> Do you produce electricity without CO2 emissions?
I mean, yes, that is clearly the plan. A substantial proportion of EU energy usage is carbon-neutral already, and the current plan is that all coal & oil power plants will be closed entirely before 2040.
You can see current energy sources live on https://app.electricitymaps.com/ - even countries like Germany & Poland (famously fossil fuel keen) currently use 63% / 47% fully renewable energy today, and at the other end of the spectrum there's Iceland (100% renewable), Sweden (100% renewable + nuclear), Norway (98%), France (93%), Spain (86%) etc.
Not 100% yet, but heading in a good direction. There are of course other challenges, but on this specific point: I think it's clearly possible for the EU to get to a 100% renewable/nuclear grid by 2035 if they continue on the current trajectory.
By carbon free, do they actually mean e2e energy production? Do they include mining for the material needed to make the turbins, the batteries and the impact of throwing the batteries afterwards? ...
In short, despite those costs, over the entire lifetime of the wind turbine this adds up to 5 - 26g of CO2 per kWh, as opposed to 437 - 758g (for gas) or 675 - 1689g (for coal).
So yes, it's not literally _zero_ CO2, but it is a 97.4% / 98.7% reduction in CO2 compared to gas/coal respectively. The same applies to most other similar questions: yes, there are lots of small non-zero factors, and it would be great to minimize those, but they're dwarfed by the massive emissions of the current approach.
The end goal here is _net_ zero, not strictly zero emissions output. Although there will still be some emissions there, they will be far far lower than today, and the remaining emissions are intended to be offset through all sorts of measures like increasing greenery, emission improvements in those production steps themselves, direct carbon capture, etc etc etc.
I mean, yes, that is clearly the plan. A substantial proportion of EU energy usage is carbon-neutral already, and the current plan is that all coal & oil power plants will be closed entirely before 2040.
You can see current energy sources live on https://app.electricitymaps.com/ - even countries like Germany & Poland (famously fossil fuel keen) currently use 63% / 47% fully renewable energy today, and at the other end of the spectrum there's Iceland (100% renewable), Sweden (100% renewable + nuclear), Norway (98%), France (93%), Spain (86%) etc.
Not 100% yet, but heading in a good direction. There are of course other challenges, but on this specific point: I think it's clearly possible for the EU to get to a 100% renewable/nuclear grid by 2035 if they continue on the current trajectory.