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The map appears to be counting some renewable generation in Queensland as CO2 emitting. There's actually quite high solar penetration. That said, Australian is
by ezzaf 6y ago
The map appears to be counting some renewable generation in Queensland as CO2 emitting. There's actually quite high solar penetration.
That said, Australian is a large contributor to pollution. The majority of electricity is still produced from coal. It is improving, but with a federal target of only 20% renewables, a lot of financial incentive to build new generation could be about to dry up.
- tialaramex 6y ago> The map appears to be counting some renewable generation in Queensland as CO2 emitting The map is based on figures which (correctly) assume everything creates at least some CO2 emissions over its lifetime. For example Britain's offshore wind farms are scored as 11g/kWh. Sweden's nuclear reactors, 12g/kWh. In some sense a wind turbine or a nuclear fission plant do not actually "emit" CO2 in operation, they aren't burning carbon - but you need a bunch of concrete construction and mining to have these generators, and it's at a scale where we mustn't forget it. Another reason for showing a number is that if you don't, some pro-fossil fuel person is going to say "Ah, but what about..." and so it's all baked in, same way you can find numbers for "carbon emissions" from ground source electric heat pumps. Unlike a gas boiler to heat things obviously the electric heat pump does not in fact "emit" carbon directly, but nevertheless for comparison we can estimate what the overall emissions are for one versus the other (mostly to show that yup, heat pumps are a good idea).
- ezzaf 6y agoSorry I wasn't very specific. It appears to be counting solar generation as coal generation, so the amount of co2 emissions is vastly inflated.