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> 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 ju

> 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

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