I had a similar realization a few weeks back while trying to purchase a new electricity contract. In the EU, this is made even worse by the definition of green electricity which includes biomass but excludes nuclear energy. For those curious, I wrote up what I found here: https://integralreview.com/green-electricity/
Well, my point was that carbon neutrality is only one variable of the equation.
But if you want to focus specifically on biomass, I would say: "it depends". You can't answer that question easily. For instance, would you say a biomass plant producing electricity from wood pellets imported from Brazil is carbon-neutral? I think it isn't. When you're looking at biomass, you can't just look at the plant, you need to focus on how its fuel is sourced, what impacts this sourcing activity has, etc.
In some countries, peat is considered biomass. It’s probably worse than coal in terms of per unit damage, but generally it’s burned in far lower quantities.
Yeah, I've had these discussions with some scientists who are _really_ into peat, and got down a rabbit hole looking at the various EU states and how they deal with their peatlands from a policy point of view.
That's not how it works with plants. If you or a cow can eat them, that means that they are already done capturing the carbon because that's what they are made out of.
They are done and we still got too much atmospheric CO2, now you burn them. Feel free to insist they captured it in the past hundred years but it’s really a distinction without a difference in this situation. You don’t get a free pass on the CO2 you are releasing now.
If you do not burn them, the plants will die and get composted into soil. Soil itself will decompose and release that carbon back into the atmosphere. In temperate climate, this happens in a decade or less.
The cycle keeps running with or without humans doing the emissions part.
So lets focus on the extra carbon that we dug out and inserted into the cycle.
Drax is cutting down old-growth forests in Canada and shipping them to the UK to be burned for fuel. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-farce-of-burning-woo... This is compressing the release of hundreds of years of captured carbon into a lot less time, increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.
If it takes 50-100 years to grow back, then the CO2 is still in the air during this time plus you reduce a lot of habitat and create deserts.
If all the energy we consume today for heating, cars, electricity etc would come from biomass/trees then a huge part of our forests would have to be cut down in just a few years time, before they have a chance to grow back.
> In the EU, this is made even worse by the definition of green electricity which [...] excludes nuclear energy
Are you sure about this? I've done a quick search for what is specifically included, but came out empty-handed. I was under the impression that France managed to get nuclear to be included.
---
Edit: found something that seems to say it's included in the "list of technologies" aimed to achieving "net zero" emissions. Although it's not "green", it's "strategic".
> After much back and forth, nuclear power was finally included in the single list of 17 technologies proposed in November by the text’s rapporteur, German MEP Christian Ehler (European People’s Party – EPP).
In addition, all nuclear technologies were covered: existing and future ones, fission, fusion as well as the fuel cycle.
When I searched, none of the electricity providers included nuclear energy in their list. I tried doing some research and found this definition for the European Environment Agency: "Electricity produced from resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and low-impact hydro facilities is often referred to as 'green electricity'."
It's good to see as you point out that the situation is evolving. Strategic is better than nothing!
This is about companies buying from grid suppliers. Obviously if companies have on-prem energy generation that is used this analysis does not apply. No company is going off grid though, so for evaluating "carbon free" goals it's relevant.
These headlines misinform people who e.g. generally mean well but are also doubtful that corporations aren't pulling their leg with things like green energy contracts. However, the article says it did make sense back when it funded build-out:
> While a win for the status of renewable energy technologies, a side effect of cheap renewables means that new corporate or institutional agreements to purchase power from solar and wind projects have an increasingly limited impact in driving long-term, system-wide emissions reductions.
"increasingly limited impact" has quite a different vibe than the headline's "they do little" as a general statement
In real terms this means that we change some of the habits that bring us marginal happiness and comfort, to allow others to rise out of poverty, and leave our children a world to live in.
Lower your thermostat (hint : put on a sweater), isolate your house, eat less meat, reduce air travel, take care of your stuff so it lasts (and buy less gimmicks).
All of this will likely sound like ridiculous to an American (or even to large swaths of Europe). But I assure you it really is both impactful, necessary and not very difficult.
