can't take wood from a local national reserve. So yeah - sorry about that. A large part of our society is focused mostly on their own convenience.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    It seems like you’re saying that people are burning wood. It’s worth pointing out that wood burning stoves are not all the same. Here in America our environmental agency (EPA) has mandated that all new wood burning stoves meet their new standards for emissions. The result is that a new wood burning stove can produce as little as 1/15th the emissions of what a traditional wood fireplace would emit. For the 2020 models, a wood burning stove should release less particulate than a car without a catalytic converter, while a regular fireplace is roughly as bad as an old diesel truck. It’s still nowhere as clean as even natural gas, but even without switching fuel sources you can do a lot to make wood burn cleaner.

vecinu 6y ago

I took a quick look at the data sources since I was curious where data for Romania and other eastern European countries was coming from [1]. I wonder how accurate and reliable the data is but if it's coming from a central European commission I expect it to be audited and verified. [1] https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/blob/master/DATA_SOURCES.md https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/blob/maste...

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

Very cool idea but data are seriously lacking, Germany shows 0% solar, and has largest installation of solar energy in Europe.

tiluha 6y ago
That's the current solar output at night. The listed solar capacity for germany is 52 GW.
ezzaf 6y ago
It's showing live data. Being nighttime, there is currently no solar generation. If you click on the country and look at the little last 24 hour visualisation you can see solar production peaking at 23% yesterday in Germany. https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
steeve 6y ago
It actually shows live output and total capacity. Solar capacity is listed at 52GW. Wind total capacity is 61 GW, with an mediocre 15% output. That’s not a lot to show for 500 billion euros...

steeve 6y ago

Settles a lot of arguments and removes a lot of BS and preconceived opinions when talking about energy. Case in point: look at France vs Germany (who has now spent 500 billion euros in renewables). Now imagine if that money had been spent elsewhere...

sturmeh 6y ago

There seems to be a lot of "no data available".

Bedon292 6y ago

Definitely cool, but seems to be missing some data. Even in areas that they seem to have coverage. They have PJM covering the Mid Atlantic region, but none of the actual local companies doing it. Dominion Energy has ~1.5GW of Solar in VA alone. But doesn't seem they take it into account. I am sure this is because Dominion doesn't offer the numbers, but it seems like there is incomplete coverage in areas they are showing coverage for.

jaimex2 6y ago

This seems to be completely wrong for Australia. Live dashboard of our country if the creator is interested: http://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/ http://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/

exabrial 6y ago

This USA data seems kind of strange to me. For instance my home state, Kansas, we are fourth in the nation for installed wind capacity, supplying 41% of our energy demand. Our sole nuclear power plant provides an 18% base load. 33% is coal and the rest random crap. We're very population sparse and low population in general. Yet in other areas of the country that are strictly coal and natural gas fired, with a greater population density and higher total population, they're less turd colored. I'm guessing this is a strange interaction between renewable availability or it just might be a lack of available data.

westurner 6y ago
From https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#data-sources https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#data-sourc... : > Here are some of the ways you can contribute: > Building a new parser, Fixing a broken parser, Changes to the frontend, Find data sources, Verify data sources, Translating electricitymap.org, Updating region capacities I sent a few tweets and emails about the data in this region but nothing happened here either
godelski 6y ago
Let's look at PJM: Gas (39%, 490gCO2eq/kWhr), nuclear (36%, 12gCO2/kWhr), coal (16%, 820gCO2eq/hr), wind (6%, 11gCO2eq/hr). So that's ~327. So despite coal being 16% of the energy production, it is 40% of the emissions and gas is 58% of the emissions. Looking at NYISO we see a different story. Currently there is a lot grayed out in the gas area. Right now gas is 28% of the total electricity generation while peak of the day it is 39%. If you look at CISO (California) you'll see the opposite happen. Mid day solar takes over and emissions drop. The famous Duck Curve. They go from 150gCO2eq/kWhr in the morning to more than double that at night. You'll also see wind die down at times. Interesting thing is how hydro changes. So a lot comes down to how you're providing your base load and what energy sources you are using at what times in the day. If you look around the map a lot you'll see that a lot of countries/areas that have very consistent loads (and hence emissions) export a lot of their energy at those different times. While a lot of people like looking at averages the problem here is substantially complex because there's temporal components (hourly, weekly, seasonly) as well as a lot of environmental factors.

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Kosirich 6y ago

Great visualization, great UI, I will share it extensively. It would be great to also get a layer with locations of all major power stations/plants and information on their yearly capacity factors.

phtrivier 6y ago

China: no data available. Most of USA: data "temporarily" unavailable.

sleavey 6y ago

The UK imports and exports at the same time (from/to France and Netherlands), which seems to me to just be creating unnecessary joule heating in underwater cables. Is it some kind of price arbitrage? When I did an undergraduate report on the UK electricity network ~10 years ago this happened then as well, so it's not a new phenomenon.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I would have thought that as the grid de-carbonises the greater the diversity of supply the less storage we will need. It's a bit like food where our wheat crop is down 40% this year but we aren't expecting riots because the rest of the world is up.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Most electricity infrastructure can't move energy more than 1000 miles without substantial (ie. >20%) losses. Countries with higher voltage distribution systems (there are a few 1 megavolt in China for example) have less losses, but you still don't want to be moving much power across entire continents.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    These are high voltage DC systems and the distance in the case of France is only 45 miles.
goodcanadian 6y ago
I think you are (mostly) mistaken. The UK mostly imports from the continent, and occasionally exports. I have never caught an instance of simultaneously importing from France and exporting to the Netherlands (or vice versa). I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it is clearly not common. The direction of flow might change over a relatively short time frame due to changes in the production of solar or wind energy. With these and other production and load changes, some apparently illogical or inefficient things might happen for short periods of time as it is the best way of handling the dynamic grid. Also, I know nothing about the state of interconnects between France and the Netherlands. HVDC under the quite narrow English channel might well be the most efficient route.

Gravityloss 6y ago

Australia and India, two very coal and gas intensive areas on the map have very good potential for solar energy.

cbmuser 6y ago
India is building nuclear power plants which are way more effective in slashing greenhouse gas emissions than solar. They just started up their first reactor using a domestic design, the IPHWR-700: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPHWR-700 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPHWR-700
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  That's great! India also has the world's biggest solar plant and is building more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park https://constructionreviewonline.com/2020/06/india-awards-worlds-largest-solar-project-bid-at-us6bn/ https://constructionreviewonline.com/2020/06/india-awards-wo...

chippy 6y ago

Users might also be interested in a map of the actual power infrastructure e.g. https://openinframap.org/#10.72/51.42/0.6706/0.6706 https://openinframap.org/#10.72/51.42/0.6706/0.6706 all based from data from OpenStreetMap, where you see how and where the connections between countries are.

dcahill-ieee 6y ago

This thing again? The colour is only based on source of energy, not actual quantity of CO2 and hence actual impact on the atmosphere. If I had one family on an island burning a coal stove it would be coloured black. I know the live data is there but it doesn’t affect the colour assessment one little bit. Also since when is black bad? Bit racist no?