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Comment by twobitshifter | Hacker News Reader

> The CO2 calculations are based on the national average, but electric grid emissions vary considerably across the country.

Keep this in mind. If you live in VT you’re at 0. If you live in TX or FL maybe don’t bother. https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/excel/electr...

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But it's a shared market for power - this feels like arguing about which side the bucket you are drawing water from.

Yes and no. It's a shared grid (except most of Texas) but for the most part your power is still coming from local sources. The sharing is to balance out extremes, not for constantly moving power from Vermont to Georgia. That would be extremely inefficient.

That's why we can speak regionally.

It’s not a shared market, only a shared grid—through the magic of accounting, you can purchase renewable energy even if the actual electrons came from a fossil fuel plant.

Sorta but not really. If you model the grid as a superconductor, sure, but the transmission lines we use do have resistance and therefore a maximum capacity and the father from generation you are, the more losses are incurred to get the power to you. So you end up actually getting power from the generating capacity close to you and occasionally get power from further away (or your local generation sends excess further than normal).

If you have 2 buckets connected at the bottom by a small hose, and you take from the left bucket at a high enough rate, the buckets will be at an unequal level and at some point either you stop taking and the water eventually seeks its own level again or your take rate becomes that of the connecting hose. (this extension of your bucket analogy, like all water/electricity analogies, breaks in a lot of ways but it gets the idea across at least).

In addition to location mattering as others have pointed out, time also matters a lot. Charge up during the day, you might be using solar. At night, that isn't likely anymore.

Well, not for Texas.

But not really; if your local regional plant is nuclear and is consistently the contributor to the lesser sized coal plant in the next region, then the emissions for your bev are less than the coal region.

And given how often Nuclear does provide greater base load than smaller coal plants; if your most local plant is nuclear, your emissions are less.

Maine 20% fossil I believe. Or just buy some panels.

Is panel production energy intensive or toxic these days?

Energy used in manufacture is paid back early in the panel's life. This article from 2018 gives a range of 1-4 years, things will have only improved since then. Most panels come with a warranty of 20 years at 90% of original output, so they come out way ahead.

Its disappointing to see this myth repeated over and over again, you should examine the political motivations of the sources that are telling you how dirty panels are. There are externalities to their manufacture but any who tries to convince you they are worse than fossil fuels is being deceptive.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/03/solar-power-can-pay-eas...

OP is talking about CO2 emissions. 20% of Maines electricity generation is fossil but the vast majority of that is natural gas, which they get from New Brunswick (as does NH).

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