7 ms·

Crazy they were able to label natural gas as “sustainable” but nuclear just barely squeaked in.

brtkdotse 6y ago
Natural gas or biogas? Same gas but the first is fossil while the other is made from fermenting sewage and hence renewable
- loeg 6y ago
  Either? The problem is that combusting it produces CO₂.
  - enkid 6y ago
    Methane is going to come out of sewage whether we process it or not, and methane itself is a greenhouse gas. It's not going to come out of the ground without help (in the quantities we are using).
    - loeg 6y ago
      Sure, burn that methane. Is there enough of that to many any significant impact on energy needs?
      - brtkdotse 6y ago
        Most busses and taxis in Sweden run on it, so there’s that
        jnurmine 6y ago
        And the gas comes from biowaste, which is actually nice, because municipalities which have the most effective ways of collecting and processing biowaste can export the resulting biogas to e.g. surrounding municipalities and in this way generate income to run things for everyone. This means waste must be sorted somehow, but this is a rational thing to do anyways. And it pisses me off immensely to see some idiots throw plastic bags or non-food waste to the biowaste bins. There are signs in many languages and even with pictures, but some people still manage. Such biowaste cannot be used for gas generation, so it's kind of hurting all the inhabitants.
        brtkdotse 6y ago
        Household waste comprised a minuscule percentage of the total substrate. The majority is sewage and food processing refuse. Source: my wife used to work at a biogas plant
        jnurmine 6y ago
        Maybe not all plants are alike? According to VafabMiljö [1], who runs the local biogas facility, in the year 2020 they processed 16157 tons of household biowaste, i.e. 66% of entire processing that year. The other stuff was sewage sludge and slurry from packaged/unpackaged food items (total of 8246 tons). 16157 tons of household biowaste turned into gas to run buses with and not dumped into a landfill is a good thing. In 2012 the municipality collected 60% of overall food waste to turn it into biogas. Back then they hoped to reach 80% eventually. [2] I didn't find newer collection numbers (they are somewhere, I just stopped iterating), but the number can only be higher today. [1] https://www.vafabmiljo.se https://www.vafabmiljo.se [2] Naturvårdsverket rapport 6518, September 2012 (ISBN 978-91-620-6518-8).
    - brtkdotse 6y ago
      Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas, however it breaks down rather quickly. Like I said in a sibling post, the big advantage is that biogas is Net 0 carbon wise as you’re reusing carbon already in the carbon cycle
      - mlyle 6y ago
        ... it's incredibly potent as CH4... and then it "breaks down" into CO2 and H2O. I think enkid's point is agreeing with you: might as well burn that sewage CH4 for energy-- you end up with the same CO2 in the end and less CH4 in the atmosphere in the short term.
  - brtkdotse 6y ago
    Not quite, it depend where the carbon forming the CO2 comes from. Carbon extracted from sewage is already in the carbon cycle giving a net 0 carbon when burned. Extracting and burning fossile carbon ADDS carbon to the cycle, hence the problem
    - godelski 6y ago
      Or we could extract it and not burn it, making it "carbon negative". Though your comment has a problem. It isn't carbon that is the problem, it is carbon in the air. If we did 100% CO2 extraction from coal fire plants they wouldn't be a real climate issue (overly simplified). Similarly we can't consider sewage as a carbon 0 cycle because eating turns a solid carbon source (food) into a gas. Carbon is fine, carbon in the air is not fine. Sewage is only neutral in the respect that we've already converted it to a gas (unless we accelerate this process, which is typically done) but doesn't account for the conversion process that happens.
      - Ericson2314 6y ago
        Yes, thank for this! Not burning are net 0 biofuels is equivalently the cheapest carbon capture we can do. It's very good to analyze specific flows, but at the end of day, greenhouse gases (appropriately weighted) in the air are a fungible liability, and taking some specific process and sanctifying it's net greenhouse gas emissions in isolation is silly.
  - hedora 6y ago
    If the CO2 was recently extracted from the atmosphere, then burning the gas is carbon neutral. It might be more thermodynamically favorable to use the gas as input to a carbon capture process. Even if that is the case, bootstrapping a market for biogas will lower the cost of biogas. In turn, that will lower the cost of biogas-based carbon sequestration.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    Not at all. Problem is that gas from fossil sources adds extra carbon to the short term carbon cycle while biogas does not (because the carbon fixated was already in the short term cycle).
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    Right, but that's one of several components of sustainability. Another component is whether the energy source is renewable, which biogas is.
- belorn 6y ago
  Biogas is very similar to farming. You can produce meat and vegetables with net 0 carbon, and both can operate on using waste from other industries. The problem comes when one introduce fossil fuels into the production chain because it makes economical sense to do so.
- jdsully 6y ago
  It says natural gas in the article. If it were something as specific as biogas I imagine it would have been mentioned.

