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Page added on April 14, 2014
What is the Greenest Source of Electricity?
Earlier this week the new French Prime Minister Manuel Valls reiterated President Hollande’s plan to cut French dependence on atomic power to half of all output by 2025, down from almost 75% currently. The plan is to curtail nuclear and ramp up renewables. In his speech he noted that:
The climate is probably the area where regulation is most needed . . It’s a major challenge for the planet and we will respond with a real low-carbon strategy.
I’m not sure if the context of this quote has gone missing in translation, but I’m guessing that switching from nuclear to renewables is not how France intends to cut its emissions by 40% by 2030. I’m sure it isn’t, because that simply isn’t a mitigation strategy.
In the map above we can see that France already has very low carbon electricity, just 79 g CO2/kWh in terms of carbon dioxide emitted at plants. This figure is so low precisely because they have so much nuclear. In fact their carbon productivity of 0.15 kg CO2/$ makes most countries look like climate laggards (the US is 0.4 for example, and China is 2.1).
Reading this story made me wonder how well people understand the carbon intensity of electricity generation. So here is a quick primer, based on an excellent IPCC meta-study of the issue, looking at full lifecycle emissions of electricity production.
It’s basically pretty simple. Fossil fuels are high carbon sources of electricity while other generation sources are low carbon.
Coal is the most carbon intensive, followed by oil and then natural gas. Solar PV and geothermal are slightly more carbon intensive than other non-fossil sources, but still very low carbon compared to any fossil fuel. If you dig into the study you can see the range of data points across different studies for each technology.
So what is the ‘greenest source of electricity’?
If you are looking just at carbon then hydro is a decent bet, closely followed by ocean power, wind and nuclear. If we could actually make it work biomass with carbon capture and storage (CCS) would be quite something, preferably using the waste from some fast rotation food staple. In the IPCC meta-study biomass with CCS has estimates from -1,368 to -598 g CO2eq/kWh. Sadly this option looks like it is a very long way from being commercially scalable.
So which do you think is the greenest source of power? Does your definition of green extend beyond just carbon?
23 Comments on "What is the Greenest Source of Electricity?"
Stilgar Wilcox on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 9:06 pm
But I thought NG was CLEAN! /sarc
Plantagenet on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 9:10 pm
Nuclear power releases zero CO2. If we are going to reduce our CO2 emissions and fight against climate change, then nukes have to be part of the solution.
Plantagenet on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 9:11 pm
NG is much cleaner then oil or coal. Switching electrical plants from coal to NG makes a lot of sense. Switching them to nukes would be best of all.
rockman on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 9:28 pm
I guess “greenest” is being strictly defined on the basis of carbon and not on the overall effect on the environment. Otherwise I don’t think many Japanese would consider nuclear as very green.
J-Gav on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 9:37 pm
Interesting but, euh, yes, my definition of green does extend well beyond just carbon.
Shall we take nuclear as an example? At the low end of this ‘carbon’ scale (though one wonders if this is really the result of a tooth-to-tail carbon study), nuclear still represents one of the most menacing energy forms ever invented. No need to give a lot of details to readers of this site so I’ll just mention terrorist attacks, floods, a solar blast, earthquakes … any of which could set off major disruption and not just locally, what with all the highly radioactive crap sitting above ground across the country.
As for the French “Plan” to reduce nuke by 25% by 2025, Hee-hee-hee. Living there (i.e. here), I’ve seen all the flack taken by the initial effort to just phase out a single well-past-shelf-life plant in Alsace recently. Belief in political promises is a pretty good measure of public naivety.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 9:39 pm
Green marketing ploy bashing fossil fuels with inaccurate comparisons. The real effect on the environment is much more complicated. Hydro in many cases is an environmental mess with methane emissions, ecosystem losses, human dislocation, and water quality reductions. Nuclear is possibly a game ender when society collapses and can’t keep the waste pools cool. What about the huge construction costs and uranium mining costs. Biomass is generally a fossil fuel transfer devise. In an industrial society biomass is not environmentally friendly. The AltE’s on the list are deceptive also considering the cost involved to produce and maintain the sources. It takes a fossil fuel economy to have AltE period. If you want to be green don’t have a car, don’t use A/C, eat only very local like your garden, don’t shop, don’t travel, and don’t have a TV or radio.
kervennic on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 10:07 pm
Everybody knows that we by no way need,individually all this energy.
Many of us are happy using a tenth of what other use and we do not want to waste our time thinking about complex solution that we do not need.
Nuclear is worse than global warming. All those wastes will necessarily one day contaminate the aquifer everywhere, as they do already in the state in the oldest site.
Global warming will last a thousand year. This shit will last much longer.
And we do not need it.
J-Gav on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 10:19 pm
Well Davy, that’s a pretty tall order, even for a frugal type like me. I don’t drive anymore, don’t have a cellphone, don’t have A/C, don’t travel abroad anymore, but do have a TV, a computer, a radio but – goddamit, don’t have a garden yet …
DC on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 10:20 pm
The nuclear fuel\construction\waste cycle is actually very carbon intensive, far more so than the fake figure given above would indicate. A fact well known to both industry itself, and many of activists that oppose nuclear. That aside, what is missing from the chart above? A second chart showing the radioactive intensity(forget carbon intensity!) of the various power schemes. Now that, is something I wish they had included…
If they had, the 2 worst, of course, would be Nuclear(off the chart), followed by coal.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 11:00 pm
Gav, I salute you!! If I did not have a woman and children I would get rid of the car yet, I need a truck to haul cattle. I guess I could hire that done??? I have cut way back on A/C by living in a 12×40 log cabin that ventilates very well being shotgun. I travel with the 1%er family but shouldn’t. I hate to leave the farm but I believe in being with the family some so I travel with them. Have TV for the rug rats so I can have sanity which I think I have but don’t. Well, I do everything possible on IPhone and laptop but experience technical stress I probably don’t need. I have a big garden, orchard, and 400 acres of fields, woods, and lakes. I will tell you this Gav, 10 years ago I went completely off line. It was an amazing experience. It was on a farm of course. I don’t know how you could go “off line” in a big sh_city. I really found a spirituality you can’t have connected in any way to anything electrical on or off grid! My family, friends, and woman had a fit and after 2 months I gave it up. Now I am more connected than anyone else in some ways. A part of me longs for the end of status quo bau but the other parts knows the discomfort, pain, and maybe death that will come with that.
Makati1 on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 11:19 pm
There are NO clean electric production anywhere out side of Nature’s lightning and static. ALL other sources have heavy carbon trails, even nuclear and solar. The mining and refining and the manufacturing/building of machines/facilities ALL are heavy carbon emitters at some stage. This graph is no more accurate than anything else related to hydrocarbon ‘news’.
Kenz300 on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 11:31 pm
Nuclear is too costly and too dangerous………
Fukishima and Chernobyl have taught us how EXPENSIVE nuclear power really is.
It is time to transition to safer, cleaner and cheaper alternative energy sources like wind and solar.
Years of Living Dangerously Premiere Full Episode – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brvhCnYvxQQ
J-Gav on Mon, 14th Apr 2014 11:53 pm
Davy – If I had the kind of garden I was talking about, it would meanI’d be out in the country where I wanna be but then I’d need to drive again … No perfect situations are there?
Davey on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 12:09 am
Nope Gav, I believe in relative sacrifice that is the best I can muster the other alternative is my 45. Let’s face it humans just aren’t green creatures. We tend to destroy ecosystems with or without fossil energy. I guess there is some kind of ecosystem reason for the human beings which I see as glorified gate crashers!
GregT on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 12:29 am
45s have too much rise, follow up is much faster with a 9. Cheaper too.
All this talk about which is a greener source of electricity, but not much talk about the stuff we want to power. Electronics are very carbon intensive to manufacture, transport, and replace. Most have relatively short useful lives.
Rick on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 12:32 am
There is no such thing as green, with a planet about to reach 10 billion people.
Mike999 on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 12:49 am
I wonder if the natural gas chart includes water pollution, and the natural gas leakage.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 12:55 am
Yea Greg, US army believes in 9’s and the doctrine of fire superiority! I am old fashion and figure one shot and make it count.
Greg, I think you hit the nail on the head. Let us quit blaming the fuels used and start blaming our lifestyles especially the nonnegotiable American way of life that the rest of the global middle class is aspiring to. You can’t blame the drug for the addiction. People do drugs. Our lifestyles have evolved into energy intensive thoughtless actions that developed because of ever increasing amounts of cheap energy and effective technological uses of that cheap energy. Now we are at an energy predicament that I fear we will not be able to negotiate without natures help. Nature will be impartial and effective but with no concern for human society or economy.
Shaved Monkey on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 1:04 am
Nuclear has waste
Hydro destroys eco-systems
Bio Mass destroys eco-systems
Geo thermal has radiation risks.
Solar PV is ok but requires a lot of manufacturing and mining of resources for a short term return.
Really wind, ocean and solar csp seem to be the greenest.
GregT on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 1:18 am
For general use Davy, call me a socialist, but I’m a big fan of the Russian round. I’d prefer not to be up close and personal, but that angle is also well covered.
Like I said before, mitigation first, then adaptation. The first thing that we need to do is reduce our overall energy usage. Unfortunately that will be a hard sell, it also won’t do well for the overall economy. Food production should be at the top of the list. Much better to change by choice, then to wait until there are no choices, and not enough food.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 11:06 am
Greg , a financial correction is an increasing bet with the noise I am hearing on the finance blogs. We know the main result of a financial correction and that is an increased cost of money. When “real” risk gets factored into the financial system long term rates will go up. Short term rates are repressed by central banks but the long term rates are very difficult to repress just witness the QE debacle or what China has done with its easy money and moral hazard bail outs. When the cost of money goes up it acts like a tax just like a hike in gas prices do. This will be a permanent phenomenon. The system is excessively laden with debt. This debt is so large and so pervasive it will never be repaid. The central banks no longer have the tools to fight another financial correction. Using debt to fight a debt problem is like throwing gas on the fire. At this point the economy will either be lead into another more dire decent much like “29” or have a slow death. It is death either way of the system as we have known it. The system is already dead in many ways it is just things appear more or less normal. The markets have been rigged, price discovery is corrupt, corruption at the top is normal, disregard for the rule of law excessive, and parasitic wealth transfer is cannibalizing the lower classes. Greg, your mitigation efforts will start with a financial correction. Adaptation will come shortly after that. All levels of government, industry, and GP will experience a loss of purchasing power. This will be a global event with the poster girls of Russia, China, and the tird world experiencing the same event. In a complex interconnected world at limits of growth with population over shoot the feedbacks and consequences of less with less will be devastating on the social fabric, trade, and confidence. Look to a decay of global trade and trust. Look at food stress. Look at resource stress points with potential hot wars. It will be mayhem and dysfunction. Once chaos enters the system and problems cannot be solved technological and infrastructural abandonment will begin. This is when the real demand destruction initiates. So the system itself will bring an end to the excessive consumption most probably. It is possible the financial repression can last a significant amount of time because it is really only contingent on the 1%er confidence. No worry Greg because the energy predicament is waiting in the wings to present a brick wall to the runaway train. That will be the end. We as a global society will not be able to continue a debt fueled bubble that is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme of wealth transfer and parasitic cannibalization of the lower classes generating a pseudo growth. In our fiat based currency system growth is a must. Debt must be repaid with interest. If the markets determine interest cannot be paid why loan money? None of us are in the business of giving anything away other than our pet donations. The end is near and it is not clear whether this will be swift or slow. Either is possible in a complex interconnected system that is self-organizing with no clear leadership.
meld on Tue, 15th Apr 2014 11:24 am
Just as long as we can bury all the nuclear waste under your house plantagenet and you assure us you’ll be first in line to clean up a site when it melts down then I can go for that.
bobinget on Wed, 16th Apr 2014 12:36 am
…….NO SOURCE OF ENERGY IS W/O DOWNSIDES……
Geothermal is certainly the ‘greenest’. Like hydrocarbons, geothermal is not available everywhere.
One death in eight can be directly attributed to coal burning. As POTENTIALLY dangerous as nuclear is,
coal is by far the outstanding champion killer. It’s laughable when doomsters proclaim “radio-active’ dust coming to America’s West Coast… time to be concerned, get a geiger counter!
EVERY single river and stream in America has been contaminated by airborne heavy metals from coal.
Where to store nuclear waste is more of a political than physical problem. Because no one is watching, coal burners simply bribe local officials. Pumping coal ash slurry into America’s waterways
would make Tony Soprano blush. One in eight deaths.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLEAN-BURNING COAL.
No one would build a nuclear power plant w/o cement.
Hundreds of inspectors, maybe more, go over every aspect of a nuke plant before millions of yards of concrete and high quality steel are poured and welded.
When a new coal burner comes on line, it hardly makes news. Until last year coal burners with oil out dated pollution abatement equipment were permitted to operate. Those same coal company officials would never fly on a fifty year old company aircraft.
The fact is, we need all of the above with the exception of coal. The same folks marching against a new gas pipeline at home will switch on electric ranges, stir fry some delicious tofu and onion, go to bed having no idea how much pollution they innocently caused.
With 70% of our power coming from coal, this very post is guilty.