Kevin’s data center is going to run on natural gas generators in a valley which already suffers from horrible inversions every year. The Wasatch front valley has some of the worst air quality in the world during the winter.
Nuclear is too expensive for the capitalists building these. They’d rather pollute than pay more money for nuclear.
In this case I’m referring to the Wonder Valley AI data centre campus just to be clear since I wasn’t in OP, it’s proposed for northwestern Alberta, Canada. Near Grande Prairie. He’s got multiple on the go.
Not arguing but just curious. I didn’t think natural gas plants heavily affected air quality. I’m aware that fracking has its share of issues, notably ground water contamination. I always thought coal plants were the ones with emissions issues.
I mean yeah but is it burning in such a way it’s actually impacting people’s wellbeing? Is it creating that much atmospheric pollution even with waste fume scrubbers? I cook with natural gas and it doesn’t leave soot. I’m not sure where you are but anywhere I’ve been lighters use butane and not natural gas. I’m not trying to be a jerk, just trying to get an accurate picture of the situation.
Perfectly combusted butane only releases CO2 and water, too. The point of that experiment is showing nothing burns perfectly. Even 100% pure methane burning at 100% efficiency releases CO2, which has measurable toxicity in humans.
That being said, largery hydrocarbons will generally burn less perfectly then smaller ones. Methane has 1 carbon. Butane has four. Gasoline has 8-10, lower grade fuels have more, tars get to 20-30. Coal is a mixture of tars and hydrocarbons with even longer carbon chains.
So natural gas powerplants with sufficient exhaust scrubbers are having a substantial effect on atmospheric pollutants? I feel like we keep getting off of the main question here. Like to stoves and lighters and such. I get nothing burns perfectly clean but seems like just an engineering hurtle to me. With natural gas I’m typically more concerned about the hydro fracking aspect. There’s really not a solution to groundwater contamination in fracking beyond them saying it didn’t happen.
Scrubbers cannot possibly capture all of it. It’s not just an engineering hurdle. It’s physics. Just like burning it can never be 100% efficient, scrubbing it cannot either.
Even if it were possible to somehow scrub 100% of the CO2 and other methane byproducts, it would be unbelievably expensive. Not only is it something that frankly shouldn’t even be focused on any more when we already have cheap, green, renewable energy, but do you expect the capitalist billionaires to care enough to pay for the new scrubbers (which, by the way, in this context, do not even exist?)
Natural gas still causes pollution, just less than coal.
I grew up with natural gas, and if you didn’t turn on the hood it would get nasty inside. It also made our pots and pans turn black during long cooking sessions.
A 2024 study from Stanford and PSE Healthy Energy scientists estimates the annual societal cost of NO2 exposure from gas and propane stoves is $1 billion. Burning natural gas and propane has also been shown to generate benzene, a known human carcinogen. A 2023 study from Stanford and PSE Healthy Energy scientists found that a single gas cooktop burner on high could raise indoor levels of benzene above those in secondhand tobacco smoke.
And that’s just from indoor stoves.
The primary component of natural gas is methane. Methane is a colorless, odorless, and highly combustible gas. It is also a powerful climate pollutant. In addition to methane, natural gas contains pollutants which are known to be toxic, linked to cancer, and can form secondary health-damaging pollutants that may impact air quality and human health.
That was part of the natural gas grift: because it’s slightly better than coal, and it has natural in the name, it must be clean! It fooled a lot of people, unfortunately and understandably.
I mean yeah if you displace air (nitrogen and oxygen) with anything you’re going to have a bad time, but I didn’t think natural gas plants were straight up leaking valuable natural gas everywhere like a home stove or gas heater can. The black soot is interesting, must mean the natural gas source was tainted because as far as I know pure natural gas burns totally clean.
It does not burn totally clean. All extracts of gas and oil, including that of natural gas (which is methane) are not 100% pure and do not burn at 100% efficiency. If that were the case, there would be no byproducts, such as leftover methane. It also turns into CO2 when burned, which while not as harmful to the environment, is not something you want built up during an inversion and can contribute to climate change.
Even if it were some how burned at 100% efficiency, there is another source of pollution before it ever gets to the power plant: leaks.
Methane is the main component of natural gas; it makes up 70% or more of raw natural gas in the ground and well over 95% of the processed gas we burn for energy. When burned, this methane turns into CO2—but before then, it can escape into the atmosphere from all parts of gas infrastructure, like valves and pipes. And those leaks, too, need to be counted when we calculate how much natural gas is contributing to climate change.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 6.5 million metric tons of methane leak from the oil and gas supply chain each year5—around 1% of total natural gas production. At this rate, methane leaks would account for around 10% of natural gas’s contribution to climate change, and CO2 emissions for the other 90%.
In a 2022 study focused on gas production in New Mexico, a group of Stanford researchers estimated that leaks equated to more than 9 percent of all production in the area, based on aerial surveys.7 A 2023 study suggested methane emissions were 70 percent higher than U.S. government figures from 2010 to 2019.8 Plata says there’s no current consensus on the magnitude of methane leaks.
“Leaks are so poorly quantified,” Plata says. “Nobody knows that number for sure. It’s hard to sense methane comprehensively and finding those pipe-based leaks can be trickier than it sounds.”
Leaks can start and stop irregularly, in different places along the natural gas supply chain, making them hard to spot even as more methane-sensing satellites are put into space. For now, we’re largely dependent on scientists, industry, or citizen volunteers trying to find leaks one at a time, with equipment that is not consistently accurate.
