Just 5% of world’s power plants account for almost 75% of carbon emissions | Hacker News Reader

Just 5% of world’s power plants account for almost 75% of carbon emissions

nature.com

18 pointsDocFeind11 comments

> were responsible for 73% of global emissions from *electricity generation*

Misleading headline.

Be fair, the headline says "almost"

The headline, to me, implies 75% of all carbon emissions. From a quick search, electricity generation is only 25% of global carbon emissions.

Obviously, this is still a significant source and seems like a low hanging fruit we should absolutely address, I just would like to see more.. precision of language when talking about it

Works out to ~19%. Definitely not 75%, definitely still a big chunk.

Agreed

Is there a map of where all these plants are located? Article points out one in Germany. Is Germany the only super polluter? Which country is most responsible?

China.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emi...

Wow. I had no idea China accounted for that much of the global percentage for CO2 emissions. If I'm looking at this right, their share is more than the US plus largest EU countries combined?

Yes, that's about right. This is different from what you've heard before probably because you've heard more about per-capita emissions.

https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe... is nice; play around a bit if you want. The USA gets a lot of blame because it's a big polluter with very high per-capita emissions, but China pollutes more in total. Australia's a bit like a more extreme USA, and various small countries are weird outliers.

So what? It is the factory to which we outsourced almost all of our production. Do you think the stuff you shop to waste after use grows on trees?

I was hoping for a dot map with a dot for each of the power plants in question. Did the article really only need to include a single example? Where is their list of power generating facilities?

Seems like there's a chart here,

https://www.colorado.edu/rasei/2021/02/17/super-polluters-do...

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