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FA criteria (Femke)

I think the article is now completely ready for GA, and plan to sign up when you say yes. While we're waiting for a reviewer, we might as well start working towards the Featured article criteria.

1a. Well-written:

  • When finished, we should ask someone external to do a copyedit and identify jargon.
  • I'm not sure our two lists are MOS-compliant
  • innovation / learning by doing is mentioned in the lede, but not in main text. FemkeMilene (talk) 17:06, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

1b. Comprehensive:

  • the section on climate change mitigation pathways now focuses on 1.5°C. In the featured article review for climate change, we concluded that 1.5 should not dominate over the longer standing goal or 2°C temperature rise.
  • There are two paradigms of sustainable energy systems; one around hydrogen, the other around electrification. I feel they should take up approximately equal amount of space, but I wouldn't know what to say about electrification. A lot of that paradigms has been discussed in other sections...
  • The Soysal book has quite a lot of space dedicated to the water aspect of sustainable energy. Kutscher dedicates a couple of pages to it as well, a similar amount as to climate change. We might need to add a paragraph.. FemkeMilene (talk) 16:48, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Government policies may need a paragraph on sustainable development: SDG7, knowledge exchange, the Sustainable Development Mechanism in Paris. Now a subsection with only one image I didn't want to delete. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

1c. well-researched: there are a few sources we might want to replace with higher quality sourcing (all fine for GA):

  • I'm not sure about recycling international: replaced with BBC, but my overview sources don't mention recyclability. Due? I've now included different environmental impacts.
  • I'm not entirely sure about the 2011 report of the IPCC: surely this has been superseded?
  • The sourcing around thorium needs to be revisited; there a bit old, and am not sure whether they are as due using overview sources.
  • FORATOM, advocacy for nuclear, but also weirdly publishing daily numbers
  • Course description Open University. I've removed it in two out of three instances. Is it necessary in the last one? FemkeMilene (talk) 20:14, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
  • The fears around coronavirus and sustainable energy seem to not have come true. I don't like updating sentences every month, so I'm leaving it be Until after GA

2b. Appropriate structure:

  • I think that pathways should come after the core description of sustainable energy sources and system, before energy policy.
  • Maybe we can make sectors into its own heading?
  • There are several short sections/paragraphs that need expanding or merging.

2c. consistent citations: still a bit of work to do here.

  • Some citations to larger works lack specifics page(s)
  • we cite the IPCC report inconsistently.
  • We cite the 2019 book by Kutscher inconsistently
  • some of the citations lacks specific information, such as authors
  • some citations use a website URL for work, instead of the name of the publisher/website
  • Final full stop after citation
  • For works with many authors, do we want to use etal?

3. Media:

  • We have two low quality images: of hydrogen and of pumped hydro.
  • There is a large white space because of the sustainable energy template. I like the template on top, but I assume there was a reason to push it downwards?
  • In the renewable energy section, the images are pushed down into inappropriate subsections. Not sure what the best solution is.
  • For accessibility, I think images not described by the caption need an alt.

FemkeMilene (talk) 10:59, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm good with submitting for GA :) I'll reply to your FA list bit by bit. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:39, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Discussion on FA criteria

1b. Comprehensive

Regarding the two paradigms of electrification vs hydrogen, how much weight are high-quality overview sources giving to descriptions of them being competing paradigms for energy systems as a whole, as opposed to descriptions of them being competing paradigms for specific applications? We should definitely add that this debate exists for specific applications, particularly vehicles. We should also add something about how both electrification and adoption of hydrogen would require massive shifts in the machinery and infrastructure that consume and distribute energy, and how those shifts can't necessarily wait until clean hydrogen production or clean electricity scales up. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:40, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

  • The Soysal book barely talks about either. One page for hydrogen (out of 500), electrification barely mentioned. They do talk about other aspects of the energy system like load-side energy management
  • The Fletcher book has a section dedicated to hydrogen vs electrification. FemkeMilene (talk) 12:01, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
  • The Kutscher book has a section on hydrogen (3 pages out of 600), and mentions electrification in a different section
  • IEA 2020 report mentions electrification about half as much as hydrogen.

So we're not far off the mark. I see two ways forward.

  1. Either we follow Fletcher, and dedicate more space within our hydrogen vs electrification section to the former.
  2. Or we merge the electrification section with the electricity sector section. We'd move some of the specifics of hydrogen to the appropriate sector section (transport / heat) for contrast between the various options. Cobenefit: two out of three tiny sections are sufficiently large for MOS. I prefer this option — Preceding unsigned comment added by Femkemilene (talk • contribs)
Great, thanks. You're ahead on me on this issue. Thanks for the pointers to sources - I'll try to read up. To brainstorm a bit, one way to frame the issue is to talk about the concept of energy transition and all the assets (infrastructure and machinery) we have for transporting and burning fossil fuels for vehicles, industry, buildings, etc. Then we could talk about the options for dealing with these assets: 1) Replace them with other assets appropriate for electricity, 2) Replace them with assets appropriate for hydrogen, or 3) Use existing assets with carbon neutral fuels, many of which are in the early R&D stages. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:27, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
Yes! I believe that is the crutch of the energy transition: three competing paradigms (even as the carbon neutral fuels from bioenergy are losing favour) and stranded assets and the other hand, whose size is still substantial with carbon neutral fuels (oilfields, mines). The question is how much attention we should dedicate to this issue in this article, compared to energy transition. My reading of the sources is less than I initially expected, so I'm curious what your going to find. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:12, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Media

  • What do you mean by low quality images for hydrogen and pumped hydro? The FA criteria don't say that images have to be high-resolution. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:25, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
    You're right, having high quality images isn't a requirement for FA (TIL). I think both images are quite ugly. The first one is too busy to convey the meaning, whereas the hydrogen one has ugly white. I do wonder whether for accessibility, we'll need to modify some of the images to make sure the text size is at least 85% of the default text size.. I'll ask the experts later. FemkeMilene (talk) 09:01, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm not seeing a large white space near the sustainable energy template. I moved the template from the top of the article to near the bottom for several reasons: 1) The first thing the reader sees shouldn't be a list of ways to leave the article, 2) Some of the articles that are linked to, particularly the first link which is low-carbon power, are currently of poor quality, and 3) It's a lot to scroll past on mobile. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:25, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
    Fair enough. The white space appears on screens of high resolution. It's a big less grating now that I've expanded 'Energy policy' FemkeMilene (talk) 09:02, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
    It's gone now :). I moved some text from 'pathways' to energy policy. FemkeMilene (talk) 20:16, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Section on environmental issues?

