[HN Gopher] NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard ___________________________________________________________________ NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard Author : firstbase Score : 113 points Date : 2022-03-11 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nyiso.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nyiso.com) | 7thaccount wrote: | Just an FYI, | | All RTO/ISOs in the US have a variety of dashboards to describe | realtime and historical information, as do the Canadian entities. | So you can see the same thing for CAISO, ERCOT, SPP, MISO, PJM, | ISO-NE...etc on their websites. | toomuchtodo wrote: | Check out ElectricityMap.org, they scrape the independent | dashboards (CAISO, NYISO, ISO-NE, ERCOT) for generation mix | data, anything else (in the US) is pulled from EIA's balancing | authority API with a 6-12 hour lag (ElectricityMap uses machine | learning to provide real time estimates based on historical | data for data delayed zones, and it is _spooky_ how accurate it | is [Chile in particular] when the data backfills and "catches | up"). | | https://app.electricitymap.org | | https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr... | | Edit: (can't reply, HN throttling) @mardifoufs | https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hydro-quebec-could-l... | | https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/maine-vote-hydro-quebec-1.6233... | | (NIMBYs in Maine sandbagging export of clean hydro to New | England ISOs) | mardifoufs wrote: | Woah Quebec seems to have the lowest (?) Carbon intensity on | the map. Hydro power is just amazing, and I'm glad we had | very forward looking PMs back in the 60-70s who pushed for | massive hydro projects even when the costs were gigantic. | There's still so much hydro potential in the province that | isn't being used though. | | Makes me wonder if it would be possible to build up our hydro | capacity specifically for export instead of just exporting | our surpluses like we do now. Maybe it won't be profitable | now, but would it be too energy inefficient to transport much | more electricity from the north of the province to further | south than New England? | ceroxylon wrote: | There is a fair amount of missing / misleading data on that | map, e.g. Brazil is the 25th largest consumer of coal[0], | but the map claims 95+% of Brazil's energy consumption is | renewable and lists their coal percentage as "?" | | [0] https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by- | count... | toomuchtodo wrote: | The data for that link looks like it ends in 2016 for | Brazil. ElectricityMap is parsing the data directly from | the grid operator. | | https://www.worldometers.info/coal/brazil-coal/#coal- | consump... | | https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49436 | ("Brazil largely relies on hydropower for electricity | generation; in 2020, hydropower supplied 66% of its | electricity demand. Wind and solar generation have grown | quickly in recent years and had a combined 11% share of | the country's electricity generation in 2020. Biomass | accounted for an 8% share. Fossil fuel-fired plants made | up another 12% of electricity generation, while nuclear | power accounted for 2%.") | liketochill wrote: | And yet everyone is critical of current mega projects that | are being built now that will benefit future generations. | | Site C in BC Muskrat falls in NL/Labrador Keeyask in | Manitoba. | | All while We benefit from paid down mega projects from | decades ago that our predecessors had the grit to fund and | build | finiteseries wrote: | There is a very nice volunteer made one for ERCOT that popped | up during the freeze last year, on datadog no less. | | https://p.datadoghq.com/sb/5c2fc00be-393be929c9c55c3b80b557d... | toomuchtodo wrote: | Much nicer than ERCOT's imho. | pfdietz wrote: | Ercot's is ok, and tells you things like solar and wind | production. They're producing nearly 20 GW from wind right | at this moment. | trinovantes wrote: | Ontario also has a dashboard https://www.ieso.ca/power-data | | I'm glad most of our energy is from non-carbon sources | cosmic_quanta wrote: | I am surprised at how much nuclear power (~50% of the total | supply) is produced in Ontario! | johnnyb9 wrote: | Nice, now I can visualize how much more I'm paying after the | shutdown of Indian Point nuclear plant in favor of expensive | fossil fuels. | thaway2839 wrote: | Will you be factoring in the cost of an accident (you can | adjust the rarity of the accident to get your expected value) | destroying the entire economic engine of the state? | | A lot of nuclear closures make no sense. Germany's | indiscriminate shutting down of all the nuclear power plants in | the country without waiting for renewable alternatives to be | online was a bad idea. | | However, specific shutdowns do make sense. A nuclear plant | situation upstream of the biggest city in the US, right by the | entire city's water supply is very high up in the list of | existing nuclear shutdowns that make sense. | johnnyb9 wrote: | Sure, like Fukushima, which is rare, and had a single death? | ceejayoz wrote: | The economic damages