Natural gas or biogas? Same gas but the first is fossil while the other is made from fermenting sewage and hence renewable

loeg 6y ago
Either? The problem is that combusting it produces CO₂.
- enkid 6y ago
  Methane is going to come out of sewage whether we process it or not, and methane itself is a greenhouse gas. It's not going to come out of the ground without help (in the quantities we are using).
  - loeg 6y ago
    Sure, burn that methane. Is there enough of that to many any significant impact on energy needs?
    - brtkdotse 6y ago
      Most busses and taxis in Sweden run on it, so there’s that
      - jnurmine 6y ago
        And the gas comes from biowaste, which is actually nice, because municipalities which have the most effective ways of collecting and processing biowaste can export the resulting biogas to e.g. surrounding municipalities and in this way generate income to run things for everyone. This means waste must be sorted somehow, but this is a rational thing to do anyways. And it pisses me off immensely to see some idiots throw plastic bags or non-food waste to the biowaste bins. There are signs in many languages and even with pictures, but some people still manage. Such biowaste cannot be used for gas generation, so it's kind of hurting all the inhabitants.
        brtkdotse 6y ago
        Household waste comprised a minuscule percentage of the total substrate. The majority is sewage and food processing refuse. Source: my wife used to work at a biogas plant
        jnurmine 6y ago
        Maybe not all plants are alike? According to VafabMiljö [1], who runs the local biogas facility, in the year 2020 they processed 16157 tons of household biowaste, i.e. 66% of entire processing that year. The other stuff was sewage sludge and slurry from packaged/unpackaged food items (total of 8246 tons). 16157 tons of household biowaste turned into gas to run buses with and not dumped into a landfill is a good thing. In 2012 the municipality collected 60% of overall food waste to turn it into biogas. Back then they hoped to reach 80% eventually. [2] I didn't find newer collection numbers (they are somewhere, I just stopped iterating), but the number can only be higher today. [1] https://www.vafabmiljo.se https://www.vafabmiljo.se [2] Naturvårdsverket rapport 6518, September 2012 (ISBN 978-91-620-6518-8).
  - brtkdotse 6y ago
    Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas, however it breaks down rather quickly. Like I said in a sibling post, the big advantage is that biogas is Net 0 carbon wise as you’re reusing carbon already in the carbon cycle
    - mlyle 6y ago
      ... it's incredibly potent as CH4... and then it "breaks down" into CO2 and H2O. I think enkid's point is agreeing with you: might as well burn that sewage CH4 for energy-- you end up with the same CO2 in the end and less CH4 in the atmosphere in the short term.
- brtkdotse 6y ago
  Not quite, it depend where the carbon forming the CO2 comes from. Carbon extracted from sewage is already in the carbon cycle giving a net 0 carbon when burned. Extracting and burning fossile carbon ADDS carbon to the cycle, hence the problem
  - godelski 6y ago
    Or we could extract it and not burn it, making it "carbon negative". Though your comment has a problem. It isn't carbon that is the problem, it is carbon in the air. If we did 100% CO2 extraction from coal fire plants they wouldn't be a real climate issue (overly simplified). Similarly we can't consider sewage as a carbon 0 cycle because eating turns a solid carbon source (food) into a gas. Carbon is fine, carbon in the air is not fine. Sewage is only neutral in the respect that we've already converted it to a gas (unless we accelerate this process, which is typically done) but doesn't account for the conversion process that happens.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      Yes, thank for this! Not burning are net 0 biofuels is equivalently the cheapest carbon capture we can do. It's very good to analyze specific flows, but at the end of day, greenhouse gases (appropriately weighted) in the air are a fungible liability, and taking some specific process and sanctifying it's net greenhouse gas emissions in isolation is silly.
- hedora 6y ago
  If the CO2 was recently extracted from the atmosphere, then burning the gas is carbon neutral. It might be more thermodynamically favorable to use the gas as input to a carbon capture process. Even if that is the case, bootstrapping a market for biogas will lower the cost of biogas. In turn, that will lower the cost of biogas-based carbon sequestration.
- _Microft 6y ago
  Not at all. Problem is that gas from fossil sources adds extra carbon to the short term carbon cycle while biogas does not (because the carbon fixated was already in the short term cycle).
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Right, but that's one of several components of sustainability. Another component is whether the energy source is renewable, which biogas is.
belorn 6y ago
Biogas is very similar to farming. You can produce meat and vegetables with net 0 carbon, and both can operate on using waste from other industries. The problem comes when one introduce fossil fuels into the production chain because it makes economical sense to do so.
jdsully 6y ago
It says natural gas in the article. If it were something as specific as biogas I imagine it would have been mentioned.