Electricity map: Mapping the climate impact of electricity

https://app.electricitymap.org/map

143 82 4 years ago

app.electricitymap.org

bb123• 4 years ago

France sticks out like a sore thumb in a sea of natural gas burning neighbours. We could all be running on nuclear like them. Nuclear is safer, better for the environment and has the nice side effect that it frees us from relying on despots like Putin and the Saudi ilk to keep the lights on. Instead here we are. At the bitter end of 30 years of shit government.

adrianN2• 4 years ago

About a third of all Uranium is either mined or at least refined in Russia.

masklinn4• 4 years ago

That's complete nonsense, unless you're asserting that Kazakstan is in Russia.

Russia produces about 5% of uranium, and uranium is reduced to yellowcake on site but it is generally enriched by the country using the fuel (eurodif being a pretty significant exception).

Furthermore uranium has a bunch of advantages — aside from most of the known reserves being in advanced economies (namely Australia and Canada):

- because it's dense and stable (unlike gasoline or natural gas), countries can have years of enriched fuel in storage, meaning in case of supply issue they can easily wait out

- ramp up of existing mines (or opening out of new mines) to compensate for one supplier shutting down or being blackballed, because

- uranium requires very little infrastructure between the mine (which ships yellowcake) and the enrichment plant, yellowcake is transported in 400kg drums packed into standard shipping containers

ohgodplsno5• 4 years ago

Mostly because as it stands (stood), it's (was) the most economically sensible thing to do. France also gets a ton from Niger, Australia is known to have stupid amounts in their reserves (and they can't really pull the "mines are bad" argument considering just how many coal mines they have), and pretty much every country has the ability to open mines. It's just a matter of how expensive it is. The good thing with nuclear fuel is that you don't really need that much, and much of the cost of nuclear energy is in operating costs, not fuel. Additionally, had we continued research on nuclear, we might have the ability to reuse spent fuel today, which still holds a _ton_ of energy in it.

Tade0• 4 years ago

The EU gets 20% of its uranium from Russia, and another 20% from Kazakhstan which, despite its recent refusal to participate in the war, is still deeply tied with Russia.

masklinn4• 4 years ago

Unlike natural gas though, uranium is easy to stockpile and doing so is pretty standard (IIRC france keeps 2~3 years worth of fuel stockpiled, plus a 5 years strategic reserve), and there are no new pipelines to build and install if you look for a new supplier, it's "just" a question of that supplier ramping up production or opening mines for whatever price they are interested in. The steps inbetween are pretty much standard international shipping in intermodal containers.

smotah2• 4 years ago

The main difference is that:

- the weight of uranium compared to the weight of coal needed for the same amount of energy produced is absolutely ridiculous: 2.5 metric tons vs. 7 grams of uranium 235. That make it easy to stockpile it for years to come

- Some "waste" are already being recycled and used again

- uranium is uniformly distributed on earth, there's not the same geopolitical issues that we experience for fossil energy sources such as oil and gas

- I'm not sure whether those 20%/20% proportions are true since some EU countries does not disclose the part of uranium imported from each countries

- Australia, Niger and Canada are also some major players for EU uranium import, none of which want to back Russian war, quite the contrary according to the UN vote.

goodcanadian2• 4 years ago

If you had looked a couple of days ago, the UK (for example) would have been a lot greener as the wind was blowing. Today is especially bad for wind which, unfortunately, does mean more gas.

yodelshady• 4 years ago

Yet today, France is as green as it was.

And I'll bet money that, couple of days ago, the carbon put out by the spinning reserve that is necessary to cover a day like today wasn't counted.

If you're going to advocate for wind, great. Can we examine your plans honestly, please? Because if you want to deliver an equivalent service to France, one where "SLA" and "disconnect the customers if convenient" are treated as different things, then our current plan is not wind. It is gas.

danielsokil• 4 years ago

Yes! I have finally found the ideal country to live in, starting my journey towards Kosovo.

panick21_7• 4 years ago

Just to think France would have been nice and green for decades. Imagine if people at Kyoto would have just said 'right, climate change, lets are just start building nuclear power plants as fast as we can'.

