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> The central finding is that a 15% increase in solar generation across the U.S. is associated with an annual reduction of 8.54 million metric tons (MMT) of CO2

• spwa4 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • colechristensen 1y ago
    The reason this is a stupid argument is that solar power is significantly cheaper than fossil fuel power almost everywhere. And not in a "calculating all of the global impacts" way, in the very direct, greedy, "I want the cheapest electricity possible" way. "Whatabout"s with storage and time of day, etc. aren't necessary, battery tech is cheap and solar production is so cheap you can do inefficient things with it (panels at non-ideal angles to get more power at off peak hours) and still come out ahead. I really doubt China is installing solar at insane rates to be nice to the world.
  • putinapologist 1y ago
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  • squigz 1y ago
    I don't think Jevon's Paradox is applicable here? This is about solar becoming more efficient. In any case, if the argument is that oil is going to be pumped regardless of how much it's actually used, can we not just save it for a rainy day, so to speak?
    • spwa4 1y ago
      No because we cannot store large amounts of oil. We can store a few weeks of oil, and that's it. That's why, for example, Putin burned it off: if he doesn't cut supply, he can't store it. But that isn't a Russian problem, that's a global problem. Losses through burnoff are typical in the industry, which is why equipment for large scale burnoff even exists: for various logistical problems. If oil can't be taken out of pumps or refineries, and it's not worth it to take production offline due to restart costs, they just burn it right there. For no useful work.
      • squigz 1y ago
        Why can't we store oil? Is it just a matter of we haven't built long-term storage yet due to not needing to, or is there something else?
        • adrianN 1y ago
          We can store oil underground for millions of years.
          • spwa4 1y ago
            ... in the sense that we can disable some pumps, yes. If one party agrees to make less money and let everyone else have more, then we can store oil underground for millions of years. In other words: this is absolutely, utterly, completely and totally impossible. What always happens is oil becomes cheaper and all of it sells.
  • adrianN 1y ago
    Solar is cheaper than oil, and oil is essentially never used for electricity.
    • gnabgib 1y ago
      Of the world's power 35% is coal (solid oil), 20% Gas/Natural Gas (gaseous oil), 3% oil (Wikipedia def'n).. 58% of our power is oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... Are you being particular about your definition of oil? Light Oil (C4-C12 aka "Gasoline"(NA) "Petrol"(EU)) is used for personal generation and backup power systems. Heavy oil (C9-C25 aka "Diesel") is regularly used for electricity, extensively used for backup power systems.
      • adrianN 1y ago
        I count three percent as negligible.
      • hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
        Redefining coal as "solid oil" and natural gas as "gaseous oil" is ludicrous. Coal, natural gas and oil are well-defined concepts that are not easily fungible in our energy infrastructure, so plopping them all together using your made-up language is silly.
        • gnabgib 1y ago
          GGP used oil to cover all fossil fuel based sources.. GP decided to focus on the word choice rather than the intent. 58% of the worlds power comes from fossil fuels.
• kumarvvr 1y ago
  US Produced about 4.8 Billion Metric Tons of CO2 in 2024 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide... ) The savings is minuscule. But important nonetheless. It just goes on to show how much more solar is required.
  • bawolff 1y ago
    Given that solar power is 4% of electricity generation, a 15% increase is like 0.5% percentage points in total. Roughly 30% of co2 is from electricity generation, the numbers all seem to make sense. If you replace 0.5% of things that emit carbon with non-carbon sources it reduces carbon emissions by 0.5%.
  • Cheezmeister 1y ago
    I mean it's five basis points, it ain't nothin. Put another way, if I could grease the right palms to shave commensurate minuscule savings off of the budget of ICE, it'd pay off my mortgage. Twentyfold. Back to greenhouse gases, I'm no climatologist, but isn't it plausible the difference could, for instance, make or break one catastrophic wildfire across the western seaboard of North America? Beware of statistic thinking in a stochastic world.
    • hawk_ 1y ago
      Fifty basis points.
  • ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    This falls for the ”fallacy” of primary energy. We need vastly less total primary energy to run a 90-95% efficient BEV compared to a 20-30% efficient ICE. That is excluding the entire very inefficient supply chain to refine and transport the fuel to the ICE.
    • ben_w 1y ago
      > We need vastly less total primary energy to run a 90-95% efficient BEV compared to a 20-30% thermally ICE. While true, that requires actually transitioning to BEVs, which in turn requires having enough batteries to transition to BEVs. Doing that in the USA is (~290M vehicles, say 60kWh each, ~= 17.4TWh) more than enough to provide the entire USA with several days worth of backup storage, even if the place somehow got a continent-wide version of a Dunkelflaute that wasn't merely "20% normal output" but "actually no output". I am hopeful this will happen, but last I checked, it was further away than the PV itself is, what with the batteries needing replacement every few thousand cycles but the PV mostly lasting 25-35 years no problem.
• aaron695 1y ago
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• jebarker 1y ago
  Seems odd to state a percentage increase in solar to obtain an absolute decrease in CO2.