What am I doing about my Carbon Footprint?

Forums › Off topic › What am I doing about my Carbon Footprint?

PhantomNVD

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#224002 28-Oct-2017 10:57

In order to keep the EV thread on topic, let’s talk here about what you do about your own ‘Carbon Footprint’

Do you choose your electric supplier based on their production mechanism?

Do you choose your transport to reduce your CO2?

What else do you do to make the difference you can?

Would you change if it was financially similar in cost? (AKA do you even care?)

PhantomNVD

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#1891756 28-Oct-2017 11:10

Here’s the current discussion from the EV thread:

MarkH67:
Aredwood:

If your peaktime demand is more than your baseload demand. Almost certainly, your peak electricity usage will be both generated by fossil fuel generation. And you will indirectly be providing income to the owners of that fossil generation.

And that is why we need more hydro!

With hydro you can open up floodgates to spin up more turbines to increase electricity output. Solar & wind lack this ability to increase output for peak load, they help with base load which is useful but hydro is best for peak load.

Hydro has minimal impact on the environment, only affecting one small area. In comparison, burning fossil fuels have a global impact by raising CO₂ levels for the entire planet.

Gas powered electricity generation is popular because it is easy to turn up the heat to increase output and it is cleaner burning than coal. But gas is still a hydrocarbon and burning it still releases CO₂ which still adds to global climate change. If we want NZ to close down the gas fired power generators then we need to build more hydro dams.

Ouranos

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#1891803 28-Oct-2017 12:19

MarkH67:

Hydro has minimal impact on the environment, only affecting one small area. In comparison, burning fossil fuels have a global impact by raising CO₂ levels for the entire planet.

A key part of reducing our carbon footprint is differentiating between myth and reality. For example, it is a myth the hydroelectric generation is "clean".

The issue is summarized well in the following (source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7046-hydroelectric-powers-dirty-secret-revealed/)

Hydroelectric dams produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, and in some cases produce more of these greenhouse gases than power plants running on fossil fuels. Carbon emissions vary from dam to dam, says Philip Fearnside from Brazil’s National Institute for Research in the Amazon in Manaus. “But we do know that there are enough emissions to worry about.”

In a study to be published in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Fearnside estimates that in 1990 the greenhouse effect of emissions from the Curuá-Una dam in Pará, Brazil, was more than three-and-a-half times what would have been produced by generating the same amount of electricity from oil.

This is because large amounts of carbon tied up in trees and other plants are released when the reservoir is initially flooded and the plants rot. Then after this first pulse of decay, plant matter settling on the reservoir’s bottom decomposes without oxygen, resulting in a build-up of dissolved methane. This is released into the atmosphere when water passes through the dam’s turbines.

nunz

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#1891804 28-Oct-2017 12:21

What is we changed to boilers / generators powered by wood pellets? Carbon neutral or possibly even carbon negative ( bury the wood ash in the ground sequesters carbon) and growing trees use more carbon than mature trees with slower growth rate.

Dingbatt

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#1891840 28-Oct-2017 13:13

Why start a new thread on this topic when there is already one?

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=48&topicid=220368

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

PhantomNVD

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#1891854 28-Oct-2017 13:40

Dingbatt: Why start a new thread on this topic when there is already one?

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=48&topicid=220368

Didn’t know about that one, sorry! I did a search for ‘carbon footprint’ rather than ‘greenhouse gas ‘

Just got peeved about the EV thread being hijacked \_0_/

Ok then maybe need to thread lock?

freitasm

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#1892027 28-Oct-2017 22:07

Please continue here.