Carbon Intensity

The different fuel types in the mix of electricity production have vastly different emissions of CO2 and so different contributions to  global warming.

Many detailed studies have been performed to estimate the CO2 equivalent emissions in the life-cycle of power plants, taking into account numerous factors ranging from construction to operation, as well as the emissions during fuel consumption. Because of the complexity of these studies different values exist for gCO2 equivalent/KWh of produced electricity. The analyses on this website use values published by IPCC in 2014 as shown in the figure opposite.