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When did "green" get co-opted to mean low CO2 emissions? It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about particulat

• arcticbull 5y ago
  > It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about pollution and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. These are the same thing in common parlance. High CO2 emission plants are fossil fuel driven, and those are of course non-renewable. Wind, solar and nuclear are renewable, sustainable and low CO2. Nuclear in particular also produces very little waste as a function of power generated and extraction of uranium from seawater could fit the renewable definition.
  • hammock 5y ago
    I guess you missed the entire headline and article where it says they will call natural gas green.
    • arcticbull 5y ago
      It only gets the label if it's greener than existing solutions. They're not letting perfect be the enemy of good.
      • fivea 5y ago
        > It only gets the label if it's greener than existing solutions. They're not letting perfect be the enemy of good. That sounds very idiotic to me. One of the biggest environmental threats is global warming, which is caused by reintroducing carbon into the atmosphere through the use of fossil fuels. It makes no sense at all to label fossil fuel usage as green just because they manage to come up with an arbitrary line in the sand for unrelated pollutants and in the process ignore carbon emissions.
        • nameisname 5y ago
          The threat is humanity. The amount of pollution that will ultimately be created by the gas plants is a drop in the bucket compared to humanity overall and will largely be offset by renewables.
        • unionpivo 5y ago
          > They're not letting perfect be the enemy of good. The best you can do sometimes, its just to be less bad. If you can replace coal or diesel powered power plant into modern gas powered plant, you will emit a lot less CO2 for equivalent power. Solar and wind are not enough jet. We need something that can produce electricity 24 hours a day, or on demand. The "greenest" such tech are nuclear and gas. I have high hopes of geothermal, maybe replacing a lot of gas, but we are not there jet.
        • input_sh 5y ago
          It's caused by an ever increasing amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and it's solvable by drastically decreasing that amount. Its origin is nowhere in that equation. > and in the process ignore carbon emissions. Natural gas is the best of the worst, and it contributes to the solution in the specific case where it replaces even worse options (like coal plants). I'd argue that <270g CO2 per kWh is far too high of a threshold, but that's still at least a half of what even the "cleanest" coal plants produce per kWh. It's not the best solution and nobody is arguing that, but it is a solution in very specific circumstances.
      • belorn 5y ago
        There will almost always exist solutions that are greener than natural gas. The practical reason to choose natural gas over those are costs, sacrificing the environment in order to save money.
    • lrem 5y ago
      Aren't they aiming to do that for plants that will be using synthetic methane as alternative to battery storage?
      • fivea 5y ago
        > Aren't they aiming to do that for plants that will be using synthetic methane as alternative to battery storage? I saw no reference to origin or source or type of gas. All I saw were references to low emissions. It seems they decided to redefine "green" as "not coal".
  • onethought 5y ago
    Nuclear is not renewable… right? Ie there is a finite amount of nuclear material on earth and it’s not overly abundant either. Am I missing something?
    • rsj_hn 5y ago
      Breeder reactors can create more fuel, but even without these, there is a substantial amount of uranium that this is a non-issue. By the same token, solar is also non-renewable since it requires real resources mined from the earth which are in finite supply and solar panels are not 100% recyclable (and especially not the batteries required to make solar reliable). In this sense, nothing is renewable -- even hydro will run out eventually when the earth cools and plate tectonics comes to an end.
      • otherme123 5y ago
        Anyway, nuclear is never included in the "renewable" bucket, because the fuel has to be harvested and doesn't renew on a human timescale. Nuclear is green, because its net emissions are almost zero. OTOH burning wood is renewable, but not green, and also not sustainable. So nothing inherently good about being renewable. It's pointless to have a practical classification to then come with "technically..." and some weird and unpractical reason.
        • arcticbull 5y ago
          > Anyway, nuclear is never included in the "renewable" bucket, because the fuel has to be harvested and doesn't renew on a human timescale. You can make the case that it does - if you count uranium in seawater. Theres enough dissolved there now to fuel all the reactors on earth for 60,000 years. Geological processes continually replenish the dissolved uranium.
          • otherme123 5y ago
            Yes, and you can argue that coal and oil are currently being created... very slowly... from dead trees and what not. So renewable vs non-renewable doesn't make any sense anymore. Lets make another name: "energy which source can get replenished in less than 100 years (a life time), as wood, or less, as solar, wind, waves, and can be practically harvested with current methods i.e. not fussion or matter dissolved in the sea". That's the whole phrase you should use from now on instead of "renewable".
