Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by somecallitblues 3020 days ago
“That means the US CO2 emissions per kWh are significantly better than Germany, by the way." what? Where did you get that from?
2 comments

In 2016, Germany produced about 560g of CO2 per kWh of electricity: http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-e...

By my calculations [1,2,3], the US produced approximately 450g of CO2 per kWh in 2016.

And note that the difference is due almost entirely because the US still gets ~19% of its electricity from nuclear power but Germany does not (450g/(1-.19) = ~560). For all of Germany's effort in renewables at great cost, all it has done (besides helping to fund the technology, which is useful) is compensate for the retirement of nuclear in Germany.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_a_03.html

[3] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_01.html

Germany has a lot of coal in its grid. Mind you, It also uses half the electricity per capita vs the US.