Rough averages are given below. Each technology has a certain range, depending on the study, and the inputs and assumptions used in those studies. The NREL analysis also includes something called harmonization, which is adjusts the numbers up or down. Units are in grams of CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced.
Wind: 10 to 20 grams / kwh
Solar PV: 40 to 70
Nuclear: 10 to 40
Natural gas: 400 to 750 grams/kwh, depending on the technology.
Natural gas combined cycle: 400 to 550
Coal: 750 to 1200
Compared to fossil fuels, wind, solar and nuclear have essentially zero operational emissions. If you include construction and fabrication, then we get the values shown above.
Other technologies such as hydro, geothermal, and biomass are shown in the link as well, if you are interested.
Many other studies and meta-studies have shown slightly different values from those given above, but the overall trend is clear. Fossil fuels produce much more CO2 and other greenhouse gases than nuclear or renewables.
Constructing a nuclear facility is not carbon free.
It is worse than that! You have to mine the Uranium, then you have to enrich it, then you have to build it into fuel rods and drive them to the plant to refuel. And the workers have to drive to the plant everyday!
All told (construction and refueling) it is about 12 gCO2 per kwh (other sources say 15 or as high as 50)
NG is about 450 and coal is about 1050.
So, not zero CO2, but rather about 3% to maybe 10% of NG and half that compared to coal.
Solar PV is about 50 gCO2/kwh
Wind is about 11.
There is also the waste management. Do you have numbers for that? It might be a hell of a stretch. I would not know where to look. Google is not a friend here.
There is also the waste management. Do you have numbers for that? It might be a hell of a stretch.
Waste management is included in the number. It is not a separate issue. “Life Cycle emissions” means all of the emissions in the total life of a power plant.
From the link, they divide nuclear plant emissions into three phases.
Upstream processes: Upstream processes occur once prior to operational processes, and include facility construction and supply of materials.
Operational processes: Operational processes result in GHGs emitted on a continual basis per unit of electricity generated. They include uranium mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel rod fabrication, transportation, facility operation and to maintenance, and reprocessing. Uranium mine rehabilitation is also included as an operational phase process because the need for mine rehabilitation is modulated by how much uranium is demanded for electricity generation.
Downstream processes: Downstream processes occur once after a facility’s operational processes cease, and include facility decommissioning; nonradioactive waste disposal/recycling; and temporary, long-term, and permanent radioactive waste storage after electricity generation and facility lifetime.
So, part of the 30 grams per kwh includes waste management. How much does it contribute? I don’t have a number, but it is going to be very low. Spent nuclear fuel does not emit greenhouse gases. Spent nuclear fuel just quietly sits there and minds its own business. I suppose there will be some fossil fuels used to transport the fuel from the plant location to its final repository site, if the government ever gets its act together on that subject. But those transportation emissions are going to be small compared to the amount of electricity the fuel produced when it was in the reactor.
So, not zero CO2, but rather about 3% to maybe 10% of NG and half that compared to coal.
In Shinyland, a food that is .5% transfat is advertised as “zero transfat”.
I still fail to understand the reasoning behind EVs being the panacea they are touted to be. All EVs do is transfer the carbon production, at great cost for creation of battery production and recycling, and charging infrastructure. It might be productive in France, where some 90% of power production is from low/no carbon sources.
Shinyland only draws 38% of power from low/no carbon sources, about the same as Russia. Where is the power going to come from to recharge so many EVs? Texas and California had power shortages again this summer. Where will the power come from? There are not much in the way of unexploited hydro sources left in the US. It still gets dark at night. The wind doesn’t always blow. Nuclear plats take decades to build, and cost a fortune.
Transportation only accounts for 27% of emissions in the US. Converting the existing power generation fleet to low/no carbon sources, by itself, would address 25% of emissions. Pushing EVs, without converting the generation fleet to no-carbon sources only transfers carbon emissions, not eliminate them.
I still fail to understand the reasoning behind EVs being the panacea they are touted to be.
Because even with a “long tailpipe,” they usually generate fewer carbon emissions than ICE equivalent cars. That said, their immediate advantages are often overstated - an EV that’s lightly driven as a second car in a state with a really dirty power grid is not going to do much today (though perhaps still better).
But the idea is that we know how to make carbon-free (or carbon-light) electricity, while we have difficulty making carbon-light liquid fuels. So we will need to both convert the rolling auto stock and the electrical grid. Progress on both is necessary, so progress on EV’s is necessary.
Ev’s are twice to three times as efficient as ice vehicles for starters. Even if all the energy they use is from dirty sources,efficiency alone is a good start.
Electricity can be sourced from cleaner options like wind and solar,which will undoubtedly increase as a percentage of our energy mix in the future.
