California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by wang_li on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:34PM (#17879407)

Compared to Europe the US is doing better on carbon reduction seeing as the US went down and Europe went up. I'm not disagreeing that everyone should try to improve and the items you mentioned can be looked at, but comparing to Europe the US looks pretty good.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by acdha on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:44PM (#17879528)

Do you have a cite for that? It's common in lobbying circles but they studiously avoid mentioning that the US was starting from a substantially higher baseline so EU consumption was still considerably lower. See for example the chart through 2014 here:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/01/climate/us-bi...

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by strictnein on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:15PM (#17879818)

One source:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-carbon-iea/global-...

> "Most major economies saw an increase in carbon emissions, though Britain, the United States, Mexico and Japan experienced declines.

The biggest drop came from the United States, where they were down 0.5 percent"

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by acdha on Thursday August 30, 2018 @09:40PM (#17882297)

That’s exactly the dynamic I was talking about: the US percentage dropped more but that only made us less far behind the EU than we used to be. That’s not how almost anyone is going to interpret a statement that the US is doing better than the EU.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by strictnein on Thursday August 30, 2018 @10:08PM (#17882375)

The US is currently doing a better job cutting emissions than the EU is. You're purposefully misreading the original statement which is very clear:

> "Compared to Europe the US is doing better on carbon reduction seeing as the US went down and Europe went up. "

The US is doing a better job on _carbon reduction_.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by acdha on Friday August 31, 2018 @09:13AM (#17885256)

Again, you have to look at the actual data to avoid being mislead by that statement since it doesn’t have any context to let you know that the US is still significantly further behind. A single year which is within the range of normal year to year variation doesn’t invalidate a long-term trend.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by llukas on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:38PM (#17879460)

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...

Looks pretty good on what metric?

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by wang_li on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:35PM (#17879996)

2017. The charts you linked to end in 2014. In 2017 the US reduced carbon emissions[1]. The EU increased their emissions[2].

1 - https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/fossil-fuels/gas-... 2 - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-carbon-climatechange/e...

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by gowld on Thursday August 30, 2018 @04:07PM (#17880262)

The EU emits 50% as much per capita. A 0.5% reduction for the US isn't better than the EU in absolute terms.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by adventured on Thursday August 30, 2018 @10:59PM (#17882578)

Total output is what really matters, not just the per capita. The earth has a carrying limit for total emissions.

The EU has nearly 200 million more people than the US, roughly 60% more, squeezed into an area less than half the size of the US. Whose fault is that population density? The total EU emissions are ~80% as high as the US in ~45% of the land area (a drastically worse rate of emissions per km2), due to that population density. How do you think that emissions concentration impacts the local environment? Population matters, it's why we wouldn't have to care much if Iceland had 2x the per capita emission output of the US.

If your nation has three billion people - ie vast over-population - you shouldn't have the same per capita emissions considerations or concerns as a nation with three million. I understand that sounds unfair. The earth sets the real limitations and it doesn't care about perceived fairness.

If a country like Nigeria or Indonesia somehow rapidly expanded to five billion people, would it be acceptable for them to have the same per capita emission output of the EU? Obviously not. It'd be an environmental disaster for the planet due to the overall output. Population is the other critical factor in emissions (eg in China's case their emissions would be catastrophic at US per capita levels with 1.4b people in that small of an area).

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by llukas on Friday August 31, 2018 @01:22AM (#17883153)

Only means to decrease total CO2 output is increasing efficiency per capita CO2 output captures this very well. Population will not shrink anytime soon and moving people around at scale is not feasible.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by wang_li on Thursday August 30, 2018 @07:22PM (#17881694)

So? Is 6.8 tons per person carbon neutral? No? Then Europe needs to be cutting, not increasing, their emissions.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by tomnipotent on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:13PM (#17879808)

Misleading chart. It's showing the average across the EU and not the total.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by garmaine on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:18PM (#17879847)

Why should we care about the total? EU and US are different sizes to begin with. Per capita seems to be appropriate here.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by tomnipotent on Thursday August 30, 2018 @04:35PM (#17880501)

Then compare EU against US states individually - I'd wager the US result will drop significantly when you average the per capita results by state.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by garmaine on Thursday August 30, 2018 @06:41PM (#17881440)

That is not how averages work.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by yongjik on Thursday August 30, 2018 @06:47PM (#17881478)

Besides, doing that will most certainly inflate the number, considering US has many small rural states with much worse emission (per capita) than large, less carbon-intensive states like NY or CA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_carbon_...

(By the way, what the hell is happening in Wyoming? 111.55 tons per person?)

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by jcranmer on Thursday August 30, 2018 @08:04PM (#17881909)

Low population, but exporting coal-based power to the rest of the country? The top emissions are Wyoming, North Dakota, West Virginia, Alaska, and Louisiana, which are all big energy producers, and energy producers tend to have naturally high emissions.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by garmaine on Thursday August 30, 2018 @08:06PM (#17881915)

Lots of cows in Wyoming.

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Re:California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 by adrianN on Friday August 31, 2018 @12:22AM (#17882939)

The US is producing crazy amounts of natural gas, that probably leads to some reduction in the use of coal. I don't see much policy driving towards sustainable technology.

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