A new website backed by Al Gore tracks big polluters by name
npr.org
npr.org
Saved you a click.
Looking at Europe it is absolutely bewildering how DRAX stands out like a sore thumb. Absolutely criminal that that thing hasn't been shut down yet. Even more criminal that they get away with receiving 'green' funding.
Also we in the EU should make a particularly large effort in funding the replacement of Coal plants in Poland. Insane how much they disproportionately contribute to emissions.
I'm guessing you're referring to "Drax Power Station" in the UK that ranks #52?
Having no prior knowledge of "Drax Group" it seems to be this group:
> Drax Group PLC is a power generation business. The principal downstream enterprises are based in the UK and include Drax Power Limited, which runs a biomass and coal fueled power station, Drax power station, near Selby in North Yorkshire. The Group also runs an international biomass supply chain business.
22.10 MT from that power station doesn't seem to even come close to some of the oil and gas fields in the US. Maybe it's actually pretty green compared to what it could have been? I have no idea, so happy to be corrected.
Somewhat apples and pears comparison, Drax is burning wood pelets shipped from Canada to the UK (CO2 emissions). Oil/Gas Fields in the US emit Methane (CH4 emissions) which has 28x times more 'warming potential' than CO2 emissions.
But I agree that Oil/Gas methane leaks are a much bigger problem than what the media reports.
What's your issue with it?
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63089348
Additionally, my mostly-ignorant intuitive sense is that the wood ecosystem in US + Canada is an important maintainer of local wealth and literally sucking all the fuel out of it to burn on another continent is harmful to Canadians' well-being.
Now, there are certainly other energy costs of harvesting, processing and transport that come into play and shipping from CA to UK might tilt the balance away from green more than locally grown trees would. It is still likely much less of a greenhouse peril than burning coal.
I would much rather see those funds allocated to actual renewable sources instead of wasting time/money with wood furnaces and arguing if they are sustainable/renewable.
I doesn't indicate that at all. "Sustainable" from a business point of view and "Sustainable" from a carbon production point of view are two entirely different things.
i.e. it was always about the money...
[0] DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/aaa512
It may sound counterintuitive, but corporations like DRAX are exactly who need this funding, because without it, they would continue to not give a shit and just pay greenwashing lip service to these issues. If you give them the money specifically for that, then you are at least increasing the odds there is positive change from the places that need to change the most. (i.e the largest polluters).
Everything is about incentives. If you create this big prize of 100s of millions of dollars to receive, with the caveat that you have to show effort in going green, then you've created an incentive that wasn't there previously for the positive change you hope to see.
The reality companies like Drax should be insolvent and the staff retrained for another industry.
What I don't see is any medium long term plan to roll out Renewable storage or Nuclear supplementation.
So there is no serious EU Energy policy at the moment that allows us to get rid of hydrocarbons for energy production... in any timeline in the foreseable future.
The EU has a plan, and they stepped it up a little with RePowerEU in response to Putin's invasion giving them a bit more political leeway.
It won't please people who had their opinions on renewables mysteriously frozen 15 years ago, but for most people it's not bad. World leading in fact, but in a world that's generally not doing very well.
..despite opening this on my desktop. I guess my browser window is taller than it is wide, but that doesn't make it a mobile browser.
https://rmx.news/poland/german-minister-threatens-to-use-leg...
AI and satelites to generate independant GHG monitoring systems, so you can check on countries you distrust or who don't release any data.
The big reveal seems to be oil and gas production underestimating their contribution, which should have interesting repurcussions.
I submitted the Press Release direct from the website with the data which has more on their methodology here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33587747
It made sense to me, I think you read the headline like the abbreviation "AI" and not like name "AL" maybe?
Companies: Works great in theory[1], not so well in practice[2]. Turns out most people only pay lip service to climate change/environment, and scatter at the prospect of paying out of pocket for it.
[1] https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yc...
[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_E...
No it's not. They set a bad example. We can clearly see they put their own pride before environmental conservation.
How can you expect common people to make sacrifices that the elites are not making?
It's only really the US that lags on putting a price on emissions. Mostly because their legislation mechanisms are in the pocket of big oil.
Source? It took me a few minutes to find what the piece of legislation was called (Climate Commitment Act), but it's surprisingly hard to find what the bill actually does. The first result I found was a website from the state of washington[1], which only contains vague statements like "A market-based solution" and "Cleaner air for overburdened communities", without actual concrete measures. The second result from washington state university[2] isn't much better. It seems like the bill institutes some sort of cap and trade system with details to be hammered out later, which isn't the same as a straight carbon tax (as proposed in the ballot measure) and the financial impact is much less clear. I suspect the latter is why it was passed at all.
[1] https://ecology.wa.gov/Air-Climate/Climate-Commitment-Act
[2] https://csanr.wsu.edu/the-climate-commitment-act-is-coming/
Each specific location has carve outs and exemptions and phase-ins etc. but basically, farmers will be able to earn roughly $40 dollars per ton of emissions avoided, and other large industries will be paying $40 per ton of emissions and that figure will change as they measure progress to meet their commitments to reduce emmisions by 95%.
It might also drop to $30 if they link up their market with California and Quebec.
For comparison, the ballot measure intended to:
> enact a carbon emissions fee of $15 per metric ton of carbon beginning on January 1, 2020;
> increase the fee by $2 annually until the state's greenhouse gas reduction goals are met;
and
> use the revenue from the fee to fund various programs and projects related to the environment.
Elites fly a lot. Own multiple homes. Multiple cars. Etc. I'm not so sure the delta is that wide.
I mean, all that electricity and raw materials mined for those 15 billion computing devices running all the shite social media code that SV SWEs have foisted upon the world doesn’t have any impact at all…it’s just that poor bastard in his F150 and his damned sandwich.
Our "broken culture" isn't innate in us, it was designed.
The market would adapt quite quickly.
https://mde.maryland.gov/programs/air/mobilesources/pages/st...
No surprises, it's the "states you'd actually want to live in" overrepresented as per usual.
Make N% approximately 10%.
You've then got a pretty good start on "harmful".
The top 50 emitters make up about 4% of the total, which is a lot, but perhaps not as much as you might think. They largely seem to consist of oil and gas fields.
I would've expected the large cities, including the smaller companies without individual mentions within to form the bulk of emissions. However, you see things like megacities like London with only 4.4Mt of co2 emissions, while there's tons of random cement factories around with 1Mt of co2 emissions. Power plants also make up less of the emissions than I expected, except for those in China, which seem less efficient than those in the west (except you DRAX and Belchatow)
It looks like if we found ways to significantly reduce emissions of: oil/gas fields, cement plants, steel plant, coal mines, airports and Chinese power plants, that'd make a huge impact.
Quick disclaimer though I have always thought that pollution is more an individual consumption problem so I am biased to that conclusion.
I only clicked on 15 or so from the areas that I have lived but they were all Coal/Biomass plants, Steel Industry. This tells me that government policy both on energy and environmental standards is a big problem. However excessive corporate influence on government policy limits our ability to implement the necessary regulations to end this.
Just to prove the point that cherry picking anecdata allows you to draw from the data whatever you want.
Why do your power plants need to generate more power? Because we need more power now since more of us have more gadgets and bullshit to power.
Why does your local bottling company use so much plastic bottles? Because we think it's a genius idea to drink so much water out of single use plastic bottles.
I could think of hundreds of examples, but yes, we drive so much more than we think. Everything is connected in a web of relationships. We blame the big corporations so much, but at the end of the day the [overwhelming majority of ] corporations are there because there are individuals giving them dollars.
The problem, however, is this is effectively a truism, and doesn't really help to solve much in the immediate term. It takes generations to shape consumer habits.
Let me rephrase:
Corporations produce more to meet demands of consumers....However corporations maximize GHG emissions in order to deliver at a lower cost and maximize their revenue.
Corporations are continually allowed to externalize production costs with environmental impact because no one is stopping them from doing so either by regulation or supply-side shortage.
The ability to deliver goods is dissociable from GHG emissions. This whole spin of making companies somehow victims of consumers is corporate bullshit.
Everyone wants cheap, fast, convenient, and quick. Everyone. I suppose if you don't think this plays into corporate behavior then we don't have much of a chance of discussion here.
Perhaps I misspoke by saying consumers, what I should say is, more broadly, people. Corporations get away with it because politicians, local or otherwise, don't hold them accountable, because the consumers (people) don't vote people in that will, or vote the people out that are not. For what reasons? Laziness? Too busy being poor (yes definitely some of this)? Indifference? Imperfect information? A little bit of this and that? God only knows. We can only presume.
Either way, you cannot escape the web of relationships we all live in on this earth is my broader point.
I know they are much harder to track, but I wonder how MCAS Miramar + NAS North Island + the LCAC's at Camp Pendleton contribute in comparison to SAN. Looking at about 150gph for H-60's, 1500gph for F-35's, and 1000gph for LCACs. I know the H-60 squadrons alone will push something north of 15k flight hours locally per year (maybe a lot more; I don't keep up on the numbers), and the LCACs push a couple thousand (again, not 100% sure). I have no idea on the F-35's.
I can say that one running joke in the Navy that is actually true is that the fighters dump more fuel making trap weight than the helo's burn. That can't be good for the ocean either.
It's about 7.7%. In other words, if we factor in our imports, our co2 emissions would be 7.7% higher than our territorial emissions.
1) Energy production from Coal/Gas (household/office Heating, AC, electricity)
2) Road transport.
[0]
IMO all this discussion about meat consumption and trinkets from China distracts from the big picture. Which is:
- We need to find a way to get rid of Coal/Gas energy production (i.e. solve the whole issue of Renewables intermitency).
- We need to solve the problem of road transport without ICEs.
The main barrier for those two is policy and funding. It has bugger all to do with consumer behaviour. Which is not to say that we shouldn't all curb individual GHG emissions.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...
[0] - https://www.volkswagen-planet-better.com/en/mission.html
[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-...
Just let me view it regardless?
Imagining the world not doing anything about climate change is a lot easier than imagining them doing too much. We can already see the former.
I don't know how to gather that data, so I don't know how to make that map. But it would display very differently a power plant that is mining for bitcoin with one that is keeping a lot of people from freezing in a region disrupted by war.
It needs to track individuals with multiple large, energy-sucking houses. Also, talking heads that travel by private jet.
As far as tracking the big polluters, that's more misdirection. Yes, it'd be nice if oil refineries were run tightly enough that they had no local emissions, but those refined products are all going into the fuel tanks of jet planes, ships, trucks, power plants and personal vehicles, from whene they will be combusted to CO2 and injected into the atmosphere, so does it really matter where the emissions take place? This is not rocket science, just basic accounting. The end result is the same, here's a model of the yearly cycle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1SgmFa0r04
If countries had really wanted to slow fossil-fueled global warming, they'd have started a 1% per year replacement program (renewables for fossil fuels) in the 1980s, and we'd be at a ~40% renewable ~60% fossil energy mix by now (at least). As it stands today, every single fossil fuel company and nation-state producer is looking to maintain current production levels for the next 30 years, if they can manage it. Enough with the hypocrisy and two-faced posturing at these 'global climate meetups', already.
Finally, this 'hope' business is ridiculous. The tipping point has come and gone, there are numerous global carbon models and observational data showing that even with 100% renewables tomorrow, warming will steadily continue due to permafrost melt and carbon outgassing from marine sediments. The last time CO2 levels were this high was in the Pliocene, ~2-5 million years ago, and that's where the climate is heading. Hence, human civilization will just have to adapt to these new conditions, which will be difficult and expensive and disruptive. However, since noticeable changes in climate (i.e. clearly distinguishable from the noise in the data) only appear on a ~10 year running average, this could be accomplished, with massive infrastructure projects.
However, making efforts to adapt to new conditions would require admitting that fossil fuels drive global warming, which would create more pressure to switch to renewables, and that would be resisted by entrenched economic interests... sort of a Catch-22 situation.
If you can avoid waste at the refineries and the fields, less fossil fuels will have to be dig up to fulfill the same demand. Of course waste is an important issue to tackle. Sure, lowering demand or restricting supply may do more, but waste is often a relatively easy thing to tackle.
For example, California alone consumes about 2 million barrels of oil per day, with a population of 40 million people. Global oil production is about 90 million barrels per day. There are 1.1 billion people across the sub-Saharan Africa belt (Nigeria to Somalia). Assuming I've done the basic math right, and accounting for African oil use at present, if Africa were to consume as much oil per capita as California does, this would require an additional ~50 million barrels per day in global oil production, a greater than 50% increase.
Taylor Swift | 8.293,54 tonnes of CO2
An interesting breakdown would be "carbon emissions controlled" - the US "controls" way more emissions than the US directly makes, as so many emissions from other countries are direct results of US spend.