Reducing CO2 Emissions

The CO2 emitted during electricity generation is very different according to fuel type, with production from fossil fuel clearly producing most. Countries with large fractions of nuclear and hydro generations have the lowest emission of CO2 in Europe.

A frequent concept proposed towards obtaining carbon zero emission is to greatly increase the proportion of Variable Renewable Energy (wind+solar) in the electricity generation mix. Because of the production variations due to weather fluctuations this requires either massive storage capacity to save the peaks production for the wind off period or large over capacity and curtailment of the peak production curtailment of the peaks. This page presents exercises to explore these options.

Denmark is the largest European country where wind+solar energy dominants the electricity generation. To compensate for the large wind fluctuations it has a large dependence on imports which are 17% net over the year but often much greater for short periods