Pierre.CLAUZON writes:
> Could you tell us how much CO� Danes are producing per person and how they > are situated among europeans ?
You might say their overall production is negative. Overall, Denmark exports energy.
They export oil and natural gas, but also excess wind generated electricity. So they keep people in other countries from using coal and other carbon-rich fossil fuel. They burn 0.2 quads of coal (which I suppose produces 0.06 quads of electricity), and they generate 7.0 quads of wind electricity. See:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/world/country/cntry_DA.html
I do not find the per capita carbon ratings or "carbon factor" in this EIA database. The EIA database has recently be revised. I think it used to show individual European countries, but now they are glommed together as the E.U. Still, there is a lot of information broken down by country in the E.U. summary:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/euro.html
Carbon info is at the bottom but it does not show per capita numbers. It says Denmark has greatly reduced carbon emissions:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/euro.html#emiss
Ah, here is something:
http://eetd.lbl.gov/newsletter/cbs_nl/NL15/ghg.html
It looks like Denmark was about average for Europe in 1991. I expect they are considerably lower now that they have installed the equivalent of a large nuclear power plant in wind energy: 2,900 MW nameplate. Since wind turbines generate only ~30 percent of nameplate, and nuclear plants produce ~90 percent of the nameplate rating, this is equivalent to a 966 MWe nuclear plant. That is close to the average size of a U.S. nuclear plant (920 MWe actual - not nameplate).
Actually Danish wind turbines score better than 30% of nameplate, since many are offshore.
Wind turbines are three times cheaper than a nuclear plant, they produce no nuclear waste, and they cannot be targeted by terrorists, so this is definitely the way to go in Europe, where they have four times more offshore wind energy available than their entire present electric power production. Other alternatives, including nuclear power, would be nuts, in my opinion.
- Jed
