Talk:Low-carbon electricity

Suggested source
There is a ranking of countries and territories by low-carbon electricity here: https://lowcarbonpower.org/ranking. It covers more countries than the chart that is currently used. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.15.214.191 (talk) 04:45, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved to Low-carbon power. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:20, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Low carbon power generation → Low carbon power – This article seems to deal with types of electric power and not with the power generation as a process. Therefore, Low carbon power seems to be more appropriate. As an alternative, Low carbon electrical power could be considered. The move is potentially controversial as in 2008 the article was moved from Low carbon power to its current title. Beagel (talk) 09:00, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Support move to Low carbon power. Johnfos (talk) 00:12, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Please can we put the missing hyphen in at least, like most books do? Dicklyon (talk) 03:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Carbon capture and storage
The section "Viability" was actually about carbon capture, so I moved it to Low-carbon power.

I only mention it because I have a work contract in the CCS industry, i.e. potential WP:COI. I don't see anything controversial, though, and I wasn't paid for this edit. --Chriswaterguy talk 05:01, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

POV tag - for nuclear slant.
This article is significantly slanted towards nuclear, and doesn't present a WP:NPOV review of the various power-sources considered low-carbon. Example of this is the What is low carbon power which doesn't actually explain what low-carbon power is, but instead tells us how nuclear power is such. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:17, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Definition provided. Case closed then?
 * Boundarylayer (talk) 15:53, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I haven't seen anything that addressed the problem yet. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 01:16, 24 March 2013 (UTC)


 * You should see it now? I also changed the heading you took issue with and corrected the heading title to describe what is actually being discussed below it.
 * As for the definition - The energy challenge and government programme names nuclear power in the future energy mix, alongside other low-carbon sources, renewables and carbon capture and storage (CCS)
 * Boundarylayer (talk) 06:11, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

World's Largest CO2 producer
China is now the largest producer of CO2 in the world, in this article it is mentioned that the United States is

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Nuclear power in Slovenia
I've removed the following passage:


 * Slovenia, a country in Eastern Europe, is leading the world in utilizing nuclear power to reverse climate change.Officials announced they will be carbon neutral by 2050 by reducing their use of fossil fuel and by utilizing sustainable options for transport, housing, and industry. Slovenia’s Infrastructure Ministry announced they will decide by 2027 whether to build a new nuclear plant in order to meet the increasing demand for power without using fossil fuels.

The first issue is that using nuclear power does not reverse climate change. Nuclear energy produces a small, but positive, amount of greenhouse gas emissions. A second issue is that the cited source does not support a claim of "leading the world". A third issue is that this article is global in scope and it's too much detail about one country. Best, Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 20:14, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Replacing oil, natural gas, and coal with green energy
When working with energy, there are two things. The original amount of energy and the amount of electricity that you get when you go to generate electricity. The original energy is often in the form of heat that you get when you burn the fuel. If you burn oil, coal, or natural gas; then you get heat. This is in units of exajoules (EJ). Then, if you push that heat into a turbine, you get approximately 65% lost and 35% gets converted to electricity. For example, with nuclear, 1 gigawatt thermal energy reactor is associated with 350 megawatts electrical energy. The world energy consumption is 583 EU/yr. this is heat energy. If you convert this to electrical, you would get 35% of that in electrical form, typically. This is typically in units of terawatt hours. You can see how many terawatt hours are produced by hoover dam or London array (e.g. in 2019 hoover dam). Then calculate how many of these one needs to replace oil, natural gas, and coal. This is important since it gives one an idea of how much energy is in oil, natural gas, and coal; worldwide. And gives one an idea of what a plan to decarbonize needs to deal with. Decarbonization efforts are small relative to problem size. That is why carbon emissions keep going up. If you build 13k hoover dams, you would generate the same energy that we get from all of oil, natural gas, and coal; in total. This is not possible, because there are not enough land opportunities like hoover dam. Yet gives one a sense of the size of the problem. Same with wind. The London array is in 20m depth water. If you look at a water depth map, one will see there are not enough locations that would support 22k of these worldwide. Wind, solar, and hydro are resource constrained. They get harder as one builds since one builds at easiest locations first. one gets pushed toward nuclear. many people, including bill gates, believes we cannot decarbonize without significant nuclear; due to resource constraints. I am a power engineer, and deal w/ this every day. Perhaps we can find some text that you consider satisfactory? Perhaps something that explains this better?