But thanks to amazing green environmental organization like Greenpeace and all the fear-mongering for decades the world has missed multiple opportunities to turn into a nuclear society.

Had governments been willing to pay extra for clean energy (and air), nuclear would have taken of in the 70s everywhere. But coal and later gas was just to cheap for anything to compete.

Germany is specially interesting. They have on the forefront of green revolution. I can't even remember the amount of think pieces hailing Germany as this amazing government lead push to green energy. Germany was held up as the global model over and over. The amount of times I have heard talk about German investment in solar is almost mind-blowing.

But when I look at this map, its always brown. And Germany as an engineering society could have easily spent the last 2 decades putting up nuclear reactors. If France could do it in the 70-90, Germany could have done it 2000-2020.

Likely by now they could finish multiple reactors a year. And once you have the workforce and production capability for that pace could have built them all over the East.

What this map really shows is that if you combine nuclear with hydro you are like gone do amazing.

My own country, Switzerland, sadly had a vote (direct democracy ftw) and now nuclear research and new nuclear is basically illegal. Its a damn shame.

The world has just totally fucked up the response to climate change.

verisimi• 4 years ago

Germany was held up as the global model over and over.

They were/are, but IMO, Germany seem to be in a terrible position re managing their energy needs.

They have had huge price increases - partly because they have had such dependence on Russia, and because they have removed their own power plants.

panick21_7• 4 years ago

How are they the model when France had green energy since the 90s? CO2 saved earlier is far more helpful.

mro_name2• 4 years ago

a nuclear society is neither green nor sustainable.

adrianN2• 4 years ago

It is pretty green compared to the alternatives. And if we wanted to we could build breeder reactors that stretch our nuclear fuel reserves to a few hundred years at least. It is an open question whether 100% nuclear is cheaper or more expensive than 100% renewables though.

karteum• 4 years ago

But wind turbines and photovoltaic panels are also neither green nor sustainable (especially when you take into account all the mining and the CO2 involved in their manufacturing and transportation, and especially when you take into account the backup system e.g. gaz or batteries to compensate for their intermittent nature).

panick21_7• 4 years ago

Complete nonsense.

The amount of uranium and thorium on this planet is almost unimaginable. In fact Thorium gets carried to the surface in volcanic activity. So a nuclear society would not have to worry about sustainability for literally 1000s of years.

And that is before we even consider fusion.

As for it not being green. Nuclear reactors have very controlled inputs and outputs. Nothing is lost and civilian nuclear waste has never hurt anybody and certainty not nature.

By first principle, a nuclear society uses the least amount of resources in terms of mining and land to power human society for 1000s of years.

TZVdosOWs3kZHus• 4 years ago

Germany is specially interesting. They have on the forefront of green revolution. I can't even remember the amount of think pieces hailing Germany as this amazing government lead push to green energy. Germany was held up as the global model over and over. The amount of times I have heard talk about German investment in solar is almost mind-blowing.

Unfortunately the last two cabinets (8 years) did a poor job in continuing a most promising change to more renewable energies. The business lobbying that took place at that time is unbearable.

This graphic[1] (in german, but you get the idea) shows the expansion figures for renewable energies and it is clearly visible how photovoltaics in particular have been severely limited since 2013. Absurd rules were created, for example a levy for privately generated photovoltaic electricity. Or artificially created requirements to keep plant sizes small.

After laws were changed in favour of large investors, fossil energy companies now adorn themselves with large projects, although a large part of the expansion is still done by private individuals.

After an entire industry has been destroyed, there are now complaints that there is a lack of skilled workers and that the number of new installations cannot be increased quickly enough. It all makes me want to puke. We could be somewhere completely different today, but greed and lust for power prevent us from doing anything good for the general public.

[1] https://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/EE/Redaktion/DE/Bilder/G...

cinntaile5• 4 years ago

Absurd rules were created, for example a levy for privately generated photovoltaic electricity.

This makes sense since you stress the grid requiring the grid operators to invest.

