As i turned on my gas hob last night I had a quick thought – is this a green way to cook? Coal and gas powered electricity churns out tonne after tonne of CO2 and other environmentally unfriendly toxins into the air. If I stop using my gas hobs and moved to electricity – I already get 100% of my electricity from renewable sources would this be better for the environment.
How much Carbon Dioxide do UK hobs generate?
Over at the University of Bristol they have a table suggesting that the use of gas hobs and electric hobs is the same in the UK – with each using around 3.364 Twh (where a Terrawatt hour is equivalent to 1,000,000,000 KwH). Instantly I was thinking if we all ditch the gas – which damages the environment more than green electricity does – the country would save the CO2 on the 3.364 TwH of Gas.
After a quick look in Google – and avoiding the wikipedia like the plague. The world nuclear assosciation, it was the best source I could find, stated that CO2 emmissions from gas is about 356 grams per kWh. So thats 3.364 TwH of CO2 = 3,364,000,000 kWh X 0.356 kilograms of CO2 = 1,197,584,000 kilograms (1.2 million tonnnes) of CO2 less being emitted by the UK.
There would of course be the CO2 emitted from the greener electricity plants, I’m not naive enough to think that Green Electricity is CO2 free, but I think that should be a healthy whack off the CO2 emissions in the UK – that gotta help us meet our CO2 targets from the EU.
