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Comment by de_Selby | Hacker News Reader

I did a summer internship project with our national electricity supplier here in Ireland when I was a student - the aim was to asses he environmental impact of their fleet of vehicles.

The management weren't terribly happy with the presentation I gave at the end of the summer where using a few simple models I showed that even their smallest power station was polluting on a scale that was orders of magnitude greater than the impact of their entire fleet.

We have mostly coal and peat powered plants here. Nuclear is completely off the table for political reasons, but there is a huge untapped wind energy resource.

This really is great news for Costa Rica. I think we should also be exploring Nuclear energy more to bridge the gap in most other countries though.

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We're getting offtopic, but peat powered plants? In this day and age? What the hell? I do hope that is not being sold as sustainable or renewable?

But yeah, automobile emissions in general are relatively limited in comparison to other sources.

Peat accounts for close to 10% of the energy sources in Ireland. It's mostly coal and gas, but the damage done to the environment by mining peat is downplayed a lot here.

People don't realise we're destroying a natural resource.

Thats... madness. The Icelanders destroyed their soil in a single generation. You have perhaps the most fertile island at your latitude. I wish I thought you were pranking us.

ps Flann O'Brien fan, or Robert Anton Wilson fan?

Flann O'Brien! The 3rd Policeman specifically :)

Should I check Robert Anton Wilson out?

Yes! He was a Joyce scholar, among many other things. One, perhaps several of his books and plays reference Flann O'Brien's work, which is how I came to know about it.

Don't be mistaken. In many developing nations there is a thirst for power. Renewables aren't up to it when it comes to the scale and speed required (even though the countries involved are on the equator).

I don't advocate for the use of coal in generating power but this is what seems to be going on.

The largest (MW/GW wise) expansion projects in terms of power generation are all coal projects as far as I'm aware on the entire African continent.

Typically each unit/turbine generates close to 1 GW. It's hard to find something with the equivalent cost (including the use of a small amount of space) with renewable energy.

Even the best geothermal well in Kenya, on the rift valley geothermal reservoir, only gives out near 5 MW.

The renewable scaling issue is something that needs to be faced. Costa Rica truly has achieved a milestone much larger than it sounds.

It is possible I'm not saying its not. The three gorges dam hydroelectric plant is able to produce near 22 GW, also the largest power plant in the world (including non renewable energy)

> Renewables aren't up to it when it comes to the scale and speed required (even though the countries involved are on the equator).

Surely you must be joking. Nuclear plants take years, if not a decade to build. Coal must be trucked in. Wind and solar deployment speed is limited to only your logistical supply chain to get the parts to the generation site and your on-site installation talent.

If the first world wanted to help the third world, they'd give them renewable generation equipment free or at cost.

http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2015/highlights5...

"China, the country that is building more nuclear reactors than any other, continued to get more electricity from the wind than from nuclear power plants in 2014. This came despite below-average wind speeds for the year. The electricity generated by China’s wind farms in 2014—16 percent more than the year before—could power more than 110 million Chinese homes."

"China added a world record 23 gigawatts of new wind power capacity in 2014, for a cumulative installed capacity of nearly 115 gigawatts (1 gigawatt = 1,000 megawatts). Some 84 percent of this total—or 96 gigawatts—is connected to the grid, sending carbon-free electricity to consumers."

What kind of land do we need to make wind turbines generate more power then a nuclear plant?

Are we counting off-shore turbines that consume no usable land? And are we taking into account that we still don't dispose of nuclear waste in an acceptable way and won't ever agree to recycle it?

Good point, but does sea based cost the same and is available to everyone? What's the average case?

I am under no illusions about the need for power :-). In fact, I agree with just about everything in your post.

However, I would add: Coal plants use only a relatively small local surface area, but when you add the size of the coal mines, the infrastructure required to ship those tons of coal, the space required to store the tons coal ash produced each day (often contaminated with heavy metals; it's earth we're burning after all).... that becomes a very different discussion.

I'm unsure why people are so keen on geothermal, though. I thought it was relatively well-known that geothermal generates power in the order of milli-watts-per-square-meter, thus much smaller than solar (hundreds of watts per square meter), or even hydroelectric.

Did you factor in the energy that goes into producing vehicles, building & maintaining roads, etc? Or did you just count tail pipe emissions? What all factors did you consider when assessing the impact of the fleet?

Like I say, it was a simple model developed as part of a summer intern project. It was also quite a few years ago now, so I don't remember many details.

Regardless, I don't think energy from vehicle/road production is a valid consideration for a company assessing the environmental impact of their fleet.

These days, ESB's generation is mostly gas, with wind being the second-largest. Coal is being phased out, and peat generally not expanded.

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