3 ms·

> Close. The office in Kansas City wouldn't use it, if that office existed. Suppose you can get solar power in Kansas City, but can't transport it to Seattle, m

> Close. The office in Kansas City wouldn't use it, if that office existed. Suppose you can get solar power in Kansas City, but can't transport it to Seattle, maybe due to lacking interconnect capacity, maybe lack of contracts among the power companies, it doesn't matter. What you do is buy 1GW of solar in Kansas, sell that same power as fossil power in Kansas and buy fossil power in Seattle. If I’m understanding this correctly: 1. You buy 1MW of solar power in location X, and don’t use it. 2. You sell 1MW of emissions producing power in location X, that someone else uses 3. You buy 1MW of emissions producing power in location Y, and use that. Net result: 2MW of emissions producing power used, 0MW of solar power used, and a claim of net-0MW of emissions produced? Yes, it’s a “clever hack”, but accounting sleight of hands are just that. Most charitably magic, less charitably outright falsehoods. > IMO it's a fair and good hack: When you open a new site and use that hack to buy power for the new site, the corresponding new power generation is solar. It's just solar with two additional accounting hops I don’t understand how you got to this outcome from the first position. Can you help me understand what steps I missed for this to actually have good outcomes resulting in solar power actually being used? I’d love to be wrong and for this to actually be actually good outcomes combined with clever accounting - those are absolutely the most satisfying solutions, both to design and read about (for me personally, anyway): where clever people are coming up with creative solutions to solve bureaucratic bullshit, while also achieving good outcomes. EDIT: Child comment has helped me spot the error in my comprehension leading to incorrect math: “ What you do is buy 1GW of solar in Kansas, sell that same power as fossil power in Kansas” - I didn’t read ‘same power’ properly in my first read. I’ve left my comment as-is despite it now being completely wrong as a result of that, and glad to have been wrong

bastawhiz 2y ago
> 0MW of solar power used No, the 1MW solar power was used. It was used by someone who believed that it created emissions. But the emissions were instead produced in Seattle rather than Kansas. The accounting relies on the person buying power in Kansas not to care that it's fossil fuel power that they're purchasing. They know that there's emissions from their power use, but they don't know where those emissions are.
- oarsinsync 2y ago
  Gotttchaaaa, thank you. I see my misunderstanding in my previous: “sell that same power as emissions producing power”, I missed the ‘that same’ part. Thank you!
  - Arnt 2y ago
    Sorry about the terseness. I think it's a really clever hack. An admirable way to drive forward installation of regenerative power plants, faster than the infrastructure/contracts would otherwise allow.

bastawhiz 2y ago

> 0MW of solar power used No, the 1MW solar power was used. It was used by someone who believed that it created emissions. But the emissions were instead produced in Seattle rather than Kansas. The accounting relies on the person buying power in Kansas not to care that it's fossil fuel power that they're purchasing. They know that there's emissions from their power use, but they don't know where those emissions are.

oarsinsync 2y ago
Gotttchaaaa, thank you. I see my misunderstanding in my previous: “sell that same power as emissions producing power”, I missed the ‘that same’ part. Thank you!
- Arnt 2y ago
  Sorry about the terseness. I think it's a really clever hack. An admirable way to drive forward installation of regenerative power plants, faster than the infrastructure/contracts would otherwise allow.