[cataflam]

> Paris has a pollution problem. Instead of the smoke from Gauloise cigarettes and the aroma of freshly baked bread, the air is packed with smog, an issue that got so bad one day last month, the city forcibly halved traffic by allowing only cars with odd-number plates to drive.

Of course this could have nothing do to with Germany phasing out its nuclear power plants and having to reopen coal power plants instead.

They massively increased the share of solar and wind in their energy production, but still need more traditional methods of power generation to cover when those 2 are not providing energy, hence more coal [1].

And coal is incredibly polluting. See [2] for example for CO2 emissions :

> In July 2014, a group of NGOs published a study on the EU’s 30 worst CO2-emitting thermal power plants. German power stations featured six times among the 10 dirtiest.

CO2 is not the problem for city pollution of course, it's the rest of the small particulate matter that is.

[1] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germanys-energy...

[2] http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/01/24/coal-casts-cloud-over-g...

[legulere]

What you're writing doesn't make much sense. You say CO2 is not the problem but yet link to stuff about it. Coal plants in Germany are really clean though and CO2 is the only real problem of it. NO2 and PM gets filtered out.

Usage of coal stayed roughly the same in the last 10 years [1]. If you directly compare it with the amount 10 years ago it's a slight decrease.

The real issue for pollution lies in different sectors. For instance around half of the PM pollution in Germany is caused by people using wood for heating. Cars are one of the biggest polluters in cities.

[1] https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm click on year: all, annual, all sources

[cataflam]

Thanks for the link, I was misinformed.

[simias]

That seems very far fetched to me. Why would the pollution created by german coal power plants accumulate in and around Paris?

In my experience the big pollution episodes in Paris are when there's no wind to wash the smog away. It's definitely localized over the city (not that the air is not polluted elsewhere, it's just generally much worse in Paris).

[cataflam]

It travels all over Europe depending on the wind. There is just extra pollution around Paris (mostly because of traffic) so the two of them combined can make it exceed noticeable thresholds.

Another example of a recent particulate matter concentration map : http://www2.prevair.org/sites/prevair.org/files/styles/scald...

[sveme]

Sorry for being harsh, but suggesting that German coal power plants are responsible for Paris smog is just bollocks, Paris being around 300km from the French-German border. There are ample reasons to criticise the "Energiewende", but Paris smog is definitely not one of them.

[jellicle]

Toronto, Ontario is 400km from Ohio, and gets smog from Ohio's coal plants all the time. The studies suggest about half of Toronto's air pollution is due to U.S. power plants.

I have no idea what the reality is of smog in Europe, but your off-hand dismissal of this based on the perceived distance between the source and recipient of the pollution is entirely wrong.

[ptaipale]

However, the prevailing wind in Europe is from southwest. Paris doesn't get smog from the Ruhr, mostly it is vice versa.

Of course, occasionally the wind is the other way round, but overall, any bad air in Paris is due to Paris.

[cataflam]

As jellicle already mentioned, those distances are quite small for pollution to travel.

Have a look at this recent map of particulate matter concentration during a recent pollution peak for example : https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAr9obuWkAAQgjq.jpg:large