of a 30km exclusion zone that close to | NYC might be significant, even without deaths. | mikeyouse wrote: | Also the Japanese government is projecting a total of | somewhere between $200 billion and $600 billion to clean | up the mess left behind -- amortizing that on the $/MWh | produced by the power plant would probably lead to | _slightly_ more expensive power... | | https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the- | radi... | Wowfunhappy wrote: | Will you be factoring in the healthcare costs associated with | burning more diesel and natural gas? (Not even getting into | the externalities of climate change.) | | --- | | I thought Kurzgesagt did a pretty good job of breaking this | down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM. Basically, | no matter how you look at it, nuclear is among the safest | forms of energy we have, behind _only_ solar, wind, and | hydropower. Admittedly, deaths [?] costs, but I imagine the | numbers would be similar. | cupofpython wrote: | nuclear is also incredibly hard to build an accurate model | for because the concern tends to revolve around the risk of | human stupidity causing major issues. | | on top of that, i feel like there is a lot of hand waving | involved with the waste. if we really industrialized | nuclear fuel worldwide - we would be creating a lot of | nuclear waste. theoretically, this isnt a problem. | | what id like to see, and may do one day if i run out of | projects, is at what risk factor does nuclear equal fossil | fuels. not, look how much better it is, but "this is about | how dumb we would need to be in our handling of nuclear | plants to cause about the same damage as our current system | does" | | making it apples to apples like that would make it much | clearer.. % risk of this or that is tough to internalize | for a lot of people. but is active sabotage of 1 out of | every 10 plants necessary to be as bad as current energy? | or is just 1 plant failing enough to make nuclear worse and | we are just saying the likelihood of just 1 plant failing | is astronomically small | infogulch wrote: | The past few years have shown that our infrastructure -- | electricity, fuel, shipping, etc -- is more fragile than we | expected. We're running on very thin margins, which is | efficient!, but not very durable. | | These systems should have a larger buffer for variation than what | they run at now, and we should regularly exercise their | flexibility. A chaos monkey for infrastructure perhaps. It will | be a pain to deal with outages in normal times, but much less of | a pain than being surprised by their inflexibility in the middle | of some other crisis. | primis wrote: | Interesting that the graph of power is split between "Renewables" | and "other" which explicitly pulls nuclear out of that equation. | NY has currently about 36.5% Renewables right now in their power | mix. If they instead labeled it as "Fossil Fuels" and "Non-Fossil | Power", the "Non-Fossil" Power production would be 54.3%! | | Also, I love how constant that Nuclear line is across the | generation graph. | powerbroker wrote: | Here is the percentage of the combined wind + Solar + Nuclear + | Hydroelectric on some grids in the East & Midwest, along with | their direction of growth/decline at 5PM EST on 3/11/2022: | ERCOT 57.3 Electric Reliability Council of Texas MISO | 41.9 - Midwest Independent System Operator NYIS 50.6 | New York Independent System Operator SPP 44.4 | SouthWest Power Pool PJM 42.4 / PJM | Interconnection (PN, NJ, MD, OH, IN, DE & CHicago) | lprubin wrote: | Can anyone explain the dip in power usage between 11am and 4pm? | Why would less energy used between those hours? | kemiller wrote: | Warmest part of the day? | swarnie wrote: | For those interested the UK have a similar but much cooler | looking DB (in my opinion) | | https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ | oofbey wrote: | What units is this? $35 per what? Megawatt-hour? | mikeyouse wrote: | Yep - LBMP for NYISO is the local based marginal price in | $/MWh; | | https://www.nyiso.com/documents/20142/3625950/mpug.pdf/ | fotta wrote: | California's ISO has a similar dashboard: | https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx | reincarnate0x14 wrote: | Every major regional ISO does in North America and most of the | ones in the equivalent market organizations in Europe do as | well. The historian data this uses was made easily publishable | about 8 years or so ago and you can get quite detailed API | dumps from most of them, although usually at a time-delay to | meet their requirements for market protection. | | Worldwide OSIsoft's PI is the outsized leader in that but there | are numerous other historians with modernized REST API outputs, | etc, from Canary Labs and most SCADA systems will at least | include their own discount version built on top of Postgres or | something. The more dedicated ones use time-series databases | versus relational ones but with modern storage and processing | that isn't as big of a performance issue as it was in the 80s | and 90s. | | OATI is big in that space as well for inter-utility aggregation | and transfer, as well as some other company I'm blanking on the | name of out of Illinois that was widely used as least in WECC. | [deleted] | londons_explore wrote: | Right now, the marginal price is $36/MWh. | | Over in England, the marginal price is $268/MWh. [1] | | When the price of energy is 7x higher, businesses cannot compete. | Everything takes energy to use or make. | | Yet few economists look at the price of energy when deciding | which nations will rise and which will fall. Perhaps they should. | | [1]: https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main | clappski wrote: | Something to bare in mind when you're looking at both of those | is the price is highly dependent on a number of factors; | | - Type of generation, looking at the NY data they have a huge | hydro generation, obviously the UK grid has much less of that | | - Time of day, the Elexon graph is showing you the system price | per 30 minute settlement period. You can see that some of those | periods weren't anywhere near what you're quoting (there was | literally a period where the system price was 0PS in the last | 24h). | https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=balancing/systemsellbuypri... | makes the volatility much more obvious. | | - The weather, it plays a big part in the system price due to | price disparity of renewables (commonly wind in the UK grid) | compared to oil based and gas generation. | | - The interconnect, the UK grid has interconnectors to the EU | grid so there's some price impact from that | [deleted] | idiotsecant wrote: | You should also consider that the whole idea of a network of | large independent system operators is part of the reason why | power can be cheap in the US - you can dispatch the most | economically viable generation source over a wide area. The UK | is roughly equivalent to a mid-sized US state in terms of | energy market (roughly half the market of California, for | example). Having the UK act as it's own electrical balancing | authority and responsible for it's own power contracts is | remarkably inefficient. The prices reflect that. In a sane | world all of Europe would be under a common balancing authority | that could dispatch power economically based on the generation | and load across the entire region. The US is moving in this | direction, we've already got several very large BAs and will | eventually be under a single authority or a few very large | regional authorities. | | This is one of those many cases where the politics of the | situation and the physics of the situation go to war and the | politics wins. | londons_explore wrote: | The UK already has power interconnects with lots of Europe, | and all trading is done in a half-hourly market, so | effectively a power generator in greece is competing with a | power generator in scotland on price. Obviously as soon as | the interconnects are full to capacity, that is no longer the | case... | nicoburns wrote: | > In a sane world all of Europe would be under a common | balancing authority that could dispatch power economically | based on the generation and load across the entire region | | There are some pretty solid geographical reasons why the UK | the isn't tied into the European grid (more than by a few | interconnects). | woodruffw wrote: | I assume that the UK is like the US in providing separate | commercial electricity rates, so I'm not sure that there's a | meaningful comparison to be made directly here. | selectodude wrote: | Those are wholesale rates, literally everybody will be paying | more than that. Business will be paying less of a premium. | tialaramex wrote: | No, consumers will likely be paying the capped price. | | (A regulator on behalf of) the British government sets a | six monthly price cap, based on the actual prices from a | historical six month period, ordinarily this cap just means | that people who are too poor or too lazy to "shop around" | for a better deal pay no more than this amount for their | electricity, but because the UK uses a _lot_ of natural gas | to make electricity and European gas prices are very high | now (even though the UK has its own gas fields and doesn 't | use very much Russian gas) the cap is actually lower than | any rational supplier would offer, and so there are no | "better deals" out there, the alternatives are fixed rates | _far_ higher than the cap for long periods, essentially a | bet that prices will go _much_ higher and stay high. | | Right now the price cap is 21p per kWh (plus standing | charges) and in April it rises to 28p per kWh, it is | already anticipated that in October it will be closer to | 40p per kWh. | | Because metric units are convenient that means right now | wholesale energy prices above PS210 per MWh mean a loss | _even before expenses_ to the suppliers, and from April | until October, wholesale prices above PS280 per MWh are | likewise a loss. Peak prices of typically PS300-PS400 are | _literally bankrupting_ the suppliers. | | For small suppliers the consequence is they went bankrupt | last year, in huge numbers once these prices began to bite. | Some hadn't even been profitable with normal prices, so now | asked to eat millions of pounds per month of losses they | just