  • gefhfffh 5y ago
    Nuclear is sustainable? Tell me more
    • kewrkewm53 5y ago
      Anything that helps avoiding a climate catastrophe short-term is a good idea since it buys us time to switch to truly sustainable sources.
    • arcticbull 5y ago
      Nuclear is definitely sustainable [1]. There's at least four billion tons of Uranium dissolved in seawater, enough to power humanity until the heat death of the universe [+]. We just have to figure out how to get it out. [2] The amount in the ocean is constantly replenished through geological activity so one could even make the case its renewable too. [+] There's 5.5 million metric tons of known uranium deposits. Switching to breeder reactors, which produce more fuel than they consume, would allow that supply to match current generation capacity for 30,000 years. Then there's the 4.5 billion metric tons in seawater. That'll get us 15 million years worth of power. [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-reasons-why-nuclear-clean-and-sustainable https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-reasons-why-nuclear-cle... [2] https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4514 https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4514
• nine_k 5y ago
  Methane can be very much renewable. Its energy is "greener" than that of coal, or heavy oil: more energy is released per a CO₂ molecule produced. Also, unlike coal, it does not produce radioactive ashes. But it's not carbon-neutral, of course. I'd call this "olive" or "lime" energy: greenish but not wholly green.
  • kennywinker 5y ago
    This is as close to arguing about what colour to paint the deck chairs on the titanic as I can imagine. A non-carbon neutral source of energy is not any shade of green, until we’ve averted the upcoming climate disaster. And then maybe we can debate about how to spend our limited carbon budget.
    • varajelle 5y ago
      > until we’ve averted the upcoming climate disaster Realistically, not going to happen. We might be able to mitigate it, but not avert it. The best strategy is to plan it live with it rather than trying to avert it.
      • adrianN 5y ago
        The best strategy is to stop CO2 emissions as fast as possible. We already did enough damage that we'll need mitigation strategies in the future, every ton of CO2 we add to the atmosphere makes mitigation more expensive. Climate change is not some binary thing which you either prevent completely or don't. It just gets worse and worse proportional to how long we keep burning fossil fuels.
        • AstralStorm 5y ago
          If it only went proportional... The results are closer to logistic with some stability islands, exceeding certain thresholds causes runaway changes moving the equilibrium up. And there are some terrible end game scenarios we do not want to ever reach, such as exceeding wet bulb temperature in most living and farming places - cooling requires huge amounts of energy in scale. Exceeding that would make many places unlivable without technological support. Then there's the ultimate point where hydrological cycle stops, causing runaway drying.
• afarrell 5y ago
  Because it is widely believed that there is a climate emergency caused by CO2 emissions and so people want to focus.
  • loup-vaillant 5y ago
    > Because it is widely believed With good reason, I might add. There is a climate emergency caused by greenhouse gas emissions after all.
    • afarrell 5y ago
      Yes. It is easier to persuade people of a belief based in fact.
• heartbeats 5y ago
  Because we have specific environmental problems right now, that are quite serious and worth focusing on? You do this stuff because you want to accomplish something. If animals go extinct, that is obviously unfortunate, but it pales in comparison to the prospect that we do so. The EU isn't trying to accomplish some type of perfect environmental justice, they're trying to keep the world habitable.
  • xcambar 5y ago
    > If animals go extinct, that is obviously unfortunate, but it pales in comparison to the prospect that we do so. I agree with the global sentiment of your comment, but let's not forget that animal extinction is 1/ well on its way and 2/ a direct precursor of human extinction.
  • diordiderot 5y ago
    That is counter productive to keeping the earth habitable. This "considered middle ground" ideology is more dangerous than denial. Like MLK said about "white moderates".
    • ben_w 5y ago
      The perfect is the enemy of the good. The required reduction is 99.9% of greenhouse emissions for the next millennium. No institution has ever had that power, few have lasted that long, and even those few which have lasted that long underwent significant policy changes in that time. If we can’t make saving the planet cheap enough that even the greedy and selfish prefer to do that, then we can’t win at all. But half-arsing it now gives us more tomorrows in which to create the better solution.
