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> People are going to notice this and call bullshit on that. And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. By giving t

by mulmen 5y ago

> People are going to notice this and call bullshit on that. And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. By giving themselves this loophole the EU is undermining the market forces that will make green energy viable. We don't need to find economical energy sources anymore. We need to dump money into green energy now and last month and a decade ago. The price doesn't matter, just build true green energy and subsidize it until it becomes economical.

richardw 5y ago
> If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. Producing solar emits CO2 over the full lifecycle. Even during the generation and maintenance phase, it’s above zero. There’s no zero until we remove CO2 from the environment. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf Should we stop using solar until we find the zero-CO2 tech? Obviously not. And obviously we need net-0 asap, but it’s not “really that simple.”
- numpad0 5y ago
  Personally I’m not sure solar is a viable mass power production. I think it’s just a nice option for remote power production, as in “no one else in x miles” situation where x is an unsigned int.
  - pjerem 5y ago
    Technically, the Sun send us orders of magnitude more energy that we will ever need. So, yes, I agree with you that today, efficiency of solar panels is not enough for really big scale. But results are already impressive and furthermore, we have yet an infinity of optimizations to research to extract more energy from the sun. In fact, while absolutely not probable in the coming decades Solar could even be one of the « magic solutions » alongside the fusion. Because we know the energy is there, we just don’t get her how to extract it.
    - seunosewa 5y ago
      Solar panel tech extracts energy efficiently enough, actually. The problem is storage.
- willis936 5y ago
  You're conflating CO2 from logistics and CO2 from electricity production. Logistics can be entirely converted to electrical in a decade with no special sauce needed.
  - richardw 5y ago
    Reference discusses power generation and plant maintenance. You can argue about words but only the net CO2 matters when you’re looking for a simple answer. Perfect is the enemy of the good. We need net-0 but if you only have a binary 0-not-0 ideal we’ll leave a lot of intermediate options off the table. A Tesla isn’t net-0 but it’s better than a gas truck. I’m arguing against oversimplification, because if we want to take that to extremes we have no net-0 options right now. We need to build them. Every KG of CO2 we don’t emit now is one less we need to bury in decades to come. So do a Manhattan Project on emissions but make easily-adopted changes in the near term.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway894345 5y ago
Right now nuclear is the only green energy that is suitable for base load generation apart from hydro, and it takes a long time to build new nuclear plants, so I’m okay with a bridge solution that dramatically reduces emissions even if it doesn’t bring them to zero. The alternative is a dependency on much less green fossil fuel plants when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Intelligent people shouldn’t quibble over an imaginary “green” line, but we should focus on minimizing emissions per unit power.
- NegativeLatency 5y ago
  When you consider the other environmental impacts of hydro it’s not as green as people like to think.
- mulmen 5y ago
  It’s not ok to call gas “green”. Period. If gas is necessary then build it, but don’t claim it is green.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > If gas is necessary then build it, but don’t claim it is green Green is a spectrum, and a subjective one at that. Even if we limit ourselves to CO2 emissions, an absolutist stance eliminates solar and wind for the emissions in their erection.
    - mulmen 5y ago
      I’m not sure why this keeps getting regurgitated. Are you honestly arguing that the CO2 emissions in the production and operation of a solar plant are even remotely comparable to the emissions of a gas plant? If I have to explicitly spell all that out every time then we can’t have a conversation. It’s an absurd standard.
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > Are you honestly arguing that the CO2 emissions in the production and operation of a solar plant are even remotely comparable to the emissions of a gas plant? No, just that pretending one or the other is universally accepted as “green” while the other is not is absurd. Gas isn’t emission free. But “green” has no requirement to be zero emissions. It is in the process of being defined; this is that process and discussion. (Hybrids were once green.) “Green” should move us towards a zero-emissions future. If that happens with gas, that’s better than sitting around getting hysterical about definitions while baseload runs on dirty power.
Zenst 5y ago
More so as it smells of politics. Germany was a thorn in Frances plans to label Nuclear green for while and does seem they wore down everybody and got thru a compromise that gets them off the hook by including gas. More worrying in this is how will this play into the whole gas drama with Russia. Overall, it avoids a lot of awkward moments which would of seen both Germany and France fall short upon the EU's green regulations for energy usage/production. Whilst personally I feel it is a fair thing and well needed for France, I can't help feel that Germany took advantage of this and tailcoated their needs onto this and why we see gas labeled as `green`.
kortilla 5y ago
> And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. Then we have no green energy sources at all, which makes it sort of useless as a description. Manufacturing and installation of the energy source always has to be included. For something with as short of a life as solar panels, the manufacturing, transport, installation, and disposal is a critical piece in the CO2 emissions that has to be amortized over the kWh it’s expected to generate over its lifetime.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Oh please. Compare the CO2 emissions of a solar plant with those of a gas plant. Normalize for MWH produced. How many orders of magnitude is the difference?
  - oneoff786 5y ago
    If you’re asking someone to compare numbers, then it wasn’t really as simple as you originally stated
    - mulmen 5y ago
      It is as simple as I originally stated. The argument that solar emits carbon is counting the carbon emitted in construction and plant operation. That is such a minute amount of carbon in comparison to the energy produced by a gas plant in generating power that it isn’t even worth talking about for the purposes of classifying gas as “green”. Getting the construction and logistics of anything carbon neutral is orthogonal to the carbon emissions in the production of power. Bringing up construction CO2 is a red herring at best. I asked for numbers to illustrate how ridiculous the argument is.
      - kortilla 5y ago
        > That is such a minute amount of carbon in comparison to the energy produced by a gas plant in generating power Citation needed. A gas plant dwarves solar in energy output. The whole point is that solar does have an emission and burying your head in the sand does no good when we are comparing solutions that don’t emit during generation but do to make (solar vs wind + batteries vs nuclear?).
crucialfelix 5y ago
The EU Taxonomy specifies which activites are green, which are transitional and those that are enablers for green activites. Thus, it does describe activities that are not green, but are helping to move towards pure green. --- Activities that in and of themselves contribute substantially to one of the six environmental objectives Transition activities: These are activities for which there are no technologically and economically feasible low-carbon alternatives, but that support the transition to a climate-neutral economy in a manner that is consistent with a pathway to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, for example by phasing out greenhouse gas emissions Enabling activities: activities that enable other activities to make a substantial contribution to one or more of the objectives, and where that activity:
- mulmen 5y ago
  If they called it chartreuse energy I think I would be happy.

by mulmen 5y ago

richardw 5y ago

> If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. Producing solar emits CO2 over the full lifecycle. Even during the generation and maintenance phase, it’s above zero. There’s no zero until we remove CO2 from the environment. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf Should we stop using solar until we find the zero-CO2 tech? Obviously not. And obviously we need net-0 asap, but it’s not “really that simple.”

numpad0 5y ago
Personally I’m not sure solar is a viable mass power production. I think it’s just a nice option for remote power production, as in “no one else in x miles” situation where x is an unsigned int.
- pjerem 5y ago
  Technically, the Sun send us orders of magnitude more energy that we will ever need. So, yes, I agree with you that today, efficiency of solar panels is not enough for really big scale. But results are already impressive and furthermore, we have yet an infinity of optimizations to research to extract more energy from the sun. In fact, while absolutely not probable in the coming decades Solar could even be one of the « magic solutions » alongside the fusion. Because we know the energy is there, we just don’t get her how to extract it.
  - seunosewa 5y ago
    Solar panel tech extracts energy efficiently enough, actually. The problem is storage.
willis936 5y ago
You're conflating CO2 from logistics and CO2 from electricity production. Logistics can be entirely converted to electrical in a decade with no special sauce needed.
- richardw 5y ago
  Reference discusses power generation and plant maintenance. You can argue about words but only the net CO2 matters when you’re looking for a simple answer. Perfect is the enemy of the good. We need net-0 but if you only have a binary 0-not-0 ideal we’ll leave a lot of intermediate options off the table. A Tesla isn’t net-0 but it’s better than a gas truck. I’m arguing against oversimplification, because if we want to take that to extremes we have no net-0 options right now. We need to build them. Every KG of CO2 we don’t emit now is one less we need to bury in decades to come. So do a Manhattan Project on emissions but make easily-adopted changes in the near term.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

throwaway894345 5y ago

Right now nuclear is the only green energy that is suitable for base load generation apart from hydro, and it takes a long time to build new nuclear plants, so I’m okay with a bridge solution that dramatically reduces emissions even if it doesn’t bring them to zero. The alternative is a dependency on much less green fossil fuel plants when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Intelligent people shouldn’t quibble over an imaginary “green” line, but we should focus on minimizing emissions per unit power.

