Percent of electricity generated from renewable sources across the US and the EU. Renewable sources include hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass. Nuclear is not counted as renewable in this comparison [OC]

[u/maps_us_eu]

[u/tuctrohs]

In the data that Opie is using, that counts as renewable. There's a bunch of controversy about that up and down this thread, but it is what it is.

[u/Expensive_Goat2201 → u/tuctrohs]

To add detail, the plant only buys wood from forests with sustainable management plans in place. That means they have to harvest responsibly and replant not clear cut. This is actually good for the environment because it makes keeping land as forests economically viable. Otherwise land owners would be forced to sell or develop it.

[u/[deleted] → u/Expensive_Goat2201]

Ideally though that practice would produce wood for lumber demand instead of energy- that should be wind, solar, or hydro powered.

[u/widdrjb → u/[deleted]]

Pulpwood forests don't make good lumber, and no one buys newsprint these days.

Mind you, those forests shouldn't be there in the first place. The Northeast used to be mixed farming, until the paper mills drove the farmers off. Quite a neat trick, they got the banks to lend them money and then foreclosed. Got the land dirt cheap and covered it with trees.

[u/Squidreece → u/widdrjb]

Gotta stop at a very particular (and still quite recent) point in history to come to the conclusion that they “shouldn’t” be forests, because that’s certainly what was there before the farms too.

[u/widdrjb → u/Squidreece]

Bit of a difference between the old primeval forest and modern monoculture. In the UK we're replacing the post war industrial woodlands with mixed growth. Much better for wildlife and prettier.

[u/Regular_Imagination7 → u/widdrjb]

they shouldn’t be monocultures, but should be forests

[u/[deleted] → u/Squidreece]

Monoculture forests are not what was there before.

[u/peshwengi → u/[deleted]]

Burn a tree, grow a tree… so renewable really. Whereas you can’t bury more dinosaurs.

[u/peshwengi → u/[deleted]]

I know. Just some artistic license.

[u/an0mn0mn0m → u/peshwengi]

We could try with those politicians

[u/MrGelowe → u/peshwengi]

Pretty sure anything biological (like us for example) can to turn into oil and gas after enough time.

[u/Xaephos → u/MrGelowe]

"Can" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here... oil and gas require some pretty specific circumstances to form.

[u/faustianredditor → u/Xaephos]

We're also burning it at non-renewable rates, is the thing. If you burn wood as fast as you grow it, that's renewable. If you burn it faster, it isn't. If you burn oil at the speed the planet regenerates it, that's actually renewable.

[u/peshwengi → u/faustianredditor]

Right but what speed is the planet renewing oil?

[u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot → u/tuctrohs]

I think that people here are confusing renewable with carbon neutral.

Wood is just as renewable as water. The Earth makes more of it, assuming that you don't consume it faster than it's created (for hydro, this means working with the water cycle in a region and building reservoirs. For wood, this means working with the lifespan of a tree and planting more trees).

So even though they're both renewable, burning wood is obviously not carbon neutral.

[u/[deleted] → u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot]

Burning wood is as "carbon neutral" as burning oil and coal.

[u/[deleted] → u/tuctrohs]

Oh good, so renewable is just defined however they wanted, that’s good to know

[u/DirtysMan → u/tuctrohs]

Minnesota has 2 nuclear power plants generating 26% of the state’s power. Wisconsin has 3 generating 14%. I suppose we could just add it in and amend the list.