Above text written on my talk page by and copied here for others to easily join in Chidgk1 (talk) 06:03, 23 July 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree with what you are saying generally but I think the best comparisons for the electrical output of fossil fuels would be with solar, wind and nuclear - not hydro, because as you say sites are limited. And I think discussing heat energy is confusing for the reader because it is not related to wind and they may get mixed up with solar heat.

So how about you write something like:

In 2020 (or 2019 if you prefer a more typical year) fossil fuels generated X TWh of electricity

For comparison

The world's largest wind farm generated A TWh electricity

The world's largest solar farm generated B TWh electricity

The world's largest nuclear plant generated C TWh

And yes if you write about the speed and expense and difficulties of scaling up wind, solar and nuclear that sounds great Chidgk1 (talk) 06:29, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Chidgk1 (talk) 06:18, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Nuclear Power is Low Carbon Power, really?
To include nuclear power into any conversation of “green energy” is simply perverse. Furthermore the principle of “carbon banking” for virtually any industry should be criminal - as everything used in the infrastructure to create it, and dispose of, involves even more carbon energy. 2A00:23C7:CA0C:4F01:C05E:4D8C:30FD:BED4 (talk) 00:38, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Nuclear power actually has the lowest level of GHG emissions among energy sources, see https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy (this includes all the related processes such as plant construction, fuel mining and production, spent fuel management, etc.) --Ita140188 (talk) 07:14, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
 * It depends who you ask. Germany exports wind technologies, so wind is clean and atom is nein. France and US, who are biggest exporters of nuclear power stations, argue that wind is polluting and only atom is clean. China, the largest manufacturer of photovoltaics, swears by solar energy's cleanliness. Who should WP believe? The party that has bought the largest number of infomercials in English-language "reliable sources". — kashmīrī  TALK  16:01, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually.. no. There is a wide scientific consensus on these numbers. If you can find reliable sources with different numbers those can also be included Ita140188 (talk) 20:41, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Appropriate article title?
Should this article be titled "low greenhouse gas power" ?

I'm new to this article, so I don't know if sources talk about "low carbon" power or "low greenhouse gas" power.

While AFAIK the two have previously been considered to be mostly synonymous (at least WRT power plants), one recent study seems to indicate that natural gas power plants have more greenhouse gas/global-warming-potential emissions than coal plants if the leaks in the methane production and delivery are taken into account, with methane being a more potent though shorter-lived greenhouse gas.

