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Comment by aurelwu | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bit confused with estonia, from all what I know - Oil is "cleaner" than lignite, why is the value so high for Estonia? just as one example showing emissons of oil vs coal: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d666/1a01ee6a54f86fad283e46...

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Estonia's oil is not normal petroleum, but surface mined oil shale. It is just as bad or worse than Alberta's tar sand in that regard.

Are there any efforts in Estonia to move to renewables from their petrol fired generation?

See https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/blob/maste...

- Olivier

I think using a 10 years old figure if the same table shows that there are reductions to be expected is not perfect.

https://envir.ee/sites/default/files/kpp_energiajulgeoleku_u...

has 1170g/kwh as value. While it might also not the "right" value it probably is closer to reality.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the page and what you did and being myself tangentially involved with the european energy market I know how hard it is to get good values for all the different countries as emissions differ on a per powerplant basis even with same fuel type and even when all the specs are identical because their load profiles are different.

You are completely right. We are trying to get some funding to start an initiative to update emission factors per country. This is important.

- Olivier

The high CO2 emission comes from the mineral content of the oil shale. Since the oil shale has to be heated to 1100C, the emissions include a significant amount of CO2 from CaCO3 → CaO + CO2.

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