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Comment by jerkstate | Hacker News Reader

If she's blaming climate change, doesn't that make PG&E culpable? IIRC the majority of their power is generated from natural gas (at least since they shut down San Ohnofre and planned closure of Diablo Canyon), not to mention what the "G" stands for.

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Privatize the profits, socialize the losses...?

Works for banks alright.

If you do the math, I'd guess PG&E's share of the blame is maybe a millionth of a percent.

let's see. PG&E sells 970 billion cubic feet of gas per year [1] and the most recent study I could find pegs the CO2 output of electrical generation at 456 lbs per MWh in 2007 [2] (which is pretty low), and generated or bought about 80 terawatt-hours in 2014 [3]

456 lbs * 80,000,000 megawatt-hours = 36.5 billion lbs CO2 or 1.65 million metric tons from electrical generation/purchased generated power.

Natural gas releases 117 lbs of CO2 per thousand cubic feet [5] so 970 million * 117 lbs = 5.148 million metric tons.

California as a whole emits 359 million metric tons of CO2 per year [4] and PG&E generates 27% of the power in California, 27% of 359 million is 97 million metric tons. PG&E sells products which directly contribute 6.798 million metric tons, or about 7% of what I would consider "their share"

It's honestly lower than I was expecting but still significant.

[1] https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/how-the-system-works/natura...

[2] http://www.pgecorp.com/corp_responsibility/reports/2007/envi...

[3] http://www.pgecorp.com/corp_responsibility/reports/2015/bu01...

[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_carbo...

[5] https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_mass.php

I really appreciate you doing the math.

But the cause of global warming today is the accumulated global production of CO₂ since the start of industrialism a few centuries back.

I'll be less ambitious than you and not attempt to compute the number by my definition.

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