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To summarize the part about efficiencies, by heating up your place with electricity instead of gas, the power plant needs to burn ~50% more gas (& so 50% more e
by bialpio 5y ago
To summarize the part about efficiencies, by heating up your place with electricity instead of gas, the power plant needs to burn ~50% more gas (& so 50% more emissions) than you'd have to if you were to use your furnace. Intuitively, other fossil-fuel power plants will also cause larger emissions than you would locally (as they all start with burning stuff for heat & only then convert that to electricity with some losses, while you could stop there), but I haven't run the numbers. Thermodynamics is a b*tch.
- bluGill 5y agoProbably, though I live in an area where 50% of our electricity comes from the wind, so if the wind is blowing electric heat is far less CO2, while if the wind isn't blowing electric heat is far more.
- bialpio 5y agoIn that case the problem becomes what other poster mentioned: it's a zero-sum game so you increasing your energy consumption takes green energy from someone else. Maybe if you mined only when you knew that the energy would be curtailed otherwise? Not sure how to know that though...