I'm not sure where to put water issues, that have come to the fore in Texas this week. What about a small section on environmental issues with cliate change, water, food and toxic material, describing what is wrong with our current system relying on fossil fuels and biomass? Potentially, we could broaden out the section on energy access to also talk about energy security.. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:22, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Femkemilene, I'm not sure what kinds of water issues you're referring to. Do you mean the boil-water advisory in Texas? We should have a section on the environmental and reliability problems of our current system, for sure. The statement that 70% of GHG emissions come from energy is in the lead but actually not in the body. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:59, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
We should also add a few sentences about the seasonal variability of wind energy and ability to withstand cold waves and hurricanes. Typi wind turbines have to be shut down in extreme wind to prevent damage, but I understand there's some research being done to make them more resilient. Clayoquot (talk | contribs)
The water issue has multiple aspects: the use of water for energy, the pollution of water from energy production and the need for energy to for water processing. The first two aspects could be summarized as one of the paragraphs of an environmental issues paragraphs:
  • Soysal (p 470-472) says the following.. a) 10% of world energy use goes to energywater, mainly cooling, but also production of biofuels and fossil fuels. b) water use may lead to water shortages is regions where water is limited c) water consumed mostly in biofuel production, followed by coal (mining and processing) and oil (extraction). c) Water may be pumped from aquafiers, which aren't a sustainable resource. They also talk about water used and directly returned, which has some minor problems with river water becoming non-optimally warm, but they don't specify this secondary effect
  • Letcher 31: water pollution is common near coal mines, and near combustion plants
  • Kutcher (p9-10) indicates compares water usage between US power plants and indicates that water levels are going down. Nuclear and solar thermal are the biggest consumers per MhW.
About seasonal variability; I'd say no more than one sentence. I've got two sources I think: the books I'm reading are giving slightly less attention to the energy system compared to us. FemkeMilene (talk) 15:19, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
The over 70% is mentioned as 72% in the section of climate change mitigation pathways. I'm still struggling to decide for myself whether I think that section fits well within the overall structure of the article. I think we may be focusing slightly too much on climate change; if we wanted give equal attention to 1.5 and 2°C by simply expanding that section, we will definitely focus to much on climate change. From reading these overview sources, I think that climate change should take up about half of the space of environmental issues (with the rest divided over our pollution, water, toxic waste and all those other issues). FemkeMilene (talk) 20:16, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
I'm assuming that in your quote from Soysal, you meant to say 10% of world water use goes to energy, right?
Yes, it makes sense to have more on other environmental issues besides climate change. The Pathways section could definitely use some refactoring or outright merging into other sections. I wrote it before we had a section on "Sustainable energy systems" and it tried to do some of what the approach in "Sustainable energy systems" does more elegantly. I have no problem with discussing 2°C targets.
I was thinking last night about how to write a concise paragraph or three about the environmental, health, and socioeconomic problems in our current gloal energy system. Holy cow, right? There's air pollution, the environmental damage caused by oil and gas exploration, oil spills, coal mine accidents, pipeline accidents, wars fought over oil, and so on. Unfortunately I think the water issues you've raised are small in the big scheme of things, but they might make sense in sections that describe specific energy sources. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:29, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
As we don't really have a specific section on fossil, I don't think we should either, it may be difficult to put water in an energy source section. For me it makes more sense to bundle it with oil spills and air pollution, either as a short paragraph or half a paragraph. If we include wars fought over oil, this could go in a section on energy access and security.
The way I envision it, is having two sections dedicated to the two bullet points of the definitions section: one about the environmental aspects, the other about the social aspects. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:37, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Re-think the Level-1 headers?

I think some of the Level-1 headers need to be rethought. I would prefer if we thought of more standard type headings. Standard headings are things like: Terminology, definition, types, challenges, approaches, technologies, sources, applications, costs, society and culture, history. At present there are some headers that I find really unclear and which could perhaps be sub-sumed under "types", "approaches", "challenges" or similar. These are: Energy access, Energy conservation, Pathways for climate change mitigation, Energy policies. Compare also with the main section headings used in the renewable energy article: some are better, some are worse. We should be able to come up with similar headings for both articles in the end. This will also make it easier for the reader to orientate themselves. I first got introduced to the system of standard headings by WikiProject Medicine. I set up a manual of style similarly for WikiProject Sanitation. There it looks like this. WikiProject Climate change should also have something like that. So far, WikiProject Climate change only has it for climate change + geography type articles, see here. EMsmile (talk) 07:55, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

These level 1 headers are quite new. Some more tweaking may indeed be warranted.
  • energy access as part of the definition of sustainable energy, and warrants its own level I heading. Can be combined with energy security, like in the bullet point under definition.
  • Energy conservation is one of the two pillars of sustainable energy, in combination with renewable energy, so it deserves a level I heading.
  • I agree with pathways for climate change mitigation, as discussed above.
  • I like energy policies. We could also write this is politics of sustainable energy / energy politics.
Approaches and challenges are quite vague. The latter heading may drive POV editing, as it's the negative aspect. I'd rather put text about challenges under a concrete heading such as sectors, where some sectors are more challenging to make sustainable than others. I'm removing those headings in any article I see them currently...
As renewable is a sub- article of sustainable energy, we shouldn't strive to come up with similar headings. I don't think we can have a manual of style or top level articles, as they are per definition unique. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:06, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
The articles that are part of WikiProject Climate change are not more "unique" than the articles that are under WikiProject Medicine or WikiProject Sanitation. With a bit of thinking, they could be grouped by types of articles, for which standard headings could be proposed (I'll propose that on the talk page of the WikiProject when I have a bit more time). Editors don't HAVE TO use them but would be encouraged to. It just helps the readers to see clear, sensible Level-1 headings. "Challenges" doesn't have to be one of them if you think it's problematic. But many of the others that I mentioned will work for many articles. Like Terminology, Society and culture, Costs, History, Types, Sources and so forth. The article on climate change uses quite a few standard headings, like terminology, drivers, impacts, responses, policies and politics, scientific consensus and society. So that's good. I think also these two articles here would benefit from using more standard headings. For lay persons it's helpful to know what each heading entails. If energy conservation is one of the pillars, then why not put it under a heading called "Main components", or something like that. If energy access is part of the definition then why is it not mentioned under definition? And "Pathways for climate change mitigation" is a very confusing heading. How about rather "Role in climate change mitigation" (I'll try to find the earlier discussion you are referring to). The section called "energy policies" could just be called "Policies" - as the whole article is about energy we don't need to repeat energy in the section titles. Same with "Sustainable energy systems" - shorten to "systems" which would make it a standard heading. EMsmile (talk) 08:46, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
The main purpose of the headings is to help the reader understand the topic, not to compare it to other issues related to climate change. Consistency between articles is a relatively low priority for this particular article IMHO - there is really no other topic that is parallel to the energy problem. "Energy policies" could be shortened to "Policies", sure. I do think "Sustainable energy systems" is a little bit clearer than "Systems" though. I don't see how we would have a section called "Society and culture" or "History" without about adding a lot of relatively unimportant information. Where I think we could really use standardization is in articles that are about one specific source of GHG emissions. E.g. we should have an article called Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and an article called Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and the reader should be able to easily compare them. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:01, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
As an outsider and novice to this article, I am still confused by your choice of headers. Most are fairly clear to me now but I have problems with these (please keep in mind that the headers should be as self explanatory as possible; I shouldn't have to read the text before I understand the heading; the heading should immediately tell me: am I looking at a solution, a component, a characteristics, a challenge, ...):
  • Energy access (is this a component, a characteristics, a problem or a solution?)
  • Energy conservation - same question as before; could it be grouped together with the previous heading to avoid those short Level-1 sections?
  • Sectors - is this sectors that produce sustainable energy or that consume the most of non sustainable energy? Should it be "sources" or "consumers" or "producers"?
  • Pathways for climate change mitigation - completely unclear. Should it be "Contributions towards climate change mitigation", or "Relationship with climate change mitigation" or something else? It says there that the "main" article on the topic is Climate change mitigation. Also we are using bolding in the bullet point list of that section, which I don't thinks is ideal or recommended (?). EMsmile (talk) 11:46, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
    EMsmile, Those are very good points, thanks for raising them. I agree we have too many level 1 headings. We should probably put all "problem statement" sections into one level 1 heading. I'll think about this some more. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:38, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
    I renamed energy access to lack of access to indicate it's a problem.
    I don't think there is a logical section to group conservation with, and it's sufficiently prominent to warrant it's own section
    Sectors: this is about energy uses/users. While consumers might technically work, this may imply individuals instead, which is not how my sources are dividing this.. Open to other suggestions.
    I had been thinking about grouping the problem statement sections as well. At first, I wanted to integrate them with the definitions section, but couldn't make that work. I've now put them under the heading background. I usually dislike such vague section headings, but I think it works here. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:16, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Content moved from sustainable development - anything useful?