folded. Their customers were handed to the other | suppliers, on these capped rates, which are of course hurt | those suppliers too. The biggest will probably survive | this, if necessary with government money (although none of | the "suppliers" for consumers actually supply any | electricity anywhere, they exist on paper to satisfy a pro- | business agenda for government, obviously if you're | confident of the principle that capitalism is a good idea | then more capitalism is a better idea right?) | | Anyway, as a result of the cap, essentially all consumers | are not paying what electricity actually costs. British | consumers are _angry_ because their bills went up maybe | 40-50%. But the wholesale prices more than doubled. They, | as you might say, ain 't seen nothing yet. | | I can afford this, lots of people cannot. | londons_explore wrote: | Which raises the question... Can I as a consumer put a | big pump in my back yard to pump water uphill (paying the | price cap), and then own a company that generates power | from the water flowing down the hill, and get paid | wholesale rates, profiting from the difference? | tqmcb wrote: | Really interesting data here. I wonder if someone could reverse | the estimate algorithm to see what impact weather has. I'm | guessing that's the largest single factor? Might be useful to | have that information readily available for those using their own | personal solar panels. | woodruffw wrote: | Tangentially related: New York is home to NYPA[1], the largest | public power utility/authority in the United States. NYPA is | entirely owned by the public, produces some of the cheapest (and | greenest) power in the country, and is funded in perpetuity by | bonds instead of taxes. | | Edit: This bond announcement[2] document claims that NYPA | provides over 25% of NY's electricity and owns over 30% of the | physical delivery infrastructure in the state. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Power_Authority | | [2]: https://www.nypa.gov/-/media/nypa/documents/document- | library... | Spooky23 wrote: | I grew up near this NYPA facility, which is a really | interesting energy storage idea: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blenheim%E2%80%93Gilboa_Hydroe... | | Basically, they built a reservoir on top of a mountain, and | pump water up there during off peak times. When NYC hits peak | demand, they let the water flow down. Essentially a giant water | battery! | nickt wrote: | There's a similar facility at Dinorwig in Wales. It's | important not only to handle the load of all the kettles | being switched on at half-time (what they refer to as "TV | pickup", an almost 3GW increase in demand), but it's also a | "black start" site. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start | klenwell wrote: | I found myself talking randomly to an Enron engineer years | ago right around the time they were imploding. He described | working on a similar project. Pump the water up in the dead | of night. Let it flow down the next day. | | Then, well, certain facts came to light and the project got | halted. At the time we were talking, he was reporting to an | empty office to search for a new job. | nsomani wrote: | Yeah it's actually very common, it's called pumped storage. | Many power pricing models will treat them identically to | batteries given they also bid into what's called the | "ancillary services market," which exists for reliability | purposes to balance the grid when supply and demand don't | perfectly match up. You can read about other types of storage | on the PJM ISO website: https://learn.pjm.com/energy- | innovations/energy-storage | boringg wrote: | Pumped storage - always interesting highly doubt it will be | realized in any real meaningful way (might be some | interesting one off projectS). We've stopped building dams | and its too difficult to site close to markets. | idiotsecant wrote: | Whether it's close to markets or not is not particularly | relevant. I am a engineer at a utility whose power mix is | primarily hydroelectric and whose customer base is | primarily _not_ at the top of a mountain in a steep canyon | river. That 's what transmission lines are for! With the | increasing role of regional ISO likes the subject of this | article those transmission networks only get more | efficient. | boringg wrote: | Proximity matters to minimize losses and lower | transmissions costs for economic viability of the plant. | | Obviously Im not talking about the population being at | the top of the mountain I'm talking about geological | formations that are viable that are close to the marke in | order for the value prop of energy storage from pumped | storage to realized | pydry wrote: | China just finished the largest one in the world. It | produces more power than a nuclear power plant. | | UK is building a huge one too. | boringg wrote: | How has hydroelectricity worked for china? Three gorges | was a total cluster. | woodruffw wrote: | Pumped storage is an incredible technology. I'm glad that | chemical battery technology is advancing, but I would love to | see more construction of this sort! | chasd00 wrote: | is there enough difference in price to actually turn a profit | doing that? | tialaramex wrote: | It depends, but in some cases certainly. | | https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main | | That top left graph is showing you the (notional) system | price for grid electricity in the UK. The x axis is | settlement periods, which are 30 minutes long, thus period | 14 on that graph ends 0700 local time, before many people | are awake, system price was PS0 per MWh. You want it? Have | it. The evening peak a few hours ago was PS327 per MWh. So | if you bought 2GWh of electricity this morning and sold | just 50% of it back this evening (accounting for losses) | you made over PS300 000 on that transaction. | | Now, those sites aren't free, I'm sure you need a dozen or | more specialist engineers who aren't paid minimum wage to | run a plant like that, and the spares are doubtless | expensive, it's not as though everybody has a spare 100MW | turbine/ pump sat around you could buy. But you can do that | most days and sometimes twice a day, so it's potentially a | nice earner. Once upon a time all the ones in the UK were | owned by the government but today they are owned by for- | profit corporations. | dahfizz wrote: | Admittedly, this is in the UK where electricity is ~10x | more expensive at peak. | dahfizz wrote: | Its not about turning a profit, but running the grid. You | have to meet demand. The options are basically to build | pumped storage to smooth out supply and demand, or build | more peaker plants to meet demand spikes. | nsomani wrote: | Yes, but it's also about turning a profit, because you | have to incentivize power producers to build pumped | storage / batteries / etc. The ISO markets are | unregulated in that respect, since the government doesn't | build or control the power plants. | tialaramex wrote: | There are a good few pumped storage sites in the world, | here's the one most convenient for me to visit (now that | COVID-19 precautions have eased) in Scotland: | | https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/ | | It isn't practical to build mountains, so you need to find | some natural mountains you don't mind cutting a big hole | into, with a pre-existing lake at the top, at the bottom, or | ideally both, and then spend a lot of money building the | storage system, plus hook it up to the grid. | | The US does have lots of spare mountains, but they aren't | exactly in the middle of cities where it would be convenient, | so the infrastructure cost is very large. | | In the UK one rationale for these sites is that they have | Black Start capability. In the event of a complete network | failure, there is no grid power, most power stations can't be | started from this situation, they need the grid first. At | suitably equipped pumped storage sites a relatively modest | amount of local electrical power (e.g. from a portable diesel | generator) is enough to get the site running with no outside | help, whereupon it can produce, for a few hours, a great deal | of electrical power for the grid, and other generators on the | grid can use that power to start themselves up safely. By the | time the reservoir is empty, lots of other generators are | back online. Black Start justified paying them money to exist | even back when they weren't regularly used. Today cheap wind | power means pumped storage is economic anyway, fill it up at | night with cheap power (sometimes at _negative_ cost) and | then generate electricity in the early evening peak with all | that water. | idiotsecant wrote: | The infrastructure cost is not nearly the burden that the | regulatory process is. Building any kind of hydroelectric | in the United States is a massive political and | bureaucratic undertaking. If you plan on building pumped | storage you better set aside a decade or two of constant | effort to get through that process. Once you have that part | done the actual building of it is comparatively simple. I | am an engineer in hydro and would absolutely love the | chance to be involved in more pumped storage projects but | they are quite rare for that reason, despite being a | perfect match for what our grid currently needs (much more | storage!) | ZeroGravitas wrote: | Pumped hydro is cool, but we already have more storage | than we need, its called "not burning gas". And until we | run out of opportunities to not burn gas, theres no real | demand for storage. Hopefully well get there soon, but | the more people say "we can't build more renewables until | we have storage", the longer that is going to take. | replygirl wrote: | europe came within weeks of consumer energy rationing | this winter because it almost ran out of natural gas. | | in the us, our natural gas infrastructure is such that if | you build a new building in new york city, you can't get | a gas hookup. | s0rce wrote: | The US already has tons of reservoirs in the mountains. I | think California does do some pumped hydro energy storage | at the moment. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms_Pumped_Storage_Plant | | https://www.sdcwa.org/projects/san-vicente-pumping- | facilitie... | Wowfunhappy wrote: | Why is power produced by wood (which I assume means _burning_ | wood) listed alongside solar in "other renewables"? | | I guess technically trees are renewable? I assume burning them | releases CO2 though... | umanwizard wrote: | Growing them captures CO2. Burning them releases that same CO2. | reincarnate0x14 wrote: | Biosphere carbon is carbon neutral. If you grow a tree, pulp | the tree, and burn the tree, the amount of overall carbon | available has not changed as the process of growing new trees | will reuse the same carbon. Ignoring external energy costs, | obvs. | | It's a little weird to think about but those wood burning | plants are mostly taking the production waste of lumber | processing and using it for fuel, similar to wood pellet grills | but much larger, and it burns surprisingly clean, relatively | speaking anyway. | | What's killing us is pulling billions of tons of carbon that | was buried deep in the earth and reinjecting that into the | atmosphere. | Swenrekcah wrote: | However, while carbon neutral from trees would have been | great in the past and hopefully will be again in the future, | _right now_ it's not our saviour because it takes decades to | rebind the carbon in a new tree and we don't have decades | anymore. | | So it's like natural gas, a marginally better thing than coal | and oil but still not great. | | Same with carbon offsets from planting trees, it might be | fine to require planting trees for every flight or something | but it really should not be used to "offset" the emissions | because it won't. | TameAntelope wrote: | That's not true though, because it's not 1:1 -- we don't | burn one tree, pause, plant a new tree, we burn millions of | trees while many more millions of other trees are | simultaneously being grown and are at various stages of | maturity, only a handful of which (relatively) will be | burned for fuel like this. | | The carbon from the tree burned can be absorbed by all the | other, currently growing, trees. | ZeroGravitas wrote: | If the sawdust and twigs was just going to be dumped to | rot, then it would give off methane, so similar to food | composting, burning that output can be GHG negative. Its | not going to be a primary source of power, because solar | and wind are so ridiculously cheap and scalable, but every | little bit helps in the short term. Once fossil fuels are | elimanted it'll make sense to do other things with them, | rather than burn them. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | Huh! I guess it depends on whether those trees will actually | end up being repopulated. I'm still not sure I'd put it in | the same class as solar energy for that reason (not arguing | against it as a power source), although perhaps solar | generates so little the distinction is meaningless? | dahfizz wrote: | Tree farming is pretty common, both for lumber and biomass | fuel. NY state has over 300,000 acres of tree farms. | https://www.nytreefarm.org/about/ | reincarnate0x14 wrote: | Solar and wind and hydro and nuclear aren't carbon neutral | though, they're zero carbon (again excluding external costs | of production, etc). With carbon-neutral the amount of | biosphere C stays constant, with carbon zero is may | potentially go back down as natural or artificial carbon | capture processes happen. | | It's not a distinction that is made in public discourse | commonly but matters if, for example, it's powering a | carbon capture system or producing methane from atmospheric | gasses. Doing that via a carbon-neutral system would be a | net negative energy relatively to carbon usage case, | whereas using a nuclear reactor or solar plant to do it | when it's overproducing relative to immediate grid load | would work out. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _With carbon-neutral the amount of biosphere C stays | constant, with carbon zero is may potentially go back | down as natural or artificial carbon capture processes | happen_ | | The net effect is the same. A country running on biofuels | and a country running on solar will have the same net | production irrespective of carbon capture. One emits and | absorbs while the other never emits. | LordDragonfang wrote: | Assuming a totally steady-state biosphere, and that zero- | carbon energy and carbon capture are mutually exclusive, | which are not a valid assumptions. Almost every first- | world country's biosphere is limited by human action, so | a country running on "zero carbon" energy can allow the | biosphere to capture carbon at effectively the same rate | as the biofuel country, and _not_ release the carbon back | into the atmosphere. | dahfizz wrote: | Those trees are farmed for burning. So the wood is renewable - | Every X unit of time, the earth renews that supply of wood. | Renewable does not mean without carbon dioxide, although this | is a carbon neutral process (CO2 taken out of the atmosphere | when the trees grow, and released back as they burn). | missedthecue wrote: | Renewable doesn't mean Co2-less, even though most renewable | energy methods do not emit Co2. | | Burning farmed wood is carbon negative, if you attach a carbon | scrubber to the flue of the power-plant. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-11 23:00 UTC)