NegativeLatency 5y ago
When you consider the other environmental impacts of hydro it’s not as green as people like to think.
mulmen 5y ago
It’s not ok to call gas “green”. Period. If gas is necessary then build it, but don’t claim it is green.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > If gas is necessary then build it, but don’t claim it is green Green is a spectrum, and a subjective one at that. Even if we limit ourselves to CO2 emissions, an absolutist stance eliminates solar and wind for the emissions in their erection.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    I’m not sure why this keeps getting regurgitated. Are you honestly arguing that the CO2 emissions in the production and operation of a solar plant are even remotely comparable to the emissions of a gas plant? If I have to explicitly spell all that out every time then we can’t have a conversation. It’s an absurd standard.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > Are you honestly arguing that the CO2 emissions in the production and operation of a solar plant are even remotely comparable to the emissions of a gas plant? No, just that pretending one or the other is universally accepted as “green” while the other is not is absurd. Gas isn’t emission free. But “green” has no requirement to be zero emissions. It is in the process of being defined; this is that process and discussion. (Hybrids were once green.) “Green” should move us towards a zero-emissions future. If that happens with gas, that’s better than sitting around getting hysterical about definitions while baseload runs on dirty power.

Zenst 5y ago

More so as it smells of politics. Germany was a thorn in Frances plans to label Nuclear green for while and does seem they wore down everybody and got thru a compromise that gets them off the hook by including gas. More worrying in this is how will this play into the whole gas drama with Russia. Overall, it avoids a lot of awkward moments which would of seen both Germany and France fall short upon the EU's green regulations for energy usage/production. Whilst personally I feel it is a fair thing and well needed for France, I can't help feel that Germany took advantage of this and tailcoated their needs onto this and why we see gas labeled as `green`.

kortilla 5y ago

> And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. Then we have no green energy sources at all, which makes it sort of useless as a description. Manufacturing and installation of the energy source always has to be included. For something with as short of a life as solar panels, the manufacturing, transport, installation, and disposal is a critical piece in the CO2 emissions that has to be amortized over the kWh it’s expected to generate over its lifetime.

mulmen 5y ago
Oh please. Compare the CO2 emissions of a solar plant with those of a gas plant. Normalize for MWH produced. How many orders of magnitude is the difference?
- oneoff786 5y ago
  If you’re asking someone to compare numbers, then it wasn’t really as simple as you originally stated
  - mulmen 5y ago
    It is as simple as I originally stated. The argument that solar emits carbon is counting the carbon emitted in construction and plant operation. That is such a minute amount of carbon in comparison to the energy produced by a gas plant in generating power that it isn’t even worth talking about for the purposes of classifying gas as “green”. Getting the construction and logistics of anything carbon neutral is orthogonal to the carbon emissions in the production of power. Bringing up construction CO2 is a red herring at best. I asked for numbers to illustrate how ridiculous the argument is.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      > That is such a minute amount of carbon in comparison to the energy produced by a gas plant in generating power Citation needed. A gas plant dwarves solar in energy output. The whole point is that solar does have an emission and burying your head in the sand does no good when we are comparing solutions that don’t emit during generation but do to make (solar vs wind + batteries vs nuclear?).

crucialfelix 5y ago

The EU Taxonomy specifies which activites are green, which are transitional and those that are enablers for green activites. Thus, it does describe activities that are not green, but are helping to move towards pure green. --- Activities that in and of themselves contribute substantially to one of the six environmental objectives Transition activities: These are activities for which there are no technologically and economically feasible low-carbon alternatives, but that support the transition to a climate-neutral economy in a manner that is consistent with a pathway to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, for example by phasing out greenhouse gas emissions Enabling activities: activities that enable other activities to make a substantial contribution to one or more of the objectives, and where that activity:

mulmen 5y ago
If they called it chartreuse energy I think I would be happy.