Methane has a much shorter lifespan than CO2, but traps much more heat while it’s still floating around in the atmosphere. We’ve previously covered the challenge of comparing methane to CO2 at Ask MIT Climate, but in short, the EPA and other organizations usually say methane is about 28 times more warming than CO2—if you look 100 years in the future. Over 10 or 20 years, though, methane is 80 to 100 times more warming than CO2.
Natural gas is still a pollutant in multiple ways. While it’s cleaner than coal, it is still a contributor to greenhouse gasses, both while burning and in transit to customers (including power plants). “Natural gas” is a greenwashing marketing term from big oil and gas companies. It’s methane. That’s what it is. It has been shown to warm the climate in multiple ways (CO2 and methane) and is a contributor to children getting life long asthma. It should not be used at all, but especially not in a valley that gets intense inversions which trap the gas.
Kevin’s data center is going to run on natural gas generators in a valley which already suffers from horrible inversions every year. The Wasatch front valley has some of the worst air quality in the world during the winter.
Nuclear is too expensive for the capitalists building these. They’d rather pollute than pay more money for nuclear.
In this case I’m referring to the Wonder Valley AI data centre campus just to be clear since I wasn’t in OP, it’s proposed for northwestern Alberta, Canada. Near Grande Prairie. He’s got multiple on the go.
Ohhh, I forgot that he had multiple… what a scumbag.
Not arguing but just curious. I didn’t think natural gas plants heavily affected air quality. I’m aware that fracking has its share of issues, notably ground water contamination. I always thought coal plants were the ones with emissions issues.
Gas burns cleaner than coal, but almost nothing burns 100% clean. Nor is any fuel source 100% pure.
Hold a lighter up to some tinfoil. See the soot?
I mean yeah but is it burning in such a way it’s actually impacting people’s wellbeing? Is it creating that much atmospheric pollution even with waste fume scrubbers? I cook with natural gas and it doesn’t leave soot. I’m not sure where you are but anywhere I’ve been lighters use butane and not natural gas. I’m not trying to be a jerk, just trying to get an accurate picture of the situation.
Perfectly combusted butane only releases CO2 and water, too. The point of that experiment is showing nothing burns perfectly. Even 100% pure methane burning at 100% efficiency releases CO2, which has measurable toxicity in humans.
That being said, largery hydrocarbons will generally burn less perfectly then smaller ones. Methane has 1 carbon. Butane has four. Gasoline has 8-10, lower grade fuels have more, tars get to 20-30. Coal is a mixture of tars and hydrocarbons with even longer carbon chains.
So natural gas powerplants with sufficient exhaust scrubbers are having a substantial effect on atmospheric pollutants? I feel like we keep getting off of the main question here. Like to stoves and lighters and such. I get nothing burns perfectly clean but seems like just an engineering hurtle to me. With natural gas I’m typically more concerned about the hydro fracking aspect. There’s really not a solution to groundwater contamination in fracking beyond them saying it didn’t happen.
Scrubbers cannot possibly capture all of it. It’s not just an engineering hurdle. It’s physics. Just like burning it can never be 100% efficient, scrubbing it cannot either.
Even if it were possible to somehow scrub 100% of the CO2 and other methane byproducts, it would be unbelievably expensive. Not only is it something that frankly shouldn’t even be focused on any more when we already have cheap, green, renewable energy, but do you expect the capitalist billionaires to care enough to pay for the new scrubbers (which, by the way, in this context, do not even exist?)
Yeah. Of course, the phrase “sufficient exhaust scrubbers” is about as reasonable as “100% perfect combustion” in this context. Engineering or no.
Natural gas still causes pollution, just less than coal.
I grew up with natural gas, and if you didn’t turn on the hood it would get nasty inside. It also made our pots and pans turn black during long cooking sessions.
Here’s more info: https://www.psehealthyenergy.org/gas-stoves-and-indoor-air-pollution-explained/
And that’s just from indoor stoves.
That was part of the natural gas grift: because it’s slightly better than coal, and it has natural in the name, it must be clean! It fooled a lot of people, unfortunately and understandably.
I mean yeah if you displace air (nitrogen and oxygen) with anything you’re going to have a bad time, but I didn’t think natural gas plants were straight up leaking valuable natural gas everywhere like a home stove or gas heater can. The black soot is interesting, must mean the natural gas source was tainted because as far as I know pure natural gas burns totally clean.
It does not burn totally clean. All extracts of gas and oil, including that of natural gas (which is methane) are not 100% pure and do not burn at 100% efficiency. If that were the case, there would be no byproducts, such as leftover methane. It also turns into CO2 when burned, which while not as harmful to the environment, is not something you want built up during an inversion and can contribute to climate change.
Even if it were some how burned at 100% efficiency, there is another source of pollution before it ever gets to the power plant: leaks.
Source: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-does-natural-gas-contribute-climate-change-through-co2-emissions-when-fuel-burned
Natural gas is still a pollutant in multiple ways. While it’s cleaner than coal, it is still a contributor to greenhouse gasses, both while burning and in transit to customers (including power plants). “Natural gas” is a greenwashing marketing term from big oil and gas companies. It’s methane. That’s what it is. It has been shown to warm the climate in multiple ways (CO2 and methane) and is a contributor to children getting life long asthma. It should not be used at all, but especially not in a valley that gets intense inversions which trap the gas.
The Wikipedia page goes into much more detail, under “environmental effects”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas