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Carbon Intensity is Falling in Industrial, Electric Power Sectors (arstechnica.com)
Over the last seven years, the electrical power sector has gone from being one of the most carbon-emitting sectors of the American economy per unit of fuel consumed to one of the least carbon-emitting sectors. From a report on ArsTechnica: That's according to new data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Despite the good news, the EIA's numbers show that, since 1975, the carbon emissions of the US transportation sector per unit of fuel used has hardly changed at all. The EIA measured relative emissions across the US economy as "carbon intensity -- an average of the amount of carbon any sector gives off as it consumes different kinds of fuel. The measurements were applied to five sectors of the US economy: transportation, commercial, residential, electric, and industrial.
"Per unit of fuel used"
What exactly is the expected result when the fuel is the same and the efficiency of the heat engine is already at or near the practical limit? As long as the fuel used is gasoline or diesel, there will be a practical limit to how far this can go. If they had picked 1930 as their arbitrary date they would get different results. If we all switched our cars to CNG, we'd have much higher "intensity", if we used coal it would be lower. Not sure what the point is.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The only reason why it's falling is because they count renewables as "fuel". So of course per unit of "fuel" consumed (and remember, solar radiation count as "fuel"), they emit less CO2. It doesn't mean the process of CO2 emitting thermal power plants actually improved.
No, since the purpose wasn't carbon reduction it was cost; carbon was a side effect.
With the next couple of years, we will see the transportation sector drop in emissions, a great deal.
Tesla is forcing 1 major car maker to switch (BMW), and the others will be forced to follow suit in about 2-3 years. However, by 2020, about 1/3 to 1/2 of new cars in America will likely be EVs. In addition, car sales in America will have dropped a great deal simply because nobody paying above $25K will want to buy an ICE, while those below 25K, will simply buy the one time expensive now used ICE cars that will be going for less than 10K for a 2-4 year old car.
Add to that the fact that Burlington Northern is in the process of switching ALL of their engines to nat gas, which they will have done in less than 5 years, will drop 5-6% of America's diesel use. Yup. Diesel useage is already going down, and will go down by about 1% a year. Then as the electric semis jump in from Tesla, that will by 2024, bring diesel down 1-5% a year, depending on how good tesla does.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
first off, that is total BS.
Trump had to have been told that even if coal came back (it will not), that it will NOT bring back jobs. As such, trump and the GOP KNEW they were lying about jobs.
And I will guess that you know that he was lying as well. After all, coal's death has NOT been due to regulations like you neo-con/tea-baggers claim, but it is one of economics. Nat gas has been cheaper than coal since 2010. MUCH CHEAPER. And it is expected to remain that way, unless trump allows massive exports of LNG, which appears to be the case. Still, wind is much cheaper than coal, and solar is touching below coal. Wind will be cheaper than nat gas within 2 years, while solar will be much cheaper than coal within 2 years.
All of this could be seen back in the election. So, no, it was NOT about jobs. It was simply about massive numbers of lies from the GOP.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...when you consider that wind/solar are getting something like 400x the subsidies per megawatt hour that coal, oil, and ng are receiving.
-Styopa
Carbon intensity is not efficiency, which is what you seem to be interested in.
Carbon intensity is, instead, a measure of where the energy comes from: not how efficiently it is used; but, how much of the energy comes from oxidizing carbon instead of from some other source.
If you divide carbon intensity (carbon per million BTUs of energy) by the efficiency (amount of produce product per million BTUs of energy) you would get a measure of the carbon emitted per unit of product. So the carbon intensity is one factor in the greenhouse emissions, but not the only factor. It's the factor that accounts for the fuel type.
... and, no, don't blame me for the silly units of kilograms of carbon per million BTUs; I didn't invent them.
I feel like we are sliding into semantics and grammar. Let's shift direction a bit - being honest, did you learn anything from the article?
Yes, I learned that several segments of energy use have been slowly shifting from higher carbon-intensive fuels to lower carbon-intensive fuels, but that transportation has not.
Actually, it isn't a retarded measure, you just need to understand what it is sayig. Basically it says that our advances in internal combustion technology have made a negligible difference in the amount of carbon emitted while burning petroleum products, or in application terms, technology woun't make petroleum based ICEs much cleaner.
No it does not say that AT ALL.
What it says is that internal combustion engines don't sequester the carbon from the fuel. Essentially every bit of it is burned to carbon dioxide and emitted into the atmosphere.
The transportation sector has made LOTS of progress with respect to emitting less carbon per passenger mile or ton-mile of cargo (even though "carbon" is not the target of most of the improvements). Engines are more efficient and mileage is greater. Some of the fleet is being switched over to electricity, which doesn't emit any carbon from fuel - at least at the vehicle. More of it is running lower-carbon-per-unit-energy fuel, such as natural gas.
But if you insist on measuring carbon emission against unit-of-fuel-consumed, for any given fuel type you will NEVER see ANY CHANGE. A given amount of a given type of fuel will contain a given amount of carbon, and it will all be emitted as the fuel is used.
Nyah!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
and the reason people have bought bigger vehicles (and thus not helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions) as fuel efficiency increased is because governments did not have the mental acuity and testicular fortitude to increase gas taxes as fuel efficiency increased, which would have led to people having the same cost as before for operating a vehicle of the same size as before, so they would have stuck with the smaller vehicles they were happy enough with before (and are still happy with in most other countries in the world.)
If you want to use efficiency gains for environmental benefit, you must increase the cost per unit of the input fuel at a rate equal to the efficiency gains. That reduces the consumption of the fuel in the economy and the emissions, and has no negative impact on utility. It's so logical that it has no chance in hell of ever being adopted as government policy.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Coal/Oil? All you need is a spark.
Solar/Wind? You have to consume energy and materials before you even get to having a chance at energy production.
Coal and oil don't jump out the ground and transport, refine and store themselves.
I gallon of gasoline takes 4 to 6 Kwh of energy to produce.
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