ZeroGravitas5• 4 years ago

Electricity isn't the only source of carbon, ghg or other pollution. And indeed, it's one of the easier ones since wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electricity these days (partly thanks to Germany's foresight and early investments)

If I was going to ding Germany for anything (because they've been pretty much world leaders on the whole climate thing) it would be their initial reluctance to embrace EVs but they seem to be over that now. And they stepped back slightly on their climate leadership under a right-wing government but greens seem to have more influence currently so getting back on track.

But generally their carbon intensity of the whole economy is trending in the right direction, despite doing more heavy manufacturing than most other EU countries.

ohgodplsno5• 4 years ago

wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electricity these days

*because they are absurdly subsidized, as opposed to other methods of production which have been repeatedly fucked over the years.

pjc50• 4 years ago

Greenpeace

Reminder that Greenpeace started out fighting against nuclear weapons and their testing (which so annoyed the French government that they simply murdered an activist) and nuclear dumping, both of which put considerable quantities of radioactive material into the air and water.

Chernobyl has been in the news again since the site was occupied by Russian troops. That and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Pla... have apparently taken shelling damage but as yet no leaks have been reported. The potential for an accidental or deliberate disaster that covers Western Europe with radioactive material and takes out a season's agriculture remains.

Is everyone happy with Iran having a buildout of a dozen or more reactors to replace their oil usage?

More prosaically, the cost of solar only goes down, while the cost of nuclear seems to only go up.

conorcleary• 4 years ago

Not only that, the potential risk that contemporary nuclear energy (worse yet, older tech) keeps increasing as the world becomes more complex. You could make a list very very long by jotting down the threats that would be caused by and directed at a nuclear installation of any size.

Frankly, I don't trust the Human to manage the risk of a nuclear installation. Look what Humans are doing elsewhere in every other domain. We don't need the sun to be brought to Earth.

kkfx2• 4 years ago

More prosaically, the cost of solar only goes down, while the cost of nuclear seems to only go up.

In practical terms: solar panels might cost less per peak W, same for inverters, same for batteries but costs to reach self-sufficiency for real [1] are still simply absurdly expensive in both absolute capex terms and expected operational life.

Actually I have a small p.v. with lithium storage as a guarantee for blackouts, not counting the battery in monetary terms I'll pay it back thanks to self consumption, I can shift most big loads in the sunny days etc, but not all. A battery big enough to ensure full operation in comfort conditions (witch means being able to heat the house in winter, cook something in early morning or in the evening etc) + some backups (grid or generator) when there is not enough Sun during the day would cost 30-40k euros. And would still be a fragile system with around 10 years of fully operational life, after some parts of the system might still be operational with enough performances to be kept, but batteries, the most expensive and unrecyclable part of the system will be not. Changing them probably means change battery inverters since voltages and other characteristics might have changed in new batteries, witch is again another important costs of the system. And that's just at private home's level, at scale for industries etc it's simply technologically impossible so far. For those usages we have only fossils, when possible nuclear (need abundant water ready available, significant hydrogeological stability etc, can't be done as easy as place a big diesel or gas generator on ground) or again when possible classic hydro power.

P.v. costs are going down in part because of evolving scale in part artificially because of economical moves (like having skyrocketed prices of oil&gas with various excuses but in reality just for a deliberate speculation) and nuclear costs soar just because instead of being done by a single State are done by various private companies that work between them for profit. We can't really run a country on renewables so far and we will not in the near future.

[1] too many use a classic dumb tricks "hey, with a p.v. system you'll produces more than you consume", witch is true in kWh/month terms, witch is false in time distribution of such production concentrated between morning and early afternoon and zero in the rest of the time

adev_3• 4 years ago

More prosaically, the cost of solar only goes down, while the cost of nuclear seems to only go up.

Comparing Nuclear and Solar cost is like comparing the cost of rain to the cost tap water. It is fundamentally stupid.

- Nuclear provides a stable continuous source of power and matches existing power grid.

- Solar need more than three time the capacity for the same level of power, need profound infrastructure changes and required to be associated with Lithium Storage or/and Power2Gas or/and water pump storage.

More prosaically, the cost of solar only goes down, while the cost of nuclear seems to only go up.

France has been able in 20 years to create out of nowhere more than 30 nuclear power plants covering more than 50% of the country energy needs for a fraction of the cost of an EPR today. Privatisation, loss of Engineering knowledge and mainly lack of politics support are the element to blame here. Not nuclear energy itself.

Reminder that Greenpeace started out fighting against nuclear weapons and their testing

Good. Then they should stick to their fundamental and go protest a bit against Nuclear weapon testing in North Korea. That will make them much more relevant that when they do support the construction of (Russian provided) coal and gaz power plants in Germany.

Sticking to their fundamental might have helped to prevent the shit show we are now in: now Germany cannot even afford to stop few Gaz pipelines from Russia without putting the country in the dark.

panick21_7• 4 years ago

Reminder that Greenpeace started out fighting

That may be, but the simple reality is that they and many like them have been fearmongering against nuclear for decades while being far more accepting of coal and case.

Is everyone happy with Iran having a buildout of a dozen or more reactors to replace their oil usage?

I am. Iran would have had peaceful French built nuclear power with French handling nuclear bringing nuclear fuel and taking nuclear 'waste' home.

This was agree on by Iran and France. However the US in its infinite wisdom prevented that.

And then when Iran said, if France was not gone do it, they would do it themselves. The US and Israel basically fell over themselves claiming this was prove that Iran was building nuclear weapons.

More prosaically, the cost of solar only goes down, while the cost of nuclear seems to only go up.

That's not a law of nature. Its an act of deliberate policy and history.

kkfx2• 4 years ago

The "response" have issues from being done by neolierals. Nuclear (actual, so fission) is expensive and dangerous enough to be a government-only show, It's not something that can be offloaded to private hands. Because of that neoliberals hate it.

Modern p.v. and eolic means tons of small "products" to be sold and sold regularly because as long as tech improve after 10 years even if a plant is still fully functional it's about time to refresh it. As a result means a very profitable business for private companies (just try to track those behind Greta Thumberg, you'll end up quickly to giants like ABB, Ökoworld AG, Dii GmbH, Enel, EDF, Endesa, Abengoa, Siemens, Cevital and various investments banks). Oil giants are sitting on big money but they know their business sooner or later will end at least because of more and more scarce resources, so they like to diversify their investments. That's is. France have more nuclear because France have more public (have had, at least, with recent government and projects things goes very badly here)...

"New" nuclear projects are stuck for similar reasons: investors want profit, the service is just a mean to elicit profits, not a purpose and the profit a reward.

Swiss is luck to a certain extent because of it's small size and a certain policy toward autonomy, they aren't really autonomous especially recently but at least hydro thanks to the orography can play an important role and probably can still grow a bit toward many smaller-size plants so just pushing nuclear a bit they can be almost autonomous again. France to be autonomous must re-nationalize EDF erasing Hercules project and other disastrous neoliberal moves. Others are almost doomed: Germany have not good enough infra in the whole country, it's private-based development under USA control have had so negative effects that I do not know how they can be back in power, Italy is also doomed, Spain might have a bit more chances but I'm not much sure and other countries are completely out of the game.