And it’s either that, or figure out how to explain to your children and their children, why you absolutely needed all those things. Because they will want to know why their standard of living and security has degraded wrt to ours, and “we didn’t know” wont work for anything you did since 2010 (and in reality the 1990’s)
The question was “what does cutting emissions mean in real terms”. I answered that question. I never said that it was the one and only thing to do, nor did I say that it would solve everything.
There is not “one” thing that will solve this. But we can, as you say, buy time, whilst we try to invent technology to find other solutions. Mind you, the Jevons Paradox will just mean that we consume away whatever improvements we create. Hence the importance of being able to restrain ourselves.
We have a pretty good picture of what activities emit CO2, and for whom. An average American emits every year twice as much as an average Dutchman, and thrice the amount of an average Frenchman. Again, for a marginal improvement of standard of living. All of this is well documented and saying it isn’t is not going to make the problem go away.
Looks like you’re just playing with numbers. The idea is to solve the problem
From your chart, the average American uses less than the average Australian and Canadian, and about 20 other countries.
Now explain why Americans use so much more than the French. Perhaps more nuclear power as a percentage of their electricity? Do any of your suggestions the difference. I’m sure the answer is No.
US CO2 emissions have fallen significantly in the past decade because we’ve retired a lot of coal power plants.
We are about to retire a significant amount of large CO2 producing coal power plants because of recent EPA regulations.
Decarbonization of the grid makes a noticeable difference.
The Dutch have 0 nuclear. That still leaves a factor of 2. With respect not to an ideal but with respect to a country that itself is emitting too much to be sustainable.
Nuclear is part of the solution, I fully agree. But it will not solve the problem alone. Technology will not solve this problem alone.
As said, the reasons behind the American emission levels are not some unknowable mystery. The emissions attributions are quite detailed now. Americans have more cars per inhabitant, and they are heavier and less optimised. American houses are bigger and consume more energy. Americans have a diet that is more emission heavy. It may be hard to hear, but that’s currently unsustainable, and by a wide margin.
You are right in saying that there are other countries that are worse. That does not liberate you from the obligation to strive towards sustainability.
Sustainability does not mean reduce to zero, just reduce enough to give those after us a livable world. Don’t complain or hide behind the others, but lead by example. That’s what a superpower does.
I would like to think that this settles it for you. But something tells me you prefer to continue to repeat to yourself that "I don't have to do anything, it's because other people won't switch from coal to nuclear".
You are right in saying that emissions have been reducing, even in the US. That's because a lot of people are actively working the problem.
The issue is not that they're not reducing. The issue is that they're not reducing fast enough. Mostly because gains on one hand are offset by increases in production (the Jevons paradox). Again, the US is emitting (per capita) twice that of European countries. And the europeans still have a lot of work ahead of them to become sustainable.
As the saying goes, statistics are like bikinis. What they show is nice, but what they hide is even more important.
Your statistic shows "Per capita carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuels in the United States"
That means that your statistics account only for CO2 that is physically produced in the US. Since the US, like most other western countries, has moved it's industry to the 2nd and 3rd world, those are missing from your image.
...you'll notice that the emissions are reducing veeeery slowly. This also explains why "CO2 from fossil fuels in US" has been reduced : those emissions have been progressively moved to China, who have been doing your industrial production since the 90s.
It also means the statistic only shows CO2 that is emitted from fossil fuels, and not any other processes.
Also, it only shows CO2, and not other Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. For example, methane accounts for 16% of GHG emissions. It is 28x more potent as a GHG than CO2. It is emitted for example by the beef industry, and waste management. I have a page for you : https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane
But something tells me that more data is not going to change your opinion. Because changing your opinion would mean that you would have to accept that your current behavior has to change.
I wish you the best of luck explaining yourself to your kids in 15-30 years.
OK. So now we have established that americans have bigger and less efficient cars. How do you think that that effects your GHG emissions? If you want more data, the Congressional Budget Office has a great page that shows that fuel economy is sliiiightly improving every year (i.e. if only cars hadn't grown so much eh?) and miles travelled is waaaaay up. So any technological improvements made has been undone by just consuming more. Did I mention Jevons paradox? https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58861
Regarding methane. A major source of methane is the agriculture sector. Look it up in the diagram I sent, it's the second biggest source. Specifically, 1kg of beef emits 4x the amount of GHG that 1 kg chicken emits, which in turns emits many times more than 1kg of plants. Remember that part about diet?
Also, methane is a side product of oil production (it escapes when you drill). That's why in the diagram it is the first source of GHG. Still think that methane has nothing to do with cars?
I live in France currently; 70% of our energy is nuclear. In the Netherlands the decades-long natural gas infrastructure is being phased out for solar PV and geothermal at a phenomenal rate. In 8 years they went from 1% to 18% of national usage. 4 GW of capacity was installed only last year.
That's not some accident of history. The Dutch made a political decision to invest, like a responsible, first-world geopolitical actor. The US could do the same. If they wanted to.
Let me guess. You're going to say (again) that "all of that is un-inmportant, we just need to go to nuclear". Even though I've already shown that the difference between France (70% nuclear) and the Netherlands (0% nuclear) is x2 instead of x3. That's because electric power is only 25% of GHG emissions. 28% is transport, 23% is industry, 10% is agriculture. Data (from statista no less) : https://www.statista.com/statistics/1200954/ghg-emissions-br...
It always felt wrong to me that you could buy some type of electricity when none was produced. It is not fungible like that. Only correct way is to cut off the loads when your wind-powered or solar-powered contract do not have matching production.
It's just a contract - if both parties are happy to deal with the energy in bulk, then there's no problem.
However, if either the buyer or seller thinks there is a risk some of the generation won't be produced, there's still lots of ways to manage that risk in a relatively simple way. Probably the simplest is a variation on "take-or-pay" where the buyer holds some of the risk when the generator is curtailed, i.e., not dispatched by the system controller. Essentially that means that the buyer is committing to have load available to generate against.
I've also seen renewable PPAs with time of use specified either in volume for purchase, or in the price structure.
It's years I cry that the sole reasonable usage of p.v. is self consumption and so the sole reasonable dimension for a plant is "how much can I self-consume myself?".
The sad state of things is that we have little designed for that at home. Personally I have a Victron EVC 300400300 one of the very few car charger claim to be integrated with p.v. production and yes, it is. Bugged and limited as hell:
- many times does not start charging when p.v. power is available, no "force start" button or "try start" configuration option available
- it stop charging only after around 30' without enough p.v. power HARDCODED
- poor integration with it's own Victron GX server, not taking into account total home consumption in a hybrid system but only the one protected by the local battery if any, of course with a smart-meter system
And it's one of the best available. Thermodynamic (heat pump) water heaters? Well one of the most reputed brands here in EU, Daikin, offer just two dry contacts to pilot the appliance, designed to follow grid tariffs, not p.v.
All the rest essentially do not take p.v. into account at all. This combined to the absurd prices p.v. installer companies ask their customers (and in some state self-made is illegal) put a strong brake in p.v. economics.
46 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 45.2 ms ] threadGreenhouse gases are merely one of the significant changes we cause to our environment.
The issue with biomass is the huge land surface it requires to produce the necessary fuel.
But the carbon cost to manage, process and transport that fuel is not neutral.
Because gasoline for the trucks and coal for the electricity is fossil carbon. Which is not biomass. My point.
But if you want to focus specifically on biomass, I would say: "it depends". You can't answer that question easily. For instance, would you say a biomass plant producing electricity from wood pellets imported from Brazil is carbon-neutral? I think it isn't. When you're looking at biomass, you can't just look at the plant, you need to focus on how its fuel is sourced, what impacts this sourcing activity has, etc.
No; the reason is that this wood is a byproduct of land use change, which is a source of increased carbon emissions [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_use,_land-use_change,_and...
The cycle keeps running with or without humans doing the emissions part.
So lets focus on the extra carbon that we dug out and inserted into the cycle.
If all the energy we consume today for heating, cars, electricity etc would come from biomass/trees then a huge part of our forests would have to be cut down in just a few years time, before they have a chance to grow back.
Are you sure about this? I've done a quick search for what is specifically included, but came out empty-handed. I was under the impression that France managed to get nuclear to be included.
---
Edit: found something that seems to say it's included in the "list of technologies" aimed to achieving "net zero" emissions. Although it's not "green", it's "strategic".
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/nuc...
> After much back and forth, nuclear power was finally included in the single list of 17 technologies proposed in November by the text’s rapporteur, German MEP Christian Ehler (European People’s Party – EPP).
In addition, all nuclear technologies were covered: existing and future ones, fission, fusion as well as the fuel cycle.
These headlines misinform people who e.g. generally mean well but are also doubtful that corporations aren't pulling their leg with things like green energy contracts. However, the article says it did make sense back when it funded build-out:
> While a win for the status of renewable energy technologies, a side effect of cheap renewables means that new corporate or institutional agreements to purchase power from solar and wind projects have an increasingly limited impact in driving long-term, system-wide emissions reductions.
"increasingly limited impact" has quite a different vibe than the headline's "they do little" as a general statement
There are 8 billion people. Many people still live in poverty.
Lower your thermostat (hint : put on a sweater), isolate your house, eat less meat, reduce air travel, take care of your stuff so it lasts (and buy less gimmicks).
All of this will likely sound like ridiculous to an American (or even to large swaths of Europe). But I assure you it really is both impactful, necessary and not very difficult.
And it’s either that, or figure out how to explain to your children and their children, why you absolutely needed all those things. Because they will want to know why their standard of living and security has degraded wrt to ours, and “we didn’t know” wont work for anything you did since 2010 (and in reality the 1990’s)
I can’t believe it’s 2024 and we’re still having this conversation.
You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about!!!
There is not “one” thing that will solve this. But we can, as you say, buy time, whilst we try to invent technology to find other solutions. Mind you, the Jevons Paradox will just mean that we consume away whatever improvements we create. Hence the importance of being able to restrain ourselves.
We have a pretty good picture of what activities emit CO2, and for whom. An average American emits every year twice as much as an average Dutchman, and thrice the amount of an average Frenchman. Again, for a marginal improvement of standard of living. All of this is well documented and saying it isn’t is not going to make the problem go away.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...
https://www.myclimate.org/
From your chart, the average American uses less than the average Australian and Canadian, and about 20 other countries.
Now explain why Americans use so much more than the French. Perhaps more nuclear power as a percentage of their electricity? Do any of your suggestions the difference. I’m sure the answer is No.
US CO2 emissions have fallen significantly in the past decade because we’ve retired a lot of coal power plants.
We are about to retire a significant amount of large CO2 producing coal power plants because of recent EPA regulations.
Decarbonization of the grid makes a noticeable difference.
Nuclear is part of the solution, I fully agree. But it will not solve the problem alone. Technology will not solve this problem alone.
As said, the reasons behind the American emission levels are not some unknowable mystery. The emissions attributions are quite detailed now. Americans have more cars per inhabitant, and they are heavier and less optimised. American houses are bigger and consume more energy. Americans have a diet that is more emission heavy. It may be hard to hear, but that’s currently unsustainable, and by a wide margin.
You are right in saying that there are other countries that are worse. That does not liberate you from the obligation to strive towards sustainability.
Sustainability does not mean reduce to zero, just reduce enough to give those after us a livable world. Don’t complain or hide behind the others, but lead by example. That’s what a superpower does.
“ It must be the big cars” “it’s the American diet”
Please explain Canada and Australia being more than the United States
You also aren’t accounting for any industry either.
Once again, the use of coal is demonstrably significant. No hand waving necessary:
“New EPA directive will cut pollution equivalent to the emissions of 328m cars”
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/25/new-rule...
https://palanan.com/blogs/news/why-does-the-u-s-have-twice-a...
https://www.zerofy.net/2022/04/04/household-co2-emissions.ht...
I would like to think that this settles it for you. But something tells me you prefer to continue to repeat to yourself that "I don't have to do anything, it's because other people won't switch from coal to nuclear".
Have the large American homes and cars been responsible for the large drop in per capita emissions over the past 20 years?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon...
Want to do a correlation between car size and home size with this large drop in emissions?
Since Americans have purchased larger cars and homes, we have a negative correlation!
https://web.archive.org/web/20240429104301/https://www.econo...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/automobiles/european-us-c...
You are right in saying that emissions have been reducing, even in the US. That's because a lot of people are actively working the problem.
The issue is not that they're not reducing. The issue is that they're not reducing fast enough. Mostly because gains on one hand are offset by increases in production (the Jevons paradox). Again, the US is emitting (per capita) twice that of European countries. And the europeans still have a lot of work ahead of them to become sustainable.