Ev’s are much less complex to repair.
Ev batteries are reusable or recyclable as well.
Perhaps not a panacea,but still very much worth doing.
Ev’s are twice to three times as efficient as ice vehicles for starters. Even if all the energy they use is from dirty sources,efficiency alone is a good start.
+1 for all your comments.
But there are more.
Even if EVs consumed the same amount of energy they would be advantageous based on the fact that they spew pollutants in the air in dense cities, that we breath and the power plants are generally located away from cities. Some power plants do emit pollutants, but some are nuclear, hydro, solar and wind, that produce none. If coal and NG were to emit at the same rate as cars it is a net improvement besides relocating to less dense population areas.
You can run an EV in a closed garage.
Electricity is a domestic product (although wind turbines and solar may be imported), while oil, on the margins is still imported. Globally it would be a good idea to minimize OPEC and Russia oil sales. Just in case you hadn’t noticed.
Gas station underground tanks leak into water sources. This is probably less now but the MTBE additives regularly showed up in CA water years ago.
In 2020 there were 170K car fires in the US. EVs also have fires but at a much lower rate despite the big news when an EV catches fire. EVs have been known to warn the occupants to get out of a damaged car before catching fire – gas cars give a warning via explosions.
You can produce your own electricity at home or on a farm or anywhere. I’ve not seen any DIY oil refineries.
Shinyland only draws 38% of power from low/no carbon sources, about the same as Russia. Where is the power going to come from to recharge so many EVs? Texas and California had power shortages again this summer. Where will the power come from? There are not much in the way of unexploited hydro sources left in the US. It still gets dark at night. The wind doesn’t always blow. Nuclear plats take decades to build, and cost a fortune.
Transportation only accounts for 27% of emissions in the US. Converting the existing power generation fleet to low/no carbon sources, by itself, would address 25% of emissions. Pushing EVs, without converting the generation fleet to no-carbon sources only transfers carbon emissions, not eliminate them.
Mike did the math in another thread, showing that if each US household had one EV driven 15,000 miles/year, this would result in a net 6% increase in US power demand. There is plenty of unused capacity at night, and time of day metering (which many utilities already have) would encourage people to charge at times of low demand. Plus we won’t get to one EV per household fleet penetration for decades. That’s a long time to make the needed changes.
Good news is that in 2021 almost 40 GW of renewable energy generation capacity was added in North America, up about 10% from the previous year, which is up about 10% over the year before that. Non-hydro renewables are becoming a significant amount of generation (not just capacity) and those growth rates don’t have to continue very long before renewables become very significant, likely to eclipse coal in a couple years.
Shinyland only draws 38% of power from low/no carbon sources, about the same as Russia. Where is the power going to come from to recharge so many EVs? Texas and California had power shortages again this summer. Where will the power come from? There are not much in the way of unexploited hydro sources left in the US. It still gets dark at night. The wind doesn’t always blow. Nuclear plats take decades to build, and cost a fortune.
Do the math.
I’ve posted this before…If every home had one EV and drives 15K miles per year their electric bill would increase 30% (and their gas bill would drop by $2400 assuming 25 mpg and $4/gal). Residential usage is 20% of all usage, so that would be a 6% total increase in electricity. It will take a decade or two to get to that point. Most people will charge at home at night and night time usage is 30% lower than daytime peak.
The message that there won’t be enough electricity has been brought to you by the oil companies.
Sure, the electric companies have some work to do, but it is not an impossible task.
About 10 solar panels on a sunny roof produces enough power to drive 15K miles in a year.
As far as the power shortfalls, such as we had in CA last week; The issue is meeting the peak demand during hot weather. This is mostly an issue of how to allow everyone’s A/C to keep running. They did this by encouraging people to conserve and run A/C in the morning to precool houses, not run appliances or charge EVs in the evening. Some businesses get lower rates in exchange for cutting back during those few peak hours. No matter what the normal grid power demand is there will always be peak hours during peaks summer weeks like this. Since EVs have big batteries most people, given the advance notice given can generally shift their charging time earlier or later. And in the future some cars could feed back into the grid at these times.
Even if EVs consumed the same amount of energy they would be advantageous based on the fact that they spew pollutants in the air in dense cities, that we breath and the power plants are generally located away from cities. Some power plants do emit pollutants, but some are nuclear, hydro, solar and wind, that produce none. If coal and NG were to emit at the same rate as cars it is a net improvement besides relocating to less dense population areas.
Another way of phrasing this is that EVs have an advantage because there is no local pollution to clean up. It is far easier to “clean up” emissions from a single large source like a power plant.
We could even capture the CO2–the technology exists–but of course then coal would no longer be “cheap”.
Funny how the economics work out when one accounts for externalities.