I missed yours,too. I was running off to work so I just gave you the source of the 500 lbs.
But I see what you are getting at.
Tim's article is talking lbs of CO2. The national Geo article was talking lbs of coal. Both over the lifetime of the bulb. Looks to me like the first article claims it will replace a dozen incandescents; that seems a bit far-fetched.
Anyway,looks like your hourly figures may be high by a factor of 2, but you are in the ball park. This says 2 lbs/KWH. A bit excessive, indeed. Who knew?
I didn't check on the 2 mil lbs/hr, but going by their values of 17.5 mil lbs/MW/year, your plant would generate 8,760,000,000 lbs of CO2/year. Whew. PFA
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Note: The SEEN database calculates emissions estimates of carbon dioxide. Many other sources calculate “carbon equivalent” emissions. Carbon comprises 12/44 of the mass of carbon dioxide; thus to convert from CO-2 equivalent to C equivalent, one multiplies by 0.2727. Conversely, to
convert carbon equivalents to carbon dioxide, multiply the carbon equivalent by 3.67. In 2000, the most recent year for which data are available, worldwide carbon equivalent emissions from fossil fuel use and venting to the atmosphere totaled 6.44 billion tons. This is the equivalent of 23.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
Environmental Costs of Electricity, a book by the Pace University Center for Environmental and Legal Studies (Oceana Publications, 1990), summarizes rates of carbon dioxide and other emissions from various power plants. Table 2 in Chapter IV of the book, "New Coal Plant Emissions," summarizes studies by PLC Inc. and the Oak Ridge National Laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Coal
According to these studies, a new coal fired power plant will release between 1.96 (PLC) and 2.09 (DOE) pounds of CO2 per kilowatt hour of operation. For our report, we assume that any given coal-fired power plant will emit 2 pounds of CO2 per kilowatt hour.
A power plant with a one megawatt (1,000 kilowatts) name plate capacity will produce the equivalent of 8,760,000 kilowatt hours annually at full operation -- that is, 8,760 hours multiplied by 1,000. At this rate, such a plant would emit an estimated 17,520,000 pounds, which is the equivalent of 8,760 short tons or 7,947 metric tons of CO2.
Natural Gas
Pace's table 3, "Emissions for Natural Gas-Fired Generation," puts the rate of emissions for these type of plants at 1.14 pounds (PLC) and 0.99 pounds (DOE) of CO2
per kilowatt hour. For this study, we assume that 1 pound of CO2 will be released per kilowatt hour; that is, a plant with 1 megawatt capacity will release 8.76 million pounds per year -- 4,380 short tons / 3,973 metric tons.
Oil
Pace's table 4, "Emissions for Oil-Fired Generation," puts the rate of emissions for oil-fired plants at 1.65 (DOE) to 1.75 (PLC) pounds of CO2 per kilowatt hour. For this study, we assume that 1.7 pounds of CO2 will be released per kilowatt hour, or the equivalent of 7,446 short tons / 6,754 metric tons of CO2 per year per megawatt.
This table also summarizes the PLC-determined rate of emissions from diesel-fired plants: 2.19 pounds of CO2 per kilowatt hour, the equivalent of 9,592 short tons / 8,702 metric tons of CO2.
Multiplying these rates' emissions by the assumed 20 years of operation at full capacity, the following conversion rates are used to determine estimated total emissions of World Bank-financed power plants:
Estimated CO2 emissions per megawatt capacity of World Bank-financed power plants over 20 years of full capacity operations:
- --------------------- Coal Natural Gas Oil Diesel
CO2(in metric tons) 159,968 79,484 135,118 174,061
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