      • AstralStorm 5y ago
        Maximally 10 extra years and waste of a lot of labor and money that could be put into building and developing nuclear power plants and more renewables.
        • 5y ago
• diffeomorphism 5y ago
  > This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that. No, it just shows that one needs to read more than the headline. It does take all that into account as well, hence all the "if"s and the "transitional" label.
  • kitsune_ 5y ago
    Sorry, but this just green washing.
    • HatchedLake721 5y ago
      I call this real-life decisions. If someone has better ideas how to progress and unite 27 countries with different levels of transition challenges and different views on nuclear and other sources, please submit them. Otherwise, being pedantic and negative about non-perfect solutions while not taking into account the complexity of getting a consensus with 27 members is not helpful to anyone.
      • thisoneistheone 5y ago
      • AstralStorm 5y ago
        It is even less helpful to tout a half-measure as a solution. Gas buys us at most a decade if done perfectly.
        • afarrell 5y ago
          If you are unwilling to walk halfway to your destination, you can never arrive.
    • gefhfffh 5y ago
      Jep, it is
• AYBABTME 5y ago
  You can make methane from carbon capture/sabatier reactors. Although I'm not sure if that's any more efficient than desalination/hydrolysis for an H2 plant with fuel cells. In any case, I'm onboard with replacing coal with gas, if nuclear isn't an option. Gas is cheap and fast to build today, and can be supplanted by nuclear/renewable later on. A pragmatic middle ground to (hopefully temporarily) accommodate the nuclear skeptics.
  • gibolt 5y ago
    Solar + Batteries/Storage are cheap to build today. No need to choose a worse technology in every way now, that only becomes less viable as time goes on.
    • bpfrh 5y ago
      Gas based Power plants are for providing capacity quickly when needed, and the cost is good compared to lithium batteries: 1 KW Gas is 0,0639€ 1 KW Lithium Battery is ~105€ There is an incoming lithium shortage which means either the price will rise sharply, or you have to build other types of batteries.
      • ben_w 5y ago
        Those are the wrong units in two different ways at once. KW = power, kWh = energy = integrated power over time Batteries are reusable. I see claims varying from 2,000, to more than 10,000 times. That reduces the battery cost to between €0.0525 and €0.0105 / kWh.
        • bpfrh 5y ago
          You are absolutely right, I somehow remembered it as the same. Isn't my comparison totally wrong on all levels? I compared batteries, which are storage(or "power plants") with the price of the thing the gas power plant uses. A better comparison would be the cost of battery storage, cost of filling it up, versus building a gas power plant and then producing the same energy. If I find a good article on that I will link it.
• josefx 5y ago
  In Germany "green" meant diesel with salad oil mixed in before our politicians started to focus on electric cars. Everything renewable qualifies as "green" even its worse for the environment.
• irthomasthomas 5y ago
  It is called green washing. Wrap yourself in a big green carbon neutral flag, and you may commit all the environmental atrocities you wish.
  • kzrdude 5y ago
    At the same time we need to do better and better. The goal is not to be perfect in the first iteration.
• pyrale 5y ago
  "green" is just a journalistic shortcut, the EU taxonomy [1] only lists sustainable production technologies, defined by 6 sustainability objectives. [1]: https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/banking-and-finance/sustainable-finance/eu-taxonomy-sustainable-activities_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/banking-and-...
• danjac 5y ago
  When Putin wanted a good return on his bought-and-paid-for lackeys in European governments.
  • MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    Ah yes Russia has limitless amount of money to control the EU despite having the GDP of Italy. Putin is personally sabotaging the magical technology that can replace natural gas instantly! The real reason why we're dependent on gas is because the eco warriors shut down coal powerplants and nuclear has been dead since 1987. Don't blame Russia for our own incompetence.
• nemo44x 5y ago
  “Green” is a marketing term designed not to promote any particular source of energy but rather to paint existing sources as “not green” which implies bad.
• zajio1am 5y ago
  > It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about particulate pollution, acid rain, habitat destruction and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. From these points natural gas is relatively good, its main problem is CO2 emissions. I worry that focusing on CO2 would lead to going back from natural gas heating to biomass/wood heating, which could be CO2 neutral[1], but brings particulate pollution and other environmental externalities. [1] although often is not due to extraction and processing steps