Reply to How clean (dirty?) is my Maryland Pepco electricity?

Forum Index » Environment, Weather, and Green Living

Reply to "How clean (dirty?) is my Maryland Pepco electricity?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thank you so much for giving me the right words to search on. I found the 2021 document.

https://www.pepco.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Pepco%20MD%20Enviro%20Fuel%20Mix%20Insert_5.22_final_ADA.pdf

Coal has increased by 2%, nuclear has decreased a bit and renewable has increased a bit. CO2 emissions have gone up. So it looks like the grid in Maryland is becoming dirtier, not cleaner. Big surprise.[/quote]

The most consequential thing we can do to reduce carbon emissions is support more nuclear power.

Also, to OP's question, it rarely makes sense to wonder from where one's individual electricity electrons come from, even by a specific utility. The grid is all connected among providers. Nuclear runs 24 hours per day, unless it's being refueled. Solar and wind, when it's sunny and windy, put some power on the grid when they're able, which is always going to be intermittent. Next up is natural gas, and this makes up the bulk. When demand peaks on hot summer afternoons and cold winter mornings, more gas gets burned. Throughout that whole process, a little bit of coal will be burned, and moreso during peak demand times.

Point is, it's a little bit like analyzing marginal tax rates. These things move in steps. Also, regardless of how much wind or solar or nuclear Pepco, or any utility has, when you're making decisions on the margins, you are deciding to burn more gas and coal, or less gas and coal. That's like your marginal tax rate. Nobody says "oh, demand just went up a little bit, put that fifth wind turbine online."[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics