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Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

I would be curious to look at the raw numbers and how they were computed. France has been a net importer of electricity for a few years now, since we decided to shut down a few nuclear facilities. As a result we're importing a mix of electricity produced mainly by surrounding countries, like germany, where electricity is emitting far more CO2 than our local one (probably by a factor of 100x).

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3-7x is a bit more realistic than x100, which would make basically zero difference to the comparison even if only imported electricity was used.

So pro-nuclear that I prefer airplanes to electric trains is a new and exciting angle on the climate discussion though.

My recent observations with regard to green parties suggestion is that they're pointing at the wrong direction pretty much all the time.

two recent case in point : they've been closing nuclear power plant in france and germany non stop, and as a consequence we're burning even more russian gaz than before, and since the war the horribly polluting gaz imported from the US.

Second example : they've passed a law in france to force home owner to better insulate their housing, but the implementation details are so messed up that all they've managed to do is make renting even more impossible for students.

So now, every time i see a law beeing passed under pressure of green parties, i look at where the horrible side effect is going to be this time.

France has been closing nuclear power plants non-stop??? Some reactors are EOL, the same is true for the USA and other countries since the nuclear power plant building boom was on the 70s and early 80s. However, France is still very pro nuclear power.

france used to be pro nuclear, but we've started the denuclearization process almost 15 years ago ( by not building new ones, not reopening restaured ones, and selling pieces of our companies that knew how to do it).

It's now at a point where we're trying to catch up with the latest tech in nuclear powerplant building coming from the US ( and probably china), with close-to-retirement engineers while they're still working, instead of being at the forefront of that technology.

No, especially in the past few weeks since Germany went ahead and closed its last nuclear power, France's electricity has really been 10-30x less carbon intensive most of the time.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

Your source, over your selected timescale, also shows both production and consumption, and over that time period France's electricity imports took it from 29mg to 30mg which means the high speed trains retain their two order of magnitude climate advantage over plane travel.

Oh absolutely, I agree with that. Mass electrification of travel + low carbon production is a winning combination (and it's going to be a headache for countries like Germany)

If you are curios here is the real time French electricity data platform: https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix

and the German one: www.smard.de

Not sure about yearly data but France seems to export lots of electricity right now. As you say, France has very low co2 emission per kwh compared to Germany, that is due to the atomic electricity production.

The ban is relative to "how long does it take to go there by train", I agree it's weird to compute that. Especially thinking about the potential of SNCF and AirFrance maybe considering their impact respectively. It's a good concern and we need to watch that.

Not really : France is exporting electricity most of the time, with a carbon intensity that's indeed typically 10-30x lower than Germany's See https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

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