I have cut out the following text from sustainable development and will replace it with an excerpt of this article. Before deleting this text block completely, I am just wondering if any of the sentences or references are useful and could be incorporated into this article? Probably not but please take a look: Sustainable energy is clean and can be used over a long period. Unlike fossil fuels and biofuels that provide the bulk of the world's energy, renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, solar and wind energy produce far less pollution.[1][2] Solar energy is commonly used on public parking meters, street lights and the roof of buildings.[3] Wind power has expanded quickly, its share of worldwide electricity usage at the end of 2014 was 3.1%.[4] Most of California's fossil fuel infrastructures are sited in or near low-income communities and have traditionally suffered the most from California's fossil fuel energy system. These communities are historically left out during the decision-making process and often end up with dirty power plants and other dirty energy projects that poison the air and harm the area. These toxicants are major contributors to health problems in the communities. As renewable energy becomes more common, fossil fuel infrastructures are replaced by renewables and we may begin to see a Renewable energy transition, providing better social equity to these communities.[5] Overall, and in the long run, sustainable development in the field of energy is also deemed to contribute to economic sustainability and national security of communities, thus being increasingly encouraged through investment policies.[6] EMsmile (talk) 12:54, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

EMsmile, Wow, thanks for removing that! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:17, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Biofuels cause pollution, not as green as thought – study". Reuters. 7 January 2013.
  2. ^ Fainstein, Susan S. (2000). "New Directions in Planning Theory". Urban Affairs Review. 35 (4): 451–478. doi:10.1177/107808740003500401.
  3. ^ Bedsworth, Louise W.; Hanak, Ellen (2010). "Adaptation to Climate Change: A Review of Challenges and Tradeoffs in Six Areas". Journal of the American Planning Association. 76 (4): 477–495. doi:10.1080/01944363.2010.502047.
  4. ^ http://www.ren21.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/REN12-GSR2015_Onlinebook_low1.pdf pg31
  5. ^ Campbell, Scott (1996). "Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?: Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Development". Journal of the American Planning Association. 62 (3): 296–312. doi:10.1080/01944369608975696.
  6. ^ Farah, Paolo Davide (2015). "Sustainable Energy Investments and National Security: Arbitration and Negotiation Issues". Journal of World Energy Law and Business. 8 (6). SSRN 2695579.

GA Review

GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Sustainable energy/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs) 20:41, 27 March 2021 (UTC)


Hello, I am planning on reviewing this article for GA Status, over the next couple of days. Thank you for nominating the article for GA status. I hope I will learn some new information, and that my feedback is helpful.

If nominators or editors could refrain from updating the particular section that I am updating until it is complete, I would appreciate it to remove a edit conflict. Please address concerns in the section that has been completed above (If I've raised concerns up to references, feel free to comment on things like the lede.)

I generally provide an overview of things I read through the article on a first glance. Then do a thorough sweep of the article after the feedback is addressed. After this, I will present the pass/failure. I may use strikethrough tags when concerns are met. Even if something is obvious why my concern is met, please leave a message as courtesy.

Best of luck! you can also use the {{done}} tag to state when something is addressed. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs)

Please let me know after the review is done, if you were happy with the review! Obviously this is regarding the article's quality, however, I want to be happy and civil to all, so let me know if I have done a good job, regardless of the article's outcome.

