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Denmark is pretty bad with respect to renewables. They have increased their oil consumption in the past years, they have increased the so called "other renewabl
by Loic 5y ago
Denmark is pretty bad with respect to renewables. They have increased their oil consumption in the past years, they have increased the so called "other renewables" which is in fact, burning wastes because they recycle nothing. They are running at 70% on non renewables.
So, Denmark is definitely not the Nordic country you want to use as reference[0]. Sweden is a completely different story[1].
[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-region?stackMode=absolute&country=~DNK https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-region?stackMode=absolute&country=~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoBurning waste for electricity makes financial/carbon/environmental sense until you have eliminated all fossil fuels from your grid. Denmark has had a reduction in carbon intensity per GDP similar to the EU average, which has brought them close to France and Sweden, who've been low for a while but haven't improved as much over recent times as say Germany. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?end=2018&locations=EU-DK-FR-DE-SE&start=1990 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?end=2...
- Retric 5y agoBuried waste sequesters carbon, burned waste doesn’t. From a global warming standpoint replacing a low efficiency wasting burning power plant with a much higher efficiency natural gas power plant is a net gain for the environment. Not just is it less CO2 in the atmosphere it’s also less lead, arsenic, etc.
- bogeholm 5y agoBurying waste may sequester carbon, but also potentially creates a host of other environmental issues down the road when stuff starts leaking into the groundwater. Proper incineration + smoke scrubbing is, as far as I know, the best way to eliminate organic (as in chemistry) waste in an environmentally friendly way, eg. PVC.
- Retric 5y ago“Potentially creates” is a solvable problem. Further the ash from burning municipal waste is very toxic and still needs to be stored somewhere. The volume is significantly reduced, but waste disposal benefits from the square:cube law reducing the volume doesn’t save that much effort.
- bogeholm 5y agoAs long as smoke temperature quenching, smoke scrubbing etc is done correctly, I can only see that the ash is less toxic in total than the waste, as eg. chlorocarbons are handled by incineration. Still toxic, but less in total. Unless I am missing something?
- Retric 5y agoIt really depends on what was burned. I suspect in general municipal waste probably gets less toxic in total but more difficult to handle. That said toxicity in general is less of an issue than what escapes into the environment, and here I think traditional waste disposal has real advantages.
- Retric 5y agoPS: As an example wet wood ash normally has a PH of 9 to 11 which can cause mild chemical burns while I burned wood is harmless on it’s own.
- erk__ 5y agoI am really unsure where they are getting those numbers from, I guess it may be fuel usage in cars that causes the oil usage, because it is certainly not electricity production where only about 1% is oil [0] [0]: https://en.energinet.dk/Green-Transition/Renewable-energy-in-the-energy-system https://en.energinet.dk/Green-Transition/Renewable-energy-in...
- bogeholm 5y agoWhile Denmark definitely has a long way to go in terms of energy consumption, it is demonstrably false the we “recycle nothing”. At my local garbage/recycling facility where you can offload gardening waste, tires, washing machines, cardboard etc. there are 20+ categories into which you must sort your trash - one of those is incinerated.