Having a small p.v. with lithium storage I've reasoned a bit just in terms of personal energy autonomy in Green New Deal terms: having built s new house (Minergie-alike (BBC) if you are Swiss) I already have all electrical and winter heating demand far less energy than an old house, winter cooling is needed thanks to the climate only during the sunny days where there is plenty of electricity however try to be almost autonomous (witch means near-zero consumption from the grid, but with the grid as a cheap backup, cheaper than running on a generator) would mean are 30-40k euros more in both battery, a geothermic heat-pump since the actual heating (hot water stored in the garage + VMC + low inertia heat transfer to the house) stress batteries too much in many winter nights. Enlarging that to all houses: we can build something similar for individual homes in perhaps 50+ years. We still have to power industries. Even if in a soon future we can use e.v. as part of the house power plant (both to recharge them when not used, thanks to more than one car and WFH, and when they supply energy to the home microgrid) we are still not autonomous in a safe manner, the investment is a significant fraction of the entire home value and the worst part: it does not last longer. Batteries really used can last from 5 to 8 years while formally they'll last 10. That's means around 10-12k euros per year, doable for middle-class that will be impoverished by such hi prices but not doable for most others, a vast majority of the citizens. And still nothing to produce enough of such gears for even just only the middle class. Nothing for the industry, hospitals, shipping, airplanes etc. Long story short the actual new deal is a way to elict money from all to enrich few, making all much more surveilled (IoT is mandatory in such systems, and done in connected and proprietary ways) and poor. Witch is actually the 2030 Davos agenda. It's almost NOTHING for climate change (the sole part is that the need of new home might means homes able to offer better climate comfort, hopefully built in hydrogeologically safe places). Oil&gas will remain probably as long as we have them in sufficient quantities and nuclear will be kept going hoping for fusion, but all in a world ruled by private bodies so a world that can't really innovate.

mattlondon• 4 years ago

How frequently does this live data update? It is showing "estimated" data for e.g. the UK from 0800, and it is now 1020 so it is over 2 two hours old?

Comparing the data from https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/, there seems to be some real discrepancies, e.g.

- Solar: 4.23% vs 13.81%

- Wind: 18.8% vs 8.5%

- Gas: 37.1% vs 41.24%

I am not sure who I would trust more - I guess if the data from electricity map is an estimate that is close to 2.5 hours out of date, that might explain some of it.

Cool UI though

ohgodplsno5• 4 years ago

Hint: if it's just two hours late, you can come back in two hours. The numbers remain true in terms of carbon intensity.

jka• 4 years ago

The parsers[1] that ElectricityMap uses are open source and use a variety of different data sources.

Here are the technical requirements for each data source: https://github.com/electricityMap/electricitymap-contrib/wik...

(to answer your question, the list mentions that a data source is required to be: "Updated in real-time with less than 2 hours of delay." ... "Can have a longer delay, but then the country won’t be colored on the map")

[1] https://github.com/electricitymap/electricitymap-contrib/tre...

possiblelion• 4 years ago

I don't think this is a fair representation - for example it makes Estonia and Kosovo stand out in the world as the worst offenders. However they have relatively tiny populations (1.3 million and 1.9 million respectively); the actual CO2 impact of them is miniscule in the world, even if per-capita CO2 seems high.

Sankozi• 4 years ago

If we divide whole map into small enough regions then all of them would be "green" by your reasoning. All kinds of problems can be "solved" that way.

EForEndeavour• 4 years ago

The modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) is a source of statistical bias that can significantly impact the results of statistical hypothesis tests. MAUP affects results when point-based measures of spatial phenomena are aggregated into districts, for example, population density or illness rates. The resulting summary values (e.g., totals, rates, proportions, densities) are influenced by both the shape and scale of the aggregation unit.
For example, census data may be aggregated into county districts, census tracts, postcode areas, police precincts, or any other arbitrary spatial partition. Thus the results of data aggregation are dependent on the mapmaker's choice of which "modifiable areal unit" to use in their analysis. A census choropleth map calculating population density using state boundaries will yield radically different results than a map that calculates density based on county boundaries.

woile• 4 years ago

i think you can read the map as "the effort each country has done to go green". and then it's valid.

lbriner• 4 years ago

The same logic means that they should find it easier to create a solution since they only have to supply a small number of people so I guess it balances out.

dang• 4 years ago

Live electricity production/consumption CO2 map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28223366 - Aug 2021 (36 comments)

ElectricityMap – Live CO₂ emissions of electricity production and consumption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24747927 - Oct 2020 (101 comments)

Electricity Map – Live CO2 emissions of electricity consumption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17772529 - Aug 2018 (71 comments)

Live CO2 emissions of electricity consumption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15998650 - Dec 2017 (135 comments)

olau• 4 years ago

Note that electricitymap.org does not have a complete model of the grid and the involved power plants so the estimates should not be trusted blindly.

vonadz• 4 years ago

In regards to plant data, https://findenergy.com/power-plants/ is pretty interesting source, although it's not in real time. We ended up using EPA recommendations for emission coefficients (https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-07/documents/em...) but at one point we experimented with using a UN study that had emission factors listed for renewables and nuclear (I think they took into account the construction of plants), and nuclear was at something like 25 KG of CO2/MWh compared to most coal plants that are around 1000 KG of CO2/MWh.