Prose

Lede

Done, FemkeMilene (talk) 15:57, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • It is similar to the concepts of green energy and clean energy - are these subjects something we could have an article on them, or is this what this article talks about? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:08, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
    I've been staring at this for a while. Clean and green energy are both terms that are used even more loosely than sustainable energy. I don't think we should have an article on them, because a are so vaguely defined. Their usage is closest to the sustainable energy (minus the social aspects, but then sustainable energy is quite often discussed minus the social aspect). I cannot find any source defining them to support the statement in the lead. Clayoquot, any thoughts on this? FemkeMilene (talk) 16:03, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
    Femkemilene, I've struggled with this stuff too. Having "clean energy" and "green energy" redirect here is the right decision, because approximately zero high-quality reliable sources define the terms, and they way they're used in common parlance is a clear subset of sustainable energy. How about if we just delete the sentence? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:07, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
    I think the policy on this isn't completely clear (not a synonym or very obvious variant, nor a minor sub topic as the examples in WP:R#PLA), so I agree we delete the sentence per WP:V. I will add a summary of the definition section you wrote to replace the sentence. FemkeMilene (talk) 18:35, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
    I don't have so much of an issue with there being a sentence (perhaps "sometimes linked to green energy"...), but I do think they shouldn't be bolded. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:50, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Is the refs in the lede neccesary? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:08, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
removed two of them, left the one about nuclear, as that is the most volatile part of this article. FemkeMilene (talk) 16:17, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
We have since added a couple more refs for some controversial statements. The current guidance in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Citations seems to give quite a bit of flexibility for editor consensus to decide when refs are necessary. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:51, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
linked. FemkeMilene (talk) 16:17, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Done, FemkeMilene (talk) 15:57, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • The energy transition to meet the world's needs for electricity, heating, cooling, and power for transport in a sustainable way is widely considered to be one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. [according to whom?]
Clayoquot, I find sentences like this difficult. One of the sources is a blog, which should probs be deleted. The other source states this as a fact, with no indication of 'widely believed'. Do you have ideas/time to deal with this one? FemkeMilene (talk) 16:21, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I've been thinking about this one. The blog source is published on the World Bank website and is written by experts, so I'd say it is a medium-quality RS. This claim is big but it's not controversial, so we don't need super-strong sourcing IMHO. Some options: 1) Omit the "widely considered" and state it as a fact, 2) Reword it to water down the claim and state it as a fact. If we do the latter, I might at some point suggest a quote to go beside it. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:05, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
stream of conciousness warning I'm still thinking about a logic for that entire paragraph. What I would like to do is a problem statement and then the political response. I feel like the problem statement might better fit as the third paragraph however.. Anyway, with the RfC about air pollution, the paragraph may become quite a bit longer than the others, and this is the type of sentence that may be condensed..
I also wonder whether a statement like this could benefit from a more modern source? If you want, I can check my books on whether they say something similar in their introduction. Agree the claim in not controversial. FemkeMilene (talk) 21:09, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Sure, that sounds good. I'm going to implement option 1 in the meantime and see if that sticks. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
  • nearly a billion people still lack access to electricity, - this might need to be explained why this in particular has to do with sustainable energy. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:08, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
    I've added an explanation of the definition to the first paragraph. Does this solve the issue? FemkeMilene (talk) 18:43, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Consider adding that sustainable energy environmental aspects also include "the production of hazardous waste and toxic emissions" to the first paragraph (it's currently under Definitions and background section). Sustainable energy is a very comprehensive topic and the lead could make that more clear I think. Bogazicili (talk) 17:06, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
    I will probably add a condensed version of this to the third paragraph, depending on the outcome of the RfC. FemkeMilene (talk) 20:39, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

General

I rather like the bullet point here, as they have the function of emphasising these aspects. Happy to be overruled here if would be against the manual of style.
Done, FemkeMilene (talk) 16:17, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Review meta comments

Just one image in the lead, or a collage

I think we should have either just one image in the lead, or a nice collage of representative images (like 2-4 of them). The current second image in the lead - that bar chart - is difficult for lay person readers to grasp. Also that same bar chart is included in quite a few other articles: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Energy_Consumption.svg (it's in renewable energy, climate change, climate change mitigation and in energy transition). EMsmile (talk) 04:40, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I do think we should have a diagram with percentages somewhere, but it doesn't have to be in the lede. Don't mind a collage, but there difficult to make pretty. FemkeMilene (talk) 07:34, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
A collage for the lead would be good. Are you volunteering? Pretty please? :) :) :) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:02, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
Hi Clayoquot, I was about to do up a collage of two images but I am actually stumped as to which images to use. I feel that the image should be sufficiently different from a typical "renawable energy" picture, such as solar or wind power so that we immediately make it clear how this article differs from renewable energy. Also the image captions should at least have the words "sustainable energy" in them (so far they don't). Also that diagram is alright, but again it shows the data for renewable energy, nothing about "sustainable energy", not even in the caption. - As a starting point, I will move that graph out of the lead now. But lets figure out what would be an ideal picture, or picture collage, for sustainable energy? Wondering if any of the images or graphs used for Sustainable Development Goal 7 would be worth including. The terminology used there is "clean energy" (which redirects to here). EMsmile (talk) 11:23, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
Why is having 2 images in the lead a problem? I'd say it's a strength, as the first image can be a thumbnail visual, and the second can be an overview schematic. I think the article is worse for having moved the overview schematic image down, as people new to the subject won't understand energy sources in context. Efbrazil (talk) 15:38, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
It's an unwritten rule in Wikipedia that a good article only has one image in the lead (or a collage - which counts as one image). Take a look at a bunch of featured articles and you'll see: usually exactly one image in the lead. It forces editors to think really carefully about that one image, not just dump a few images there and hope for the best. See here for guidance: "As with all images, but particularly the lead, the image used should be relevant and technically well-produced. It is also common for the lead image to be representative because it provides a visual association for the topic, and allow readers to quickly assess if they have arrived at the right page." And surely the reader can be expected to scroll a little to get to other images. Furthermore, I am trying to make it directly clear in the lead image how "sustainable energy" differs from "renewable energy". So far, both of the images in the lead were actually just for "renewable energy" so I consider neither of them ideal for the lead. Probably a schematic showing the main elements of "sustainable energy" would be best. EMsmile (talk) 15:55, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Saying every lede should have exactly one image is like saying every lede should be exactly 2 paragraphs. While more images in the lede isn't necessarily better, neither is one image better as a rule, it depends on the subject. Images that convey holistic information about the article from different perspectives can coexist constructively in the lede. The quote says nothing about how many images should be in the lede, just that the very first image is important, and that's very true as it's the one that appears in all search results. Efbrazil (talk) 17:05, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

If we are going to have a collage, ideally it would include a photo of at least one energy source, one photo of sustainable energy being consumed (such as an electric vehicle), and one photo representing energy conservation/efficiency (maybe an LED light bulb or bicycling). I'm not sure though if we have good free images of all of these that would work together though. Collages are indeed challenging. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:15, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

