Re:Britain has gone two months without burning coal to gener...
by kalenx on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @09:01PM
(#23472740)
Maybe for small hydro plants, but definitely not the major ones. Quebec uses almost only hydro all year long (with the major dams being far in the north), and houses and buildings heating is mostly electrical.
For instance, the Yukon Territory in Canada shows on electricitymap.org as 100% hydro with 24g Carbon Intensity score (and 3x that only 12 hours ago). Which is great, but a look during winter surely must be a different story. Having lived at a similar latitude, I know the water powering the hydro plants freezes up at some point during the winter months, at which time the small communities I've been in switch exclusively to diesel generators for part of the year (fuel for which is trucked in). Indeed, quick research of the power suppliers in Yukon (YEC/YECL) indicates several diesel generation facilities probably for exactly this purpose.