Is this distinction being made in this article? I only see one mention of methane, but the first sentence says: "..substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions..." which would technically include methane. Or should we just change that first sentence? --- Avatar317 (talk) 21:10, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi User:Avatar317, my impression is that "carbon" in many of these terms is shorthand for all greenhouse gases. Like it is in carbon footprint, Carbon offsets and credits, carbon accounting. The first sentence seems fairly clear for me but it could still be improved, I guess. Currently it is: Low-carbon power is electricity produced with substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions over the entire lifecycle than power generation using fossil fuels. Compare also with the article Low-carbon economy. EMsmile (talk) 08:15, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Proposed merger into sustainable energy
I've now added a hatnote to this article to make the relationship with sustainable energy clearer (by the way, low-carbon energy redirects to sustainable energy, I don't know if everyone is aware. Do we agree with this?). I took the wording from a comment that was posted as part of the merger discussion (link above): "To manage the potential for duplication between these articles, it might work to have a Low carbon power article with a particular focus, and a hatnote at the top of it saying something like, "This article is about x. For y, see Sustainable energy". For instance, the hatnote might say ''"This article is about the definition of low-carbon power and policies to encourage adoption of low-carbon power. For discussion of specific energy sources, see Sustainable energy."'' Could something like that work? Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 04:48, 12 December 2020 (UTC)". Pinging the people who were involved in that earlier merger discussion: User:Chidgk1, User:Clayoquot, User:Ita140188. EMsmile (talk) 09:53, 10 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Sustainable energy and low-carbon energy are not the same things. Low carbon energy is well defined and just means that there are no (or low) carbon emissions. "Sustainable" is not really well-defined, but in the general sense, as an example, coal with CCS is low-carbon, but it may be considered not sustainable as coal is a finite resource. Ita140188 (talk) 11:12, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * By the way I fixed the redirect from low-carbon energy --Ita140188 (talk) 11:14, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I disagree with redirecting low-carbon energy to low-carbon power. "Power" in this context means electricity, which is a subset of energy. An article on low-carbon power cannot cover other forms of low-carbon energy such as (sometimes) firewood.  It's OK for a page to redirect to a broader article that covers the topic in a broader context, but it would confuse people if we redirect pages to narrower articles. I think Sustainable energy is a more appropriate redirect target because it is broader. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 19:15, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Regarding the hatnote, I suggested the wording three years ago but when I look at it now I'm finding my own words to be confusing. I don't think it's helpful. I think best way forward, given that there are good arguments against merging, is to improve this article so that it covers the topic fully. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 19:25, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you both for your replies. Some comments from my end:
 * Would it makes sense to rename the article to low-carbon electricity? I think perhaps this makes it clearer that it's a sub-article.
 * I also don't think that low-carbon energy should redirect to here, as it's broader.
 * I've proposed a simpler hatnote now; I think it's useful to mention sustainable energy already in the hatnote.
 * @Clayoquot: What do you mean by "to improve this article so that it covers the topic fully"? Which additional sections would be needed or which sections would need to be expanded?
 * I worry about the section on technologies: won't that section just repeat what is at sustainable energy and at renewable energy? To prevent that, should we work more with excperts? I have added an excerpt about nuclear power because I think that particular discussion is so tricky and will need to be updated regularly, so an excerpt is best for that. EMsmile (talk) 21:59, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Good questions. Let me get back to you on this. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 00:28, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I am personally against the use of excerpts in general. They significantly lower the quality of articles and add a lot of irrelevant text. We can just avoid putting fast changing information (such as the latest capacity numbers) on these summary sections. Ita140188 (talk) 07:31, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That's a pity that you are against using excerpts in general, User:Ita140188. I would say they have to be used sparingly and only for good reason but there are many situations where I think they are a great solution. Take the section on nuclear power for example. I have added there an excerpt from sustainable energy. Why? Because that information is simply very good and very up to date. No wonder, as the article on sustainable energy is a featured article. The article on low-carbon power is only C class. As a rule of thumb, I think it can be beneficial to transcribe good sections from an FA article into a C class article (even just as an interim solution until someone has time to bring that C class article to FA standard...). Rather than avoiding giving up to date numbers / information about a topic. But yes, there could be one or several sentences in that excerpt that don't quite "fit" for the other article. I think the readers will be OK with that though. - We, as Wikipedia editors, have limited resources so the excerpt tool can make our work more efficient, if used sparingly/correctly. EMsmile (talk) 08:39, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In general it's not a good idea to have duplicated text anywhere in Wikipedia. It means the articles are not well defined and scoped. If the whole "Technologies" section is just a list of excerpts, it means that that section should not exist here, as we can just link to the relevant articles. So unless there is something specific to say about nuclear energy (or other sources) in the context of low-carbon power specifically, there is no need to have a section on it here. We can have a section on "Technologies" discussing their relevance in the context of "low-carbon power" specifically, with generic discussion and links to relevant articles, without having subsection on each specific source. Ita140188 (talk) 09:24, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree that overlap/dublication is a bad thing and have often argued against it but in many cases I also got overruled because people said the same content is relevant for several articles. E.g. I felt that the article on sustainable energy has too much of the same content that renewable energy has and that some of that detail about wind, solar etc. could be condensed. Others say that each article should be more or less "stand alone". So it's tricky. With regards to nuclear power, I think this is highly relevant for both the low-carbon power and the low-carbon economy articles as it's hotly debated and continuously evolving. So an excerpt for that is justified, I think. But for the others, like solar and wind, I would cull that content right down and not suggest to use excerpts for those. In general, I think the section about technologies in this article should be rather short and not duplicate more than necessary what is said elsewhere. EMsmile (talk) 10:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with Ita140188 that excerpts are generally unwise. In most cases that I've seen in the climate change topic area, they cause more problems than they solve, and the problems that are introduced are very hard to fix. If you want to bring in content from other articles, I suggest copying and pasting it, and then adjusting for context, length, and audience. Yes, doing this means having to maintain similar content in two places. I believe that this problem is less bad than the problems that excerpts cause. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 22:02, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've actually seen many examples where excerpts work very well in the climate change arena. From what I've seen, User:Chidgk1 and User:InformationToKnowledge like to use them as well. So I guess we might just have to agree to disagree on this one. Some people like excerpts, some don't. I am fine with the notion of not adding excerpts to FA articles. But adding excerpts from FA articles to C-class articles can work. This is because in practice our time as editors is limited and that's where excerpts are an efficient tool. But like I said: it's personal preference.
 * For this case here (and for low-carbon economy), what do we do about the nuclear power question then if you don't want to have an excerpt from sustainable energy? Copy the text across? EMsmile (talk) 22:57, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes. See my comments below regarding the amount of content for individual energy sources vs strategies for mixing them. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 00:08, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

To-do list
To answer EMSmile's question above, off the top of my head, here are some ideas/issues:
 * I would imagine there's more to say on the definition of low-carbon power. How do academics define it? How do regulators define it? The grey areas are the effectiveness of CCS, the lifecycle emissions of biomass, and the lifecycle emissions of ammonia (the latest fuel being proposed to stick into thermal power plants). These issues need to be explored. Biomass isn't mentioned here at all (except as a number in a table) which is weird.
 * I'd like to see less detail on the individual types of energy sources, and a lot more on designing mixtures of energy sources, in combination with storage and demand-side measures, to give resiliency and flexibility to the grid. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 22:56, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Technical terms should be defined on first usage, with complete-enough explanations for the reader to understand them without going to other articles. The "Power sources by greenhouse gas emissions" section puts a lot of jargon in front of the reader with no explanation. Acronyms are spelled out only after many table rows. Some of the jargon will be impenetrable to everyone but experts - in the figures for hydro, for example, I imagine "660 MW" signifies dam-based hydro and "360 MW" signifies run-of-river hydro.
 * The "Power sources by greenhouse gas emissions" section has way too much detail. Three types of coal and eight types of solar. One table for the world plus a table with very similar figures just for the EU. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 01:57, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There should be a discussion on the feasibility and cost of grid decarbonization, given the need to accommodate variability in solar and wind output. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 06:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Removed recently added example
I've just removed this section because I don't think this matches here, it's news-type content, not really encyclopedic. Might fit at something like energy policy.

Examples of low-carbon national strategies:

Evaluating development trends across the Earth as a whole, the journal Nature Communications published an analysis in December 2023 that cautioned how "renewable resources are unevenly distributed across space" contributes to an economic "mismatch" in various territories. The article found, "The uneven distribution... also creates substantial variation in the cost of renewable electricity across countries and regions, undermining their cost-effectiveness, especially if renewable resources are developed to meet electricity demand only within national borders." Examples of international power pools that facilitate transitioning away from fossil fuels include the Eastern Africa Power Pool (EAPP) and the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP). EMsmile (talk) 21:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC) EMsmile (talk) 21:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)