The fact that almost all FA articles only have exactly one image in the lead ought to tell us something. Obviously it usually works best and forces editors to think really hard about which image they want people to associate with the article's topic. Our current image in the lead is about solar panels. Do we want that the be the main association with "Sustainable energy"? I think for this topic, which is more of an approach than a technology, a schematic would work best. Compare for example with the lead image used for sanitation. Any other image, like a toilet or a wastewater treatment plant, would have given off the wrong first impression. Or see at the article toilet which uses a triple image to show the variety of toilets around the world (I just tried to align it better - hoping that someone will help me with that one day). If we were to use photos, we should also have a photo to indicate "access to clean energy" (as used in SDG 7) which sets the concept apart from just "renewable energy". - And by the way, I think it's a good guidance to say that leads should generally have 4 paragraphs (not just 2) and that they should summarise the entire content of the article well. Most of the leads don't do that yet. People spend far too little time on the leads. Usually they "leave it to last" and at the end just forget about it. Most leads only focus on the definitions but not on the entire article. A lot of readers don't read past the lead so it's a shame that the quality of many leads is actually quite low. EMsmile (talk) 14:28, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
It's funny to hear you say that many people only read the ledes, and then to say that all graphics except for an icon / collage should be shoved out of the lede. Do you see the contradiction there? Do you not see the value in producing an image for the intro that is summative, like a graph or map, rather than just an icon for identifying the topic? Efbrazil (talk) 17:08, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
I have never said anything about an "icon", where do you get that from? I am talking about a schematic or a collage of several images and have given the examples of sanitation and toilet which I think are not perfect but make my point. Do you really think the current image, showing solar panels on a roof, is great? Or that image that is currently in first place of the main body, showing how "renewable energy" has increased over the years in comparison with coal etc. is the best we can do for the lead of "sustainable energy". Is that really the kinds of images that will help people grasp immediately what sustainable energy is all about? I doubt it. I think we can do better. EMsmile (talk) 00:15, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
EMsmileThe current image is not great, I have no complaint about swapping it out. The first image should be visual (not a graph), as it is used in search results. My complaint was with removing the graph and rigidly adhering to "one image in the lede" as a rule. One image every 3 paragraphs or so is a good rule, and since we have a long lede and a graph that helps capture the issue overall, adding a second image is very beneficial to the lede. The graph has nothing to do with "definition", where it got pushed off to. Moving the graph out of the lede was a bad edit, that's what I'm trying to reverse here. Efbrazil (talk) 17:57, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
Well, there are different opinions about that graph. Note that FemkeMilene agreed with me when she wrote above "I do think we should have a diagram with percentages somewhere, but it doesn't have to be in the lede. ". Let's collect a few more opinions from people, and give them time to respond. That particular graph is not so amazing because it talks about "renewable energy" which is just one aspect of "sustainable energy" so that's why I am saying it doesn't deserve to be in the lead. Sure, we can move it to elsewhere in the article if its current location under "definition" annoys you. - I have just embarked on asking some colleagues over at Energypedia if they have suggestions for a suitable image. Let's see what they (or anyone else) suggests. EMsmile (talk) 00:51, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

FYI

We're editing this article during the UK meetup. FemkeMilene (talk) 14:25, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Air pollution deaths

Why was the 7 million number removed from the lead?

"Through adolescence and beyond, air pollution— principally driven by fossil fuels, and exacerbated by climate change—damages the heart, lungs, and every other vital organ. These effects accumulate over time, and into adulthood, with global deaths attributable to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2·5) remaining at 2·9 million in 2016 (indicator 3.3.2) and total global air pollution deaths reaching 7 million.8" p. 1837 Bogazicili (talk) 16:57, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

See "Air pollution in lede" up above, that's where this discussion happened. Efbrazil (talk) 18:02, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Minor clarification needed

The sentence Oil spills during transport at sea harms marine life; when oil ignites instead toxic gases are released to the atmosphere.[18] is very odd and appears to have lost some meaning during an edit. I am conscious that a GA nomination is in progress and this might need fixing before the GA review is complete. I considered various clarifications , but without access to the source, none seemed appropriate.  Velella  Velella Talk   16:21, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Tried to clarify, but recognize that my prose skills are meh. FemkeMilene (talk) 16:15, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Air pollution in lede

Efbrazil: Considering ambient air pollution is one of the major aspects of sustainable energy, I think it has to be mentioned in the lede. It's more important than in climate change, where I've tried to keep mention of it limited in the lede.

A second problem with your edit is that you've included uncited information, which also isn't present in the body of the article: about the WHO. I'm convinced this isn't due for the lede, where we shouldn't go into to much detail about about the opinion of an institution about a subtopic (health) of one of the problems that necessitate sustainable energy. FemkeMilene (talk) 17:47, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

P.S. can we do WP:BRD here as well; twice reverting is allowed, but I think not relaxed FemkeMilene (talk) 17:48, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
FemkeMilene I left in "smokey" for cooking, but I see your point. My point is that ambient air pollution can be eliminated while still relying on fossil fuels for power. The first world does not need to make much of any change to how it consumes power if your primary concern is ambient air pollution. If the primary concern is ambient air pollution, we arguably should shift the developing world to copy the existing first world technologies and standards.
If we mention ambient air pollution then I think we should also mention specific health impacts of climate change, or specific environmental impacts of climate change. Would you like another sentence or two trying to enumerate health impacts that would include ambient air pollution? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Efbrazil (talk • contribs)
I will shortly be re-adding " Air pollution from fossil fuels is estimated to cause 3 million deaths each year, and air pollution from use of dirty cooking fuels is estimated to cause around 4 million deaths each year." Why are we even arguing about whether the deaths of 7 million people per year is lede-worthy? If there is some way to eliminate ambient air pollution from fossil fuels while still relying on them for power, the article currently does not say what that is and I do not know of any set of technologies that can do such a thing. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:26, 19 March 2021 (UTC)


Efbrazil, regarding your most recent revert, 1) Why did you remove "key to most of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals for 2030", which is sourced in the article? 2) What issues are you referring to when you say that issues have been discussed and resolved on the Talk page? 3) What is your source for the WHO statement?, and 4) Why focus on the climate impacts of the 21st century when most of the impacts will be felt after it ends? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:14, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

