Has to be those frozen wind turbines and solar panels...

Just to stir up some shit: France is green because they have a lot of nuclear power. Which means a lot of energy for basically zero CO2. Germany could have been green, but opted to shutdown their nuclear facilities in what can only be described as a "hurt themselves in confusion" move.
- Which means a lot of energy for basically zero CO2.
  The problem with nuclear power is there's just too fucking much of it. You've practically got to give that shit away for free. You're never in a position to squeeze retail electricity consumers for $3000/MwH.
  The real meal ticket is down here in Texas, where a handful of gas-powered electric generator companies can form a cartel that fixes prices every time AC demand peaks during the summer. Then you can cash the fuck out by burning $.15 worth of butane for $50.
  Germany could have been green, but opted to shutdown their nuclear facilities in what can only be described as a “hurt themselves in confusion” move.
  Germany decided to rely on the cheap and abundant natural gas from checks notes, ah shit.
  
  I like that name for Russia.
  
  Germany decided to rely on the cheap and abundant natural gas from checks notes, ah shit.
  and shutdown a brand new reactor as well, which would still be running, more than likely.
- That's wrong, nuclear doesn't equal zero CO2, not even close. There are no emissions from producing electric power, but tons of emissions building the plants and reactors, mining the fissile materials (which in large come from Russia, btw), transporting the materials, etc.
  Granted, if you're calculating that into renewables, there are emissions, too, but far less per kWh.
  Also, nuclear's fucking expensive.
  And the "hurt themselves in confusion"-move wasn't to shut down the NPPs (it was originally planned to phase out of coal and nuclear while building up renewables and using gas during the transition), it was to stall the phaseout of coal, expand on gas relying on Russia while halting the expansion of renewables and utterly destroying the PV industry. That's what a conservative government does to you. Thanks, Merkel.
  Edit: fck autocorrect
  
  You are right, but in this specific chart, they don't include things like building the facilities, mining the materials etc. They just use the CO2 released whilst producing power, which with nuclear is very low. You can click on the chart and zoom in on the data, it's pretty cool. (This is wrong, see edit)
  The whole Germany situation is very complex and I was just jabbing, I live very close to Germany and work in Germany part of the time so I know something about it (but probably not everything). To me phasing out the nuclear wasn't that much of an issue, but it could have been done way slower to make sure renewables filled the gap. Buying gas from Russia with the war in Ukraine is going on permanently hurt my soul.
  Quickly phasing out nuclear is also a big middle finger to the countries in Europe that are looking to expand their nuclear power, but run up against long lead times. They would have gladly bought nuclear energy from Germany, which would mean way shorter lead times and prevent a lot of extra CO2 during construction of new facilities. Whilst building new big nuclear probably isn't useful in combatting climate change, getting the most out of existing nuclear would have been.
  The fuel coming from Russia isn't as big of a deal to me, as there are plenty of sources around the world to buy from. With the amount of gas we've bought from the US recently, we could have easily bought some nuclear fuel as well. Now all these sources have their issues, I don't like being beholden to the US and places like Niger or Namibia can have human rights issues.
  Obviously nuclear isn't the future and needs to be phased out, but in my mind this meant decades yet and not the rushed phasing out Germany did.
  Edit: Just checked the source, they actually do include things like mining of the fuel, construction of the facilities, transport of the fuel etc. into the CO2 calculation. Nuclear just blows everything out of the water in terms of CO2. Only renewables come close, but in terms of CO2 nuclear is the best.
  
  I think you mean mining fissile materials. Nuclear is not in the same category of emissions as fossil fuels that burn carbon directly...
  
  That’s wrong, nuclear doesn’t equal zero CO2, not even close.
  https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Carbon-footprints-of-various-energy-sources-based-on-32-for-all-energy-sources-other_fig1_308114828
  https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source
  When accounting for construction, lifetime production, decommission and disposal per mwh produced for all energy sources, nuclear still takes the lead. And it further pulls ahead when you compared land useage per mwh produced per square meter. The only place where Nuclear doesn't have a cutting edge advantage is cost per kwh, and frankly if you're putting profits over sustainability then welcome to being part of the problem that lead to us burning coal cause it was cheap.
  The best possible solution for a sustainable future is baseline nuclear power to cover average usage of loads, rooftop solar on existing buildings to make use of surface area not otherwise being used for something useful, and wind turbines added to areas where wind production is viable without displacing other production needs, such as adding it to agriculture fields or low impact areas. This ideal circumstance would also have people abandoning low density housing (specifically suburban single family homes) to move to more high density housing (apartments or multiplex homes that host multiple families) to allow additional land to be set aside for ecological restoration to better balance and preserve what climate we still have and enhance carbon capture. This is obviously a goldilocks solution that will never happen because humans will be humans, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be encouraging it and taking steps to emulate it as realistically as possible.
  
  There are no emissions from producing electric power, but tons of emissions building the plants and reactors, mining the fissile materials (which in large come from Russia, btw), transporting the materials, etc.
  That's technically true, but more a consequence of fossil fuel infrastructure peripheral to the power plant itself. Switch your rail network to full electric and use more electricity in your steel manufacturing (already the predominant modern foundry production technique), you'll solve a big chunk of this problem.
  After that you're talking about CO2 produced by setting concrete to build the plant, and that's functionally a push relative to any other power plant that also uses concrete (basically all of them, concrete is popular for a reason). You're also moving well below the carbon emissions targets we need to hit by 2050, so its an efficient move.
  it was to stall the phaseout of coal, expand on gas relying on Russia while halting the expansion of renewables and utterly destroying the PV industry
  German domestic firms were making huge margins on Russian gas imports right up until the Ukraine War broke out. That's a big problem with fossil fuels. They're still incredibly cheap to mine, with a lot of the cost coming via markups in the retail sector. There's also a huge incentive to simply import PVs from countries with dirt cheap labor costs. So.... mostly China with a bit of Canada thrown in there. Germans, like the Americans before them, no longer want to invest in industrial capital because it has a shit ROI. They want to invest in the FIRE and Tech Sectors, because they've got crazy high returns.
  So more and more industrial capital keeps getting dismantled, with imports filling the gap. And nobody really seems to care about what this does to domestic security or capacity in the event of supply chain disruptions, because that's Future Peoples problem and we're making so much money right now.
- This map underrepresents emissions from NPPs. The emissions that are assumed for nuclear are lower than everything you find in literature and are 1/5th to 1/10th of what reputable sources state. That being said, this map is otherwise a great resource and i like it very much.
  
  Really? Because they use the figure given by UNECE, that's a pretty good source I feel? The report it comes from is also very thorough.
  What sources have you seen that state a number 10 times higher? Would be interesting to see where the difference is and what numbers they give for other sources.
  
  Lifetime CO2 numbers listed here are accurate. The only time NPPs have worse CO2 figures is when they are shut down prematurely (see: Germany.) The actual act of nuclear generation produces no CO2, and mining Uranium is difficult but significantly more efficient than than coal and when comparing the amount of silicon needed for solar to make 1mw compared to uranium needed for NPPs to produce 1mw, the uranium still has has better a better track record. Hydro is a mess with so many different designs that some aren't that impactful where others devastate entire ecosystems just by existing so it's difficult to realistically talk about it objectively.
  We need NPPs, Wind and Solar if we want a dependable and sustainable power grid, but that's just one small part of a sustainable future that we desperately need to change the way we live to avert global climate catastrophe.
- And replace it with coal. Burn the C, add O2
  
  Germany didn't shut down nuclear and replace it with coal, no matter how often you read it online.
  They shut down nuclear and reduced coal at the same time, while doubling overall output.
- To stir up some more shit, nuclear power has the same hidden emissions as lithium and the same political problems as oil, nuclear waste excluded.
  
  Accounting for mining, construction, operation, decommission and disposal, nuclear has less emission that Solar.
  The political problems are entirely artificial, fabricated by the fossil fuel competitors and have been soundly disproven.
  Nuclear waste is no where near the problem people assume it is. A single plant doesn't produce more than it can store onsite during it's entire operation and 100% of all the waste can actually be recycled and ran through newer generation breeder reactors to 'burn' the radioactivity and render the resulting 'waste' safe as background radiation within a decade or so in a cooling pool. The only reason this isn't already common practice is nuclear fuel is so abundant it's not as profitable to do this, It'd be the equivalent of a coal power plant halting using coal for a few weeks so they could shovel in trash from a nearby landfill until it was empty. Less overall power output for less profit.
  
  same hidden emissions as lithium, but at a vastly smaller scale, because compared to something like coal mining, a dude with a pickaxe could supply what an entire nation dedicated to coal mining could do.

France is so low thanks to all those nuclear power plants they have.
- 💪 Well they're getting old now, that's the not so fun part
- Which are shitting themselves now. Unable to be properly repaired or financed. Requiring goverment bailouts
  
  because they're stupid and didn't regulate them like they should've.
  And im pretty sure france's nuclear isn't privately owned?
  
  Considering coal power plant subsidies in some countries...

These are not synchronous grids, but some other kind of boundaries. With synchronous grids the US should be split to only 3 zones, and most of Europe would be colored the same. So I think the kind of map you used is not the best for this joke.
World map of all synchronous grids:
From the website it sounds like that is a map of electric companies or something like that. So this map is not directly related to the Texas crisis. Most of these companies share electricity between each other.
Tom Scott video about synchronous grids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bij-JjzCa7o
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid
- I think the main point here is that it's a map of CO2 production, not that the american electrical grid is split.
  
  The part about the texas crisis made me think it's about why the USA is not a single grid, while Europe is one.
  Iirc one big reason made the crisis that severe was their grid is separate, so they couldn't buy electricity from other states.
  Also if that's the case than using screenshots from that webside is quite misleading. That site uses live data, so if the 2 screenshots were taken at the same time, one of the continents was at night, so solar panels were not working... An avarege or aggregate map should be used, not live data
- Thanks for leading me down the electric grid rabbit hole!
- I like how there is this giant Russian-Belorussian-Georgian-Azerbajanian-Kaxah-Uzbeki-Tajikistans-Kirgizian grid.
  Who said something about USSA being "too big"?
  
  The US eastern grid alone generates more than two times electricity than the former SU grid, and they are both dwarves compared to the chinese one. What do you mean, what is the point of your comment? Most of russia is just taiga forest, it's big, but doesn't need electricity.
  
  Who said something about USSA being "too big"?
  We call this copium

Washington State checking in. They don't call us "the evergreen state" for nothing!
All it took was sacrificing our river ecosystems and invalidating native tribes' entire way of life
- Texas tried that and we didn't even get a functioning electrical grid.
- We have a nuclear reactor in Puget Sound. It doesn't provide much of our power though for some reason.
  
  At least according to this it's ~8% of the state's electrical capacity all by it's lonesome which doesn't seem too bad. By the stats on it's own wiki it's pretty active.
  
  I've heard there's another reactor in the Willapa Hills that was constructed but never activated. Like some ghost story it still sits, unused, to this day.
  
  Bangor got nuclear sub fleet, but the only functional reactor is the Hanford site in Richmond on the Columbia, as far as I know. Satsop site was cancelled with all the other reactors in Richmond.

The map is just bad? They're throwing large groups of states together that have literally no control over what other states do. For instance, it groups part of North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois together as if they're one giant blob and then saying they're only 10% renewable and 31% "low carbon" (whatever that means).
A quick look at Illinois shows it's 55% nuclear and 21.6% renewables for a grand total of 76% of their power being carbon free. Minnesota is 41% renewable, 25.3% nuclear, for a grand total of 66% carbon free electricity. Iowa is 90% (!!!) renewables. Even Wisconsin is 20% nuclear and 15.6% renewables.
https://www.eia.gov/state/data.php?sid=MN
https://www.eia.gov/state/data.php?sid=IL
https://www.eia.gov/state/data.php?sid=WI
https://www.eia.gov/state/data.php?sid=IA
However this map is being generated, it appears to be absolute garbage and intentionally skewed, and isn't basing any of this on any logic. It can't be based on population served or on size of ground covered.
- I believe it goes by county.
- what is it even trying to demonstrate? Doesn't the US have three primary grids? The east, west, and texas?
  Surely this is wrong? I guess the idea is to demonstate across state/country lines, but like, why? Who cares!
- They’re based on the grid operators in these regions I think, but it still looks incorrect to me.
  And Colorado has a significant amount of renewables as well so something is really off with the numbers here.

When the global nuclear leader also has one of the cleanest grids but the climate lobby still says don't build nuclear

I also want to highlight Florida - which has around 10 different electric grids...
- Someone much smarter than me can weigh in, but wouldn’t that be preferable in a place that could regularly see massive storms?
  This way the whole state doesn’t lose power because a hurricane obliterated part of the state?
  And I’m sure those grids must sell power between themselves when necessary.
  
  This way the whole state doesn’t lose power because a hurricane obliterated part of the state?
  That's not how grids work. Hurricane doesn't look at administrative borders.

isn't the entirety of the US split into two separate grids? East and west? And also texas, because they're silly.
Like i'm pretty sure this is just, factually incorrect.
- Sure but there are also regional divisions like on this map. There's even connections between Texas and East and West grids, they're not even totally separate
  
  yeah regional divisions make sense, but i'm not sure why they would matter all that much, in the grand scheme of things it's not exactly "my problem"
  I wouldnt be surprised if they weren't fully separate, from what i understand though, texas has a pretty much isolated grid since that allows them to get around federal regulations for power production. And the east and west would more than likely be a systems scale thing, it's just better to have it split down the middle. Considering how few people generally live there.

Genuinely surprised my region isn't worse. It's not great, but I fully expected it to look like Wyoming (but without the random little green bits).

It's outsider art.

it's insane that so many flyover states are competing (and winning) against fucking California
edit: by winning, i meant having more carbon emissions, not doing better. dumb wording.
- People underestimate just how massive California is. There are a lot of people across a large span of land that require electricity. I imagine the map would look very different if it was scaled by population.
  
  my wording has failed me immensely. i would at least expect people to look at the map and realize what I'm actually trying to say but here we are. that is my point. California has like the population of all these states combined yet all of them are producing more carbon emissions. when i said "winning" i meant in amount of carbon emissions, meaning doing worse.
- Are we looking at the same map? Looks like California is far less emissions heavy than the flyover states. High proportions of solar panel energy, too.
  
  They are winning in producing emissions
- California has huge tracts of land that get sunshine like 365 days per year.
  
  so Nevada doesn't get much sunshine?
- Makes sense when you realize 12% of Americans live in CA, vs somewhere like WY where 0.17% of Americans live.
  
  what i meant was there producing more carbon emissions. you would expect more populous areas to produce more carbon emissions

Why did you cut off Maine?

lol because it’s individual countries vs states in a nation?
What a lousy comparison.
- Right above the US are much greener provinces which also aren't individual countries.
  
  and are also vastly less populated, the majority of Canadians are coastal.