As the saying goes, statistics are like bikinis. What they show is nice, but what they hide is even more important.
Your statistic shows "Per capita carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuels in the United States"
That means that your statistics account only for CO2 that is physically produced in the US. Since the US, like most other western countries, has moved it's industry to the 2nd and 3rd world, those are missing from your image.
If you look at "consumed CO2" : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...
...you'll notice that the emissions are reducing veeeery slowly. This also explains why "CO2 from fossil fuels in US" has been reduced : those emissions have been progressively moved to China, who have been doing your industrial production since the 90s.
It also means the statistic only shows CO2 that is emitted from fossil fuels, and not any other processes.
Also, it only shows CO2, and not other Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. For example, methane accounts for 16% of GHG emissions. It is 28x more potent as a GHG than CO2. It is emitted for example by the beef industry, and waste management. I have a page for you : https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane
Guess what? US emissions of methane are up : https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/ghg_met...
But something tells me that more data is not going to change your opinion. Because changing your opinion would mean that you would have to accept that your current behavior has to change.
I wish you the best of luck explaining yourself to your kids in 15-30 years.
Methane has nothing to do with cars.
Tell your kids you ignored nuclear energy for decades and used all that coal.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2024/04/17/forget...
Regarding methane. A major source of methane is the agriculture sector. Look it up in the diagram I sent, it's the second biggest source. Specifically, 1kg of beef emits 4x the amount of GHG that 1 kg chicken emits, which in turns emits many times more than 1kg of plants. Remember that part about diet?
Also, methane is a side product of oil production (it escapes when you drill). That's why in the diagram it is the first source of GHG. Still think that methane has nothing to do with cars?
I live in France currently; 70% of our energy is nuclear. In the Netherlands the decades-long natural gas infrastructure is being phased out for solar PV and geothermal at a phenomenal rate. In 8 years they went from 1% to 18% of national usage. 4 GW of capacity was installed only last year.
If ever you were in need of data : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_Netherlands
That's not some accident of history. The Dutch made a political decision to invest, like a responsible, first-world geopolitical actor. The US could do the same. If they wanted to.
Let me guess. You're going to say (again) that "all of that is un-inmportant, we just need to go to nuclear". Even though I've already shown that the difference between France (70% nuclear) and the Netherlands (0% nuclear) is x2 instead of x3. That's because electric power is only 25% of GHG emissions. 28% is transport, 23% is industry, 10% is agriculture. Data (from statista no less) : https://www.statista.com/statistics/1200954/ghg-emissions-br...
Read some of the pages I've sent. It's important.
Do the math and let me know.
But hurry because we are transitioning to electric vehicles!
France is a small country with 70 million people. It’s less industrial. Small GDP. US is 10x GDP.
The US has as much nuclear power as France but it only amounts to 20%
However, if either the buyer or seller thinks there is a risk some of the generation won't be produced, there's still lots of ways to manage that risk in a relatively simple way. Probably the simplest is a variation on "take-or-pay" where the buyer holds some of the risk when the generator is curtailed, i.e., not dispatched by the system controller. Essentially that means that the buyer is committing to have load available to generate against.
I've also seen renewable PPAs with time of use specified either in volume for purchase, or in the price structure.
The sad state of things is that we have little designed for that at home. Personally I have a Victron EVC 300400300 one of the very few car charger claim to be integrated with p.v. production and yes, it is. Bugged and limited as hell:
- many times does not start charging when p.v. power is available, no "force start" button or "try start" configuration option available
- it stop charging only after around 30' without enough p.v. power HARDCODED
- poor integration with it's own Victron GX server, not taking into account total home consumption in a hybrid system but only the one protected by the local battery if any, of course with a smart-meter system
And it's one of the best available. Thermodynamic (heat pump) water heaters? Well one of the most reputed brands here in EU, Daikin, offer just two dry contacts to pilot the appliance, designed to follow grid tariffs, not p.v.
All the rest essentially do not take p.v. into account at all. This combined to the absurd prices p.v. installer companies ask their customers (and in some state self-made is illegal) put a strong brake in p.v. economics.