If you want to put back in item 1 above that's OK, although I don't know that it is warranted in the lede. I just backed all the changes out in the hopes we could come to consensus here first. First, let me address the air pollution issue.
For dirty cooking fuels, the fix is to provide people with clean burning ovens or electrification, neither of which are necessarily "sustainable". You can easily make the argument that we should build more fossil fuel power plants in the developing world and distribute propane stoves to resolve this problem. It is a developing world problem, and copying countries like the USA is the most straight forward path out, which is not sustainable.
The deaths from ambient air pollution is also a number that doesn't connect to "sustainability" very cleanly. From phys.org: "People usually think of power plants and cars, but nowadays, livestock and wood stoves are as big of a problem. It's also our farms and our homes," said Sumil Thakrar, postdoctoral research associate in the Departments of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering and Applied Economics.
As for climate change, it should not be mentioned as an aside. Being balanced means talking about things proportional to their importance. The WHO statement is from here: https://www.who.int/globalchange/global-campaign/cop21/en/
My preference is to not shock people with numbers in the lede that are open to misinterpretation when taken out of context. Efbrazil (talk) 23:39, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Efbrazil, while a discussion is ongoing, we should go back to the latest version for which there was a consensus. You cannot say in your edit summary that it was resolved as you 1) still add it uncited 2) still ahve a fact in the lede that isn't in the article body. Please revert yourself.
The statement about the WHO is on the verge of being undue in the lede of climate change. Look at the sourcing: a call to action for the COP21! That's not the high-quality sourcing we expect of featured articles. It's a primary source as well.. For this article, it is definitely undue in the lede. We now dedicate an entire paragraph of the lede to climate change. While I'd like to frame this differently, you can't say it's overshadowed.
Sustainability is a scale. It may be that in some circumstances dirty fuels are less sustainable than some fossil fuels. They are also a climate pollutant, and directly harm people's health, ticking the two major boxes of unsustainable fuels. FemkeMilene (talk) 07:51, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
I'm not going to be responsible for putting false and misleading information into the lede of this article. If you want to be responsible for that, go ahead. Maybe you should add deaths from car accidents, since they are fossil fuel powered, along with deaths from obesity, since fossil fuels have enabled a sedentary lifestyle.
Let's get back to the Bruntland definition of sustainability: "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." What that means is all the UN sustainability talk is about climate change, not air pollution, and not about how many deaths something may or may not cause. See here: https://www.un.org/en/sections/general/un-and-sustainability/index.html
Here is a proposed rewrite of that paragraph that purges statements that there is not consensus on and adds current information from the WHO Website:
The energy transition to meet the world's needs for electricity, heating, cooling, and power for transport in a sustainable way is widely considered to be one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. Worldwide, energy demands are increasing and nearly a billion people still lack access to electricity, with around 3 billion relying on smoky fuels such as wood, charcoal or animal dung to cook. Production and consumption of energy emits over 70% of the human-caused greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, threatening clean air, safe drinking water, nutritious food supply, and safe shelter.
The description of health impacts come from current WHO text here: https://www.who.int/health-topics/climate-change. Thoughts? Efbrazil (talk) 18:32, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
Tbh, I still don't quite understand your point. Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs is clearly about current environmental impacts of fossil fuels, including ambient air pollution. These numbers, to one significant digit, are consistent across sources. Our Soysal source decidates space mainly to ambient air pollution, Kutscher dedicates significant space to both and Letcher mentions ambient air pollution more. These are all HQRS with as topic 'sustainable energy' in general.
I don't see the relevance of some initiative to make the UN internally more sustainable. Your proposed sentence implies that climate change threatens clean air, while it's clear that direct pollution is so much more significant. Our article does not mention any of those CC effects, so this is all uncited, going against the rules for GA, or good Wikipedia writing in general. I will revert. FemkeMilene (talk) 20:33, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
Are you saying that air pollution is the primary concern of sustainable energy? Because the lede that was there before only focused on that issue, mentioning climate change as an aside without talking about any climate change related health or environment issues.
Are you saying all air pollution deaths are the fault of not using sustainable energy? Because that was the claim the lede was effectively making in mentioning those numbers without context.
I mentioned the UN source because when the UN is looking at it's own sustainability impact it is not looking at its contribution to air pollution, it is only looking at its climate change impacts.
Going further, it's unclear to me whether fine particulates are a sustainability concern at all- yes, they cause deaths, but those deaths are self imposed and the particulates wash out of the air. Particulates are not a burden that will increase or become "unsustainable" for future generations. As the UN definition says, sustainability is all about whether an activity can be sustained across generations. Some activities are not sustainable because they increasingly damage the planet or deplete resources, like tearing down rainforests or progressively adding toxins to the environment. Just because an activity is damaging does not mean it is not sustainable. For instance, take smoking cigarettes- the activity is damaging to your health, but it can be done generation after generation in perpetuity, so it is arguably "sustainable". Efbrazil (talk) 23:48, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
The lede has never implied that all air pollution deaths are the fault of not using sustainable energy.
You seem to be using a definition of "sustainability" that doesn't consider the deaths of millions of people a year to be a sustainability issue, as long as the rate isn't going up. This article must continue to use the range of definitions of sustainable energy that we find in reliable sources, none of which are as narrow as your definition.
As for giving more weight to climate change in the lead, one thing to keep in mind that word count can matter less than placement. The climate change issue is the first issue in the lead, as it should be. That placement gives it a lot of weight. It wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to throw in a more few words to explain why climate change is a huge problem, but I don't think it would help the reader. If the reader has found some way to be unmoved by the many dire warnings about climate change that they've certainly already seen, another 16 words here will not change that. What the words would more likely to do is make the reader bored and decide to stop reading. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:09, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
People tend to see climate change as a more abstract threat (melting ice caps? who cares?) than air pollution (my lungs!), so if anything we need to be more clearly pointing out health impacts of climate change. As a matter of balance, if we are not going to mention health issues associated with climate change, then we should not for air pollution either. Efbrazil (talk) 17:02, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
This is starting to be an edit war.. Maybe you could start a RfC on whether air pollution should be removed from the lede? You're edit summary seems to indicate you're still thinking about renewable energy instead of sustainable energy...
I'm willing to compromise by condensing the sentence, and mentioning other environmental issues such as oil spills, and biodiversity loss. I really don't see how you can claim that these air pollution deaths are only tangibly related to energy.. There is a bit of pollution from industry and car tires, but most of it is from various form of energy production. I agree with Clayoquot that familiaty with climate change is so large that people will bore from reading more about it here. FemkeMilene (talk) 17:17, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
I understand the concern you're expressing that the obvious alternatives to energy poverty are also problematic from a sustainability point of view. I suspect there are some quality sources we could use to expand on this dilemma in the body of the article and perhaps in the lede as well.
Even if one assumes that climate change is a far bigger concern than present-day energy poverty, ignoring energy poverty is not a good climate change strategy. The IPCC puts a great deal of emphasis on putting mitigation strategies into the context of the SDGs. Emissions are growing fastest in the middle and low-income countries; I don't see how this is going to get solved unless the rich countries work with the poorer ones to develop the technology they need. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:43, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
Regarding "none of which are as narrow as your definition"- that's not my definition, it is the definition from the Bruntland definition of sustainability that the article leads with in the definitions section.
Why mention the 7 million number if you are not putting the blame or response to that number on sustainable energy? You might as well quote a number about annual cancer deaths, since some of those will be fixed by shifting to sustainable energy.
The sources of air pollution deaths according to the phys.org article are 50% non-fossil fuel related in the developed world. In the developing world, most deaths are related to poor pollution controls and dirty cooking that are best fixed by copying first world practices.
Regarding the body of the article, I think it is pretty good in presenting information with context. One thing that could be happening is that you two are so familiar with the issue that you can't see how someone that just reads the intro is going to come away misinformed.
Regarding energy poverty, I'm not suggesting we ignore that at all. I'm not sure where that complaint comes from.
As for an RfC, my preference here would be for consensus wording. Barring that, I'm happy to offer a "con" statement for the RfC on the old air pollution sentence, but I really can't see a way to justify a "for" statement. To avoid a revert war we could add the sentence back along with Template:Disputed inline. Efbrazil (talk) 17:43, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
Efbrazil, please write the "con statement" and I'll open an RFC. Bogazicili (talk) 18:04, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Bogazicili, Before you open an RfC, could you please run the RfC question(s) by us on this Talk page? I made some comments on RfC wording here: User talk:Efbrazil#Sustainable energy. Best, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:14, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Here's the con statement:

We keep saying 7 million deaths a year from air pollution in the context of articles about fossil fuels / climate change. That's misleading, as it naturally makes people assume those deaths are from fossil fuels. We might as well quote the number about annual cancer deaths or numbers of dead from automobile use, since some of those will be fixed by shifting to sustainable energy as well.

It's better to be more precise, and we have that precise number- it's "over 1 million" according to the WHO. See page 27 here: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/276405/9789241514972-eng.pdf?ua=1 Note that the WHO is talking about lives saved from pollution by meeting paris goals by 2050, and meeting paris goals by 2050 means being globally carbon neutral by then, so the 1 million number connects directly and completely to fossil fuel pollution deaths.

The discrepancy of 6 million is for 2 reasons. First, the sources of air pollution deaths are at least half non-fossil fuel related in the developed world: https://phys.org/news/2020-07-sources-deadly-air-pollution-states.html. In the developing world, where the bulk of air pollution deaths are, most are are related to poor pollution controls and dirty indoor cooking. Those deaths are best fixed by copying first world practices like higher pollution standards and not using dirty indoor cook stoves, not by shifting away from fossil fuels.

Another point is about "sustainability", which Bruntland defines as: "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." That definition raises the question of whether the fine particulates in air pollution is really a "sustainability" concern, or whether it is more like smoking cigarettes- harmful to health yes, but not a cross generational concern like tearing down rainforests or progressively adding toxins to the environment. Mentioning the 1 million number as an ancillary benefit to sustainable energy makes sense, but the focus of sustainability should be on sustainability issues. For instance, when the UN talks about its own sustainability efforts, all they talk about is climate change: https://www.un.org/en/sections/general/un-and-sustainability/index.html

In summary, there's no reason to use the misleading 7 million number when we have the more precise "over 1 million" number, and even the 1 million number should be of secondary importance when discussing "sustainability". Efbrazil (talk) 18:27, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

The nice thing about this article, in contrast to climate change, is that we can talk about all types of pollution from energy, not only from fossil fuels. That 1 million number is specifically tied to the old scenarios of how to mitigate climate change (which had more polluting BECCS then many current scenarios), but doesn't include other improvements in terms of sustainable energy, such as clean cooking. I'm in the middle of a full rewrite of the lead, taking into account the arguments here. Could we postpone any RfC until then? FemkeMilene (talk) 19:06, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
I don't like repeating myself, but how is dying from air pollution meeting the needs of the present. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:27, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Note I made an edit above to raise the issue of whether air pollution deaths from fine particulates are a "sustainability" concern at all. Some aspects of air pollution like acid rain and climate change are sustainability concerns, but not all impacts of air pollution are sustainability issues. Please draw the distinction clearly. I have no problem delaying an RfC so long as the misleading 7 million number stays out of the text.
To specifically address "how is dying from air pollution meeting the needs of the present"- obviously it isn't, but neither are deaths from a sedentary lifestyle, or smoking cigarettes, or deaths from vehicular accidents, or really any of the long list of causes of death. Is every unhealthy activity a sustainability problem in your book? Efbrazil (talk) 19:33, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Just so we're all on the same page, there was never a "7 million number". There were two numbers: 3 million deaths from fossil fuel air pollution, and 4 million deaths from cooking. What you kept removing was two numbers, not one. [2] Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:58, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Clayoquot, I'm proposing 7 million number per below, although I'm fine with something like your previous wording as well:
"Through adolescence and beyond, air pollution— principally driven by fossil fuels, and exacerbated by climate change—damages the heart, lungs, and every other vital organ. These effects accumulate over time, and into adulthood, with global deaths attributable to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2·5) remaining at 2·9 million in 2016 (indicator 3.3.2) and total global air pollution deaths reaching 7 million.8" p. 1837
Also per p.3
"Economic recovery packages that prioritise outdated forms of energy and transport that are fossil fuel intensive will have unintended sideeffects, unnecessarily adding to the 7 million people that die every year from air pollution."
What's completely not ok was deleting any mention of this, which was done by Efbrazil [3]. So I was thinking about opening an RFC asking if pollution deaths should be mentioned in the lead, before FemkeMilene's comment about postponing any RfC. Bogazicili (talk) 02:04, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Taking a look at the article again, it's clear that this edit [4] was unjustified. Sustainable energy is also about things like home heating (already in the article), clean cooking [5] (not in the article it's actually in the article under Energy poverty) and "the production of hazardous waste and toxic emissions" (Definitions and background section).Bogazicili (talk) 15:19, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
If you want to add in a number, please use the 1 million number from the WHO. If you disagree with the WHO number, then please try to find a more reliable number. Presenting the 7 million number without context is misleading, as I tried to explain in my con statement for the RfC. I don't support adding misleading information into the article without an RfC. Efbrazil (talk) 16:03, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
I plan to present an RfC with 3 or 4 options (probs Thursday) spanning various options. Before officially starting the RfC, I will give you time for input to comment on better prose and to see whether I've left out any major option that should be considered. Does that work as a plan? FemkeMilene (talk) 16:11, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for taking this on, that's fine by me, and hopefully we can get to consensus before RfC. Efbrazil (talk) 16:24, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
For long-term stability, I believe a RfC with a broader editor input is preferable. This was also such a pain point at climate change, and I don't want to see people blocked for edit warring if we can establish a consensus. I will include one or two compromise proposals in the RfC. FemkeMilene (talk) 16:29, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Efbrazil, 1 million number is WP:Original research per above explanation by Femkemilene [6]. Here are the breakdown of numbers: " After analysing the risk factors and taking into account revisions in methodology, WHO estimates indoor air pollution was linked to 4.3 million deaths in 2012 in households cooking over coal, wood and biomass stoves. The new estimate is explained by better information about pollution exposures among the estimated 2.9 billion people living in homes using wood, coal or dung as their primary cooking fuel, as well as evidence about air pollution's role in the development of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and cancers.

In the case of outdoor air pollution, WHO estimates there were 3.7 million deaths in 2012 from urban and rural sources worldwide." [7]

Both indoor and outdoor air pollution is relevant to this article, as sustainable energy includes both things like solar energy power station and clean cooking. Bogazicili (talk) 17:02, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

To present the deaths from cook stoves number accurately you must also say that the quickest solution to eliminating those deaths is to use yet more fossil fuels. Those cook stoves are not used in the developed world because people have access to natural gas and electricity from fossil fuel power plants. If your goal is to eliminate deaths from cook stoves, the quickest way to do so is to copy developed world practices and get people cooking with gas or electricity from fossil fuel power plants.
To take another angle, consider that 2 million people per year are being killed by a sedentary lifestyle. If people would just use their bodies more to walk and bike and grow food and so forth then this issue would be solved sustainably. Should we link deaths from a sedentary lifestyle number to sustainable energy? https://www.who.int/news/item/04-04-2002-physical-inactivity-a-leading-cause-of-disease-and-disability-warns-who
How about the 1.35 million that die from vehicular accidents? Are cars sustainable at all, even if electric, since they kill people at a significant rate? https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html
This dispute reminds me of a section I had to fight to delete that linked sustainable energy to the empowerment of women. It compared today's world to a utopian vision that included sustainable energy, then said look how much better off women will be in this utopian vision. We need to be more rigorous than that. Efbrazil (talk) 17:53, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
If a reliable source connects sedentary lifestyle with sustainable energy, you can add it into the article with due weight. You can review core policies here: Wikipedia:Core content policies. Bogazicili (talk) 18:32, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Re To present the deaths from cook stoves number accurately you must also say that the quickest solution to eliminating those deaths is to use yet more fossil fuels.. No, this isn't something we "must" say. There are lots of problems in making energy sustainable that we don't know how to solve. This article should be helping the reader to understand the problems, not presenting bad solutions as if they are the only solutions.
As an aside, these deaths could be mostly eliminated by switching to cooking via, for instance, electricity generated from solar energy, which is abundant in these countries and can be implemented around as quickly as fossil fuel power plants. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:03, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Draft RfC

Thanks for your patience everybody. I've done quite a lot of tweaking in the lede this last week, making sure it has a more logical flow and structure, and making sure everything is cited in the body of the article. I tried to make space in the problem statement + solution paragraph to accomodate the various options people have proposed to discuss air pollution. I've tweaked the options a bit so I'm convinced they are compliant with WP:V.

(I'm noting here for convenience that option D does not mention air pollution in the lede at all. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:52, 2 April 2021 (UTC))

Please help improve the RfC draft by

  1. suggesting minor prose improvements
  2. Indicating if there is no option you would support
  3. Suggesting we drop an option

I'd like to post the following RfC tomorrow, depending on your feedback. I'll encourage all to support as many options as possible, so that we can reach a consensus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Femkemilene (talk • contribs)

(Quick comment before I have to head out: It strikes me as odd to combine the effects of fossil fuels and the effects of traditional cooking practices. I will check the sources and write more later.) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:23, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
You are either presenting the 7 million number in an alarmist way without any context, or you are leaving it out entirely (C and D). I would prefer you offer up wording that tries to get to consensus. For instance:
E add after " and can cause toxic waste" It also contributes to fine particulate air pollution where there are insufficient pollution controls, which kills 7 million people per year
F add after " and can cause toxic waste" The WHO has estimated that meeting Paris agreement targets will save over 1 million lives per year by 2050 due to reduced air pollution alone
I am also fine with C. Efbrazil (talk) 17:19, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Neither of those are presented and cited in the body, so would fail V as it stands. Could you include a proposal to change the body as well + source? FemkeMilene (talk) 17:45, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for preparing this. I'm good with A, B1 and B2. There's no reason to omit numbers, as the lead is rather short. It improves the comprehensiveness of the lead by quantifying a core issue. Bogazicili (talk) 18:31, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I added the info into the article as femke requested with sources and quotes, including F verbatim. C, D, E, and F and all fine by me. If we do F, then the information would probably be migrated up from the article, along with the source, so as to not be redundant. A, B1, and B2 are misleading and unacceptable. Efbrazil (talk) 22:25, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Basically all information in the lede needs to be in the body of the article, so don't worry about duplication (last line MOS:INTRO). I think the 1 million is undue for this article (hence my request for including it in the proposal instead of editing the article), but will make my case after the RfC if F does not gain support. FemkeMilene (talk) 22:36, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
@Efbrazil: You seem more enthusiastic about C than D. In order to limit the amount of choices, would it be okay to drop D? And which of E/F do you prefer, or do you think both need to be included? My initial proposal with five options is already a bit ambitious, and I worry that additional options will make it difficult to find consensus. I'm assuming that Clayoquot will replace option A, as that was an attempt to include her view. FemkeMilene (talk) 16:04, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm surprised Efbrazil made another unilateral edit [8]. It is also again WP:Original Research. The source says this:

"Meeting the targets of the Paris climate agreement would be expected to save over one million lives a year from air pollution alone by 2050, according to the most recent assessment." [9]

What is Paris agreement targets? Limiting warming to 2C with aspirational goal of 1.5C. Even 1.5C goal does not envision getting rid of all fossil fuels, but a net zero goal.

There's also more recent research that revised numbers [10] [11] Bogazicili (talk) 17:40, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Again, going back to actual study, these are the numbers: " more ambitious 2 °C-compatible pathway raises the number of avoided premature deaths from air pollution to 178–346 thousand annually in 2030, and up to 0.7–1.5 million in the year 2050" [12]
So "up to 0.7–1.5 million" by 2050 for 2C goal, which envisions net zero by 2070, and again that's net zero, not elimination of fossil fuels.Bogazicili (talk) 17:51, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm fine dropping D, although it is better than A, B1, and B2. Note the sourced edit I just made showing the 7 million number is iffy, because ourworldindata has cook stove deaths at 1.6 million (not 3.8) by IHME, and that's as of 2017 (they see a downward trend, so it would be less now). Here's a link to the source.
Note that on a per capita basis, the primary users of fossil fuel based power are in high income countries, but pollution deaths are overwhelmingly concentrated in middle income countries (outdoor air) and low income countries (cook stoves). Here is another crack at consensus wording based on those facts and the debate happening here. I am leaving out the numbers of dead from indoor cook stoves due to the uncertainty around that number, plus it is worth noting that sources say the fix to indoor cook stoves is really about shifting from solid fuels to biogas, ethanol, LPG, natural gas and electricity (not necessarily "sustainable"):
G add after " and can cause toxic waste" A targeted shift to sustainable energy sources would also help reduce the 3 million annual deaths from outdoor air pollution concentrated in middle-income countries, and could help prevