Comments on: NREL Lends Legitimacy to Life-Cycle Assessment of Coal v Renewables

By: Anti-Wind Propaganda Plot Exposed by DeSmogBlog

Anti-Wind Propaganda Plot Exposed by DeSmogBlog — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:15:10 +0000

[…] wind power (or “puff power” as they suggest rebranding it) as unpopular as coal is, by funding scientific studies that: “Cause the targeted audience to change its opinion and action based on the […]

By: Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer — Wed, 09 May 2012 04:48:00 +0000

Bill, you should have done this piece! My mistake, fixing:
Here is all the supporting info for coal:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00465.x/asset/supinfo/JIEC_465_sm_suppmat.pdf?v=1&s=0cf2d763dec24aad5cbcff347c8a1b91b93034b1

You are right, the averages do in fact look more like the 1,000 grams per kWh that you see at wikipedia, not 100 grams. Have no idea how I got such a low number.

(Interesting that coal mine methane is a deal at just 63 grams per kWh – I had no idea.)

By: Bill_Woods

Bill_Woods — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:29:00 +0000

“Wind and solar generate about 5 grams to coal’s 100 grams of CO2 to generate 1 kilowatt hour of energy.”

Both these numbers seem low, but the coal figure is very low — did you mean 1000 g/kW-h?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisons_of_life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions

By: Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:03:00 +0000

You are right, that was one terrible math typo. Thank you so much for catching it Bill. In fact it is 20 times as much – solar and wind were 95 % less.

By: Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer — Tue, 08 May 2012 22:55:13 +0000

Oh, very good point. Yes, that is what I meant. Jeez!

By: Bill_Woods

Bill_Woods — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:03:00 +0000

“… burning coal generates 95% more greenhouse gases than construction projects that generate energy such as solar or wind farms.”

Coal only generates about twice as much? That’s not very impressive. Perhaps you meant wind or solar generate 95% less than coal? (I.e. coal generates 20 times more?)

The figures I recall are that fossil fuel emissions are in the 100s of grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour, while clean-energy emissions are in the 10s.