0xbadcafebee• 4 years ago

So, why does Rocky Mountain both have 78% renewables and the second highest carbon impact of the US? I see that it's using coal, but why so much?

Reventlov• 4 years ago

I believe something is fishy with the hydro storage number from electricy map, as they report roughly 4000% of hydro storage energy in use (with regards to installed capacity). Would be nice to make some bug report :)

boringg• 4 years ago

I'm just going to put it out there that this is a great start and has some distance to go depending on its end point. Interesting concept (I have seen iterations of it in the past but maybe not at the whole global level). You'll notice that it strongly favors hydro electricity (for which you can only be blessed with rivers or not) or Nuclear.

Things I take issue with: 1. How do you lump all of California under one value given there are 4 large utilities that have their own value but include LADWP and the balancing authority? 2. Since the visualization is by state but not the size of impact it also makes smaller inefficient areas look like they have as large an impact.

I do appreciate the flow of electricity across states though.

In the end I'm not sure the value prop - is this for policy planners? It's not high quality enough to be for energy trading or asset deployment. I had thought of doing something like this mapping out a couple years ago but couldn't figure out what the exercise was going to do in the end outside of some interesting visualization and then fairly complicated analysis of different energy systems.

Either way good work for the people who've got the project to this point.

kergonath3• 4 years ago

Things I take issue with: 1. How do you lump all of California under one value given there are 4 large utilities that have their own value but include LADWP and the balancing authority?

The issue is data acquisition. In regions where they have more granular input, you have a better resolution.

In the end I'm not sure the value prop - is this for policy planners?

It’s for outreach and communication with the general public. It’s trivial to put a map on Facebook to show how well/poorly a given place is doing. It’s also interesting to have a quick look depending on the conditions, like the wind turbines output during a storm, or during a heat wave, or to see just how efficient PV production is under various conditions.

powerbroker• 4 years ago

The trick with the electric grid, is that you basically have network of leaky plumbing, with pipes of various sizes, with heterogenous congestions throughout. For example, the EIA estimates that the U.S. grids loose some 5% of energy in line losses between the generator(s) and the consumers.

On top of that, that in states with high renewables, like Texas, you occasionally have grid congestion that causes wind turbines to curtail, or shut down, in order to balance the generation with the consumer's loads.

A rough picture, seemingly updated every 5-15 minutes, of the broader 'nodes' in the U.S. grids can be seen at https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...

Drill down deep enough into the data, and you will unearth the recent tracking of renewables in each of those nodes.

StillBored• 4 years ago

The green areas on this map all have one thing in common, they are backed either by hydro or nukes.

The large wind providers (notice Texas, central Australia, etc ) are really burning natural gas/etc because the wind is rarely meeting even 50% of its nameplate capacity.

masklinn4• 4 years ago

wind is rarely meeting even 50% of its nameplate capacity.

That’s hardly news though. In the US, the capacity factor of wind averages around 35%. The world over, it can range from 15% (though obviously you’d hope for some analysis before building to avoid locations where it’s that low) to 60% or so (according to the wiki, for Eolo in Nicaragua).

Solar is both better and worse: more regular, but less evenly distributed, for PV solar the CF ranges from 20% in the south (e.g. AZ) to 10 when you reach the canadian border.

pstuart• 4 years ago

We should be subsidizing home solar installations at 0 percent interest that can power the air conditioning. Everybody wins - less load on the system, people stay cool affordably, and more jobs selling, installing, and maintaining these systems.

bernardv• 4 years ago

Love the color-blind mode on this map. Well done.

Electricity map: Mapping the climate impact of electricity

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