Electricity sources and their carbon intensity

Which countries have the electricity with the lowest amount of greenhouse gases per kilowatt-hour ? Which energy source is the greenest ? An article from Cleantechnica answers these important questions.

Here is an extract of the article :

 So here is a quick primer, based on an excellent IPCC meta-study of the issue, looking at full lifecycle emissions of electricity production. It’s basically pretty simple. Fossil fuels are high carbon sources of electricity while other generation sources are low carbon.

Coal is the most carbon intensive, followed by oil and then natural gas. Solar PV and geothermal are slightly more carbon intensive than other non-fossil sources, but still very low carbon compared to any fossil fuel.

I am quite proud to write that the data from these studies corroborate and reinforce the data I had all the way back to 2007 when I covered the topic in French. Yes, I know, at the very beginning of this website I wrote from time to time in my mother tongue.

Yes, you read that right : renewable energy sources – and nuclear – are virtually carbon neutral with as little as 4 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilo-watt per hour for hydro. Natural gas emits more than a hundred times more and coal 250 times more.

In a nutshell, there is a factor TEN between the most polluting renewable energy source and the cleanest fossil fuel. Now you understand how fossil fuels are polluting… and why we have to phase them out all as soon as possible if we want to prevent the worse of climate change to occur.

Data and article via Shrink That Footprint.