
Electricity Map – Live CO2 emissions of electricity consumption - robin_reala
https://www.electricitymap.org/
======
trzeci
This page shows that some countries produce electric power in cleaner way than
other. This projects only one point of view, and congratulations for countries
that are shifting towards green sources.

But, title is misleading: This map doesn't show consumption or total
production.

Moreover an option "Show wind" emphasis that countries with less green
electricity poison other countries. Which is false. From this map it looks
that Europe suffers from Estonia and Poland being there. If we'll consider
total production from
[http://world.bymap.org/ElectricityProduction.html](http://world.bymap.org/ElectricityProduction.html)
we have following data:

\- Estonia: 12900000 (tons / year)

\- Poland: 108750000 (tons / year)

\- Germany: 228717000 (tons / year)

Without having total numbers there, my feeling is that this page tries to
manipulate.

~~~
corradio
Hi @trzeci,

Author of the electricityMap here. The point of the app is to display how much
CO2 is emitted when you consume from your power plug (hence the consumption
point of view, and hence why we emphasise intensity and not volume). We're
trying to give people an idea of when it is the best time to consume
electricity, and what strategies are best to decarbonise rapidly.

Total volumes are also interesting (the climate cares about total volumes),
but if you want to look at strategies you have to look at per kWh values (coal
in a small volume is still a bad strategy).

\- Olivier

~~~
aurelwu
I'm a bit confused with estonia, from all what I know - Oil is "cleaner" than
lignite, why is the value so high for Estonia? just as one example showing
emissons of oil vs coal:
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d666/1a01ee6a54f86fad283e46...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d666/1a01ee6a54f86fad283e4650e1074c795b7b.pdf#page=14)

~~~
alephnil
Estonia's oil is not normal petroleum, but surface mined oil shale. It is just
as bad or worse than Alberta's tar sand in that regard.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Are there any efforts in Estonia to move to renewables from their petrol fired
generation?

------
tralarpa
It's great how much public real-time information is available on energy
production and consumption.

Some other links:

France: [https://www.rte-france.com/fr/eco2mix/eco2mix](https://www.rte-
france.com/fr/eco2mix/eco2mix)

Data from the Irish grid:
[http://www.eirgridgroup.com/__uuid/2e0badb7-e18f-47bd-8eff-8...](http://www.eirgridgroup.com/__uuid/2e0badb7-e18f-47bd-8eff-865a716a3197/)

Grid in Denmark (scroll down to the map):
[https://en.energinet.dk/](https://en.energinet.dk/)

Visualization of the networks, no real-time information:
[http://ec.europa.eu/energy/infrastructure/transparency_platf...](http://ec.europa.eu/energy/infrastructure/transparency_platform/map-
viewer/main.html)

Finished this posting, and noticed that they already have a nice page
explaining their data sources: [https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-
contrib#real-time-...](https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib#real-
time-electricity-data-sources)

------
gravelc
Well that's depressing - Queensland currently sitting at 3rd last. Given our
agriculture is also a massive emitter (beef cattle the biggest earner), we are
really not pulling our weight.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Oh hey, I live in Tasmania currently sitting at number two with 22g of CO₂ per
kWh.

Tasmania got lucky historically with something like 25 hydroelectric power
stations, and more recently three wind farms.¹ Where as Queensland only has
six, and most of them quite small.²

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro_Tasmania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro_Tasmania)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hydroelectric_power_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hydroelectric_power_stations_in_Queensland)

------
kingosticks
Is there a way (or would you consider adding a way) to view historical data so
it's possible to see how the map has changed, e.g. over the last 24 hours?

~~~
corradio
Yes we were thinking of making that, but we are a bit afraid of the amount of
data that needed to be transmitted.

We had an issue opened here: [https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-
contrib/issues/733](https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-
contrib/issues/733)

Feel free to help us at [https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-
contrib](https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib)

\- Olivier

------
nickik
Our civilization is a total disaster.

We face a crisis that we can never stop talking about, 'climate change'. There
is a easy and simply model to follow to make a massive impact on this problem,
but somehow for reasons of pure bias, ignorance and misinformation we do not
do this.

Nuclear power could have and should have solved this problem by now. Nuclear
power was on track to replace older energy technologies faster then any
earlier energy transition.

But somehow we failed, mostly because of the anti-humans, sometimes called
'environmentalists' who declared war on nuclear above even coal. They declared
their goal in terms of anti-nuclear as 'increase regulation to a point where
nuclear becomes unprofitable' and they have largely succeeded.

Since then the environmental movement has grown, and the problem they fight
have grown, but they never went back and ganged their totally flawed
assumptions about nuclear and they continue to spread outright lies and
misinformation about nuclear energy.

I would not blame them alone, but the reality is the whole population now
basically believes most of these lies, its tragic. The left often accuses the
right of being anti-science but in reality most anti-GMO, anti-Nuclear people
are form the left.

~~~
pjc50
Declaring a bunch of people to be "anti-human" because you don't agree with
them is insulting.

The backlash against nuclear comes from four points and a meta-point:

1) Weapons proliferation. The standard fission cycle is just too convenient
for this (after all, that's why it was developed) and so an international
infrastructure needs to be developed around restricting this. See Iran for
example. This also prompted a lot of opposition from people who didn't want to
live under the threat of their cities being nuked.

This also turned into lethal fights with the environmental movement (the
French government sank Greenpeace's ship _Rainbow Warrior_ with a terrorist
bombing that killed a photographer, over the question of nuclear weapons
testing). A difficult bit of bad blood to bury.

2) Huge scale and persistence of accidents. Chernobyl affected agriculture in
the whole of Western Europe, and took decades for an adequate final
containment to be built. Bhopal was bad - and possibly worse in effects! - but
at least the area isn't a permanent wasteland.

Pebble bed reactors were deemed the promising future, until one of them
jammed. It's now unfixable and practically impossible to decomission:
(wikipedia) "There exists currently no dismantling method for the AVR vessel,
but it is planned to develop some procedure during the next 60 years and to
start with vessel dismantling at the end of the century."

3) Waste disposal. A forever problem. I'm old enough to remember Greenpeace
fighting it being dumped at sea, but the problem of where we put it remains.

4) Cost overruns. A systematic problem in the industry. Doesn't affect
renewables to anything like the same extent.

5) The meta-point: systematic lying about the effects of all of the above.
That this happens to overlap with the era of discovering that all sorts of
previous advances (CFCs, tetraethyl lead, DDT, asbestos) had nasty side-
effects which were also lied about or minimised is not a coincidence. Nuclear
advocates take the arrogant position that they don't need to win trust.

~~~
martythemaniak
Yeah, his wording is quite strong, but isn't it even more insulting to have
your very existence declared problematic?

Let's be honest here, some environmentalists really do see too many humans as
a problem. I mean, it's phrased in terms of too many people doing too many
things and owning to much stuff, which all implies there's to many of us. The
next logical question is "ok, so which one of us will have to go"?

Your points are mostly valid, but they were all solvable, had people wanted to
solve them. The reality is that today there are jurisdictions (Ontario,
France) that produce clean, safe, affordable, carbon-free energy because they
built and maintained their nuclear plants. But the anti-nuclear crowd did not
want to solve issues, they had one aim, which they achieved, and now we have a
far bigger issue.

The uncomfortable fact remains is that if the rest of the developed world
looked like Ontario, climate change would be a far smaller problem. And what
bothers me personally isn't that the anti-nuclear left fucked up so badly in
the 70s - after all climate change was barely on anyone's register back then.
What bothers me is that even today after we see these facts staring at us
plainly in the face, they still won't admit they fucked up.

This bothers me because even today they won't let you call yourself an
"environmentalist" unless you sign up to their very specific implementation of
environmentalism.

~~~
api
> isn't it even more insulting to have your very existence declared
> problematic?

A few loons might hold this view, but overall it's an extreme straw man to
argue that this represents a majority view in environmentalism.

Pointing out that our existence tends to generate _negative externalities_
that might be very harmful to us in the long run is not anti-human. It's pro-
human in that the ultimate goal is to avoid those long term negative
consequences. Too many humans might indeed be bad _for humans_ in the long run
because too many humans might produce too many negative externalities.

Is it anti-well-being to advocate living below one's means to save for the
future? Saving implies spending less _right now_ to realize a potential future
gain. The environmental movement argues the same, but from the angle that we
should spend less right now to avoid future losses.

I've often found it intellectually inconsistent for conservatives to oppose
environmentalism, since it really reduces to a form of fiscal responsibility.
If conservatives are worried about the national debt they should also be
worried about the buildup of excess CO2 in the atmosphere and ocean. That's
another kind of debt being passed on to future generations. I sometimes wonder
if our high monetary debt load and our high environmental debt load might not
be directly related. Keynes' famous quote "in the future we are all dead"
could turn out to be accurate in a way he did not anticipate.

~~~
martythemaniak
Indeed there are probably a few loons who hold this view explicitly. But there
are large numbers that hold this view implicitly - ie, they would never say
they want fewer people, but if you actually followed their their preferred
course of action, fewer people would be required.

I should note that I'm not a conservative and I also find their lack of
concern for the environment to be at odds with their own interests and
ideology, but what I'm talking about is slightly different. To be an
environmentalist doesn't mean sharing some goals, it means having to sign up
to a very specific set of views, which ostensibly lead to that goal. Being
anti-nuclear power is one of those specific views you have to hold, so being
pro-nuclear puts you at odds with most environmentalists, even if both sides
of the view lead to the same goal (less CO2 in the atmosphere).

~~~
NeedMoreTea
We're on a finite planet and numbers are increasing rapidly. Very few
countries have a reducing population - Japan, and well, that's about it. At
some point the solution _has_ to be fewer people.

Looking at the world's pressing problems with loss of species, diversity,
soils, climate change etc; all are hugely exacerbated by numbers.

Even if we were to perfect interstellar or interplanetary travel we're
unlikely to be sending billions.

So what is your solution? Anyone who doesn't hold the view that the planet
needs fewer humans, _in the foreseeable future,_ is simply ignoring the
problem.

~~~
martythemaniak
The numbers are increasing, but leveling off. High fertility rates only exist
in a few regions of the world (Africa, South Asia) and even there they are
falling rapidly.

The "solution" broadly speaking is higher intensity - of energy, land,
everything. If you have compact energy sources (nuclear) powering compact food
production (high-yield agriculture, some vertical farming) feeding people
living in compact cities (higher density, more ridesharing), then it's doable.
You can already see lots of signs of this in the developed countries.

This will still require lots of adjustment from people, but asking them to
live in duplexes, share rides and eat less meat is much more doable than
asking them no you know, not exist.

The Breakthrough does lots of great research on this topic:
[https://thebreakthrough.org/](https://thebreakthrough.org/)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
That may buy a little time, but unless or until the numbers actually start
falling it doesn't actually solve the problem.

It's not asking them not to exist, I can't foresee compulsory euthanasia
camps, it's merely asking them to limit procreation. China shows it's doable -
though I'm sure there's better ways to achieve limits. At least that gives our
future generations a chance of experiencing some of the things that make life
interesting with still functional ecosystem and wildlands.

------
mrweasel
With the exception of Denmark, the areas that are in the "green" either have
hydro og nuclear.

I understand the issues with nuclear waste, but it seems that's the current
trade-off, if you want lower CO2 emissions and don't have access to large
rivers.

~~~
skrause
The problem with nuclear power is that it's too expensive unless you choose to
simply ignore the long-term cost of the nuclear waste problem.

At this point it makes more sense to invest in solar, wind power and energy
storage capacity to reduce CO2 emissions.

~~~
s21n
The problem with nuclear waste is exaggerated. It can be safely stored in
warehouses, there's no need to bury it. The fuel rods are solid, so there's no
risk of leakage. Dry cask storage containers are made of steel and concrete,
they stop all the radiation and can withstand plane crashes and earthquakes.
You can't steal the fuel, it's too heavy to load it on a truck, and even if
you found a suitable vehicle, you need to convoy it when they're shooting at
you…

Our current solutions to short-term storage are perfectly adequate long-term
solutions. And we don't even need to store it that long, because soon we'll
need it to produce fuel for next generation reactors.

The real problem with nuclear waste management are impossible and unnecessary
safety requirements.

The cost of waste management is already included in the cost of nuclear
energy. The cost of energy storage is not included in the cost of renewables,
thus they may appear as cheaper, and indeed they are – for now – because we
currently don't need energy storage. But as the renewables penetration rises,
the cost of energy storage will skyrocket:
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611683/the-25-trillion-
re...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611683/the-25-trillion-reason-we-
cant-rely-on-batteries-to-clean-up-the-grid/)

~~~
maxerickson
Trying to build enough storage to handle seasonal shifts in generation and
demand is a fools errand, but we can _easily_ afford $2.5 trillion.

------
dcahill-ieee
This doesn’t show CO2 emissions. It just lists each country generation type
and what that generation type produces per kWh. Where is the actual volume of
CO2 per hour or per day?

This site would show 1 family on a little island with a coal furnace as worse
than an entire nation burning gas.

~~~
jabl
You can see the total generation for each country by clicking on the country,
then hovering the mouse cursor over, for instance, the "origin of electricity
over the last 24 hours".

So you can see that e.g. France at the moment generates (or uses? This
calculation might be slightly off due to imports/exports...) 51.5 GW with a
carbon intensity of 44 gCO2/kWh. Which means that currently France in total
emits about 44 x 1e6 x 51.5 / 1e6 = 2266 metric tons of CO2 per hour.

By comparison, with the same kind of calculation Energiewende poster boy
Germany generates 64.6 GW with a carbon intensity of 375 gCO2/kWh, leading to
total emissions of 24225 tons of CO2 per hour. Ouch!

EDIT: As pointed out by the author below, you can click on the "emissions" tab
and see total CO2 emissions (per minute though, not per hour) directly if you
don't want to do the above calculations yourself!

------
sol_remmy
Why do they list nuclear as "low carbon" when it is actually zero carbon?

~~~
24gttghh
>Nuclear power is sometimes described as being free of greenhouse gas
emissions, and that’s true of the nuclear fission reactions themselves. But
here is a list of all the stages of the nuclear power cycle at which
greenhouse gases are emitted: uranium mining, uranium milling, conversion of
uranium ore to uranium hexafluoride, uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication,
reactor construction, reactor decommissioning, fuel reprocessing, nuclear
waste disposal, mine site rehabilitation, and transport throughout all stages.

>During these stages, greenhouse gases are emitted directly (for instance, by
trucks) but also indirectly (such as through the use of materials such as
steel and cement, which are manufactured using emissions-intensive processes).
[0]

I would hazard the site simply doesn't want to be disingenuous at all, and
provide the facts, which I applaud! I do not consider this an argument against
nuclear power per-se, as stated: it is still much lower carbon than burning FF
directly as the plant's power source.

[0][http://theconversation.com/is-nuclear-power-zero-emission-
no...](http://theconversation.com/is-nuclear-power-zero-emission-no-but-it-
isnt-high-emission-either-41615)

