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Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

But when you're using solar to generate the energy, what's the equivalent of burning? I'd argue that it's just "whatever the panel produces". So, if you have some panels producing 1 KWh, and you need that KWh for your car, the relevant efficiency here is transport efficiency.

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> equivalent of burning

Probably storing.

Give it 50 years and we're going to be facing some other unexpected global disaster from unchecked battery proliferation.

Hopefully it's less dire than climate change though.

Since we currently aren't covering the existing demand for electricity with reneweables, the "marginal kwh" of electrifying some car comes from fossil fuels, not solar.

Those are two separate things - electrifying some transportation need gets us X benefit, and converting some electric generation from fossil fuels to solar gets Y benefit, but the former doesn't automagically create the latter.

1) There is no reason to attribute all of the carbon intensity to the last use to be added. It is far more accurate to estimate the carbon intensity of something by the blended production mix at its time of use. Fossil fuel plants are often kept online for factors beyond the need for additional capacity at a certain time.

2) You are assuming there is no curtailment or rejection of wind, solar, and nuclear, which is categorically false. This is why there are time-of-day rates that vary so drastically. There are large amounts of renewable/low-carbon energy that would otherwise be wasted in pretty much every geography.

You could apply that to everything.

If I turn on (or keep on) my light when usage isn't completely covered by renewables, should that be calculated as using all fossil fuels?

The logical extension is that everyone should calculate the carbon intensity as a binary choice which is obviously wrong.

The only reasonable way to go is to look at the actual carbon intensity average.

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