• filoria@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Natural gas is a dirty fucking lie. Leaked methane from natural gas extraction and transportation is orders of magnitude worse for the environment than carbon dioxide in the short term (20-year to 100-year horizon).

    It’s technically better past that, but by that point we’ll all be dead or underwater anyway.

  • zhunk@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    60% is still a ton of fossil fuels. At least solar and wind are the cheapest sources of electricity, so hopefully that helps speed things up.

  • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Now if we could put in perspective the per capita CO2 emissions of USA, combined with the pollution generating guzzlers everyone likes to own, like F-350s and other mini trucks, that would tell us the real tale of environmental “wins”.

    • u_tamtam@programming.devOP
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      1 year ago

      Per Capita equivalent CO2 emissions is quite high, but measurably on the decline as a result of more efficiency (mentioned in the article)

      • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Per capita CO2 is 4x that of China, and on top of it, USA is not particularly highly responsible for reforestation in the world, unlike Asian countries. Its just something I wanted to bring up because its not meaningful to have some progress with emissions of electric grids, if the CEO country of capitalism shits out too much CO2, pollutes the world, does not care much about reforestation and has probably half the population that thinks global warming is a myth.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    But some of the trends now seem locked in for the year: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal, and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production.

    Weather can also play a role, as unusually high demand for heating in the winter months could potentially require that older fossil fuel plants be brought online.

    This is in keeping with a general trend of flat-to-declining electricity use as greater efficiency is offsetting factors like population growth and expanding electrification.

    Its output has been boosted by a new, 1.1 Gigawatt reactor that come online this year (a second at the same site, Vogtle in Georgia, is set to start commercial production at any moment).

    But that’s likely to be the end of new nuclear capacity for this decade; the challenge will be keeping existing plants open despite their age and high costs.

    The explosive growth of natural gas in the US has been a big environmental win, since it creates the least particulate pollution of all the fossil fuels, as well as the lowest carbon emissions per unit of electricity.


    The original article contains 849 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • mino@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    What I find truly amazing is that they have found a way to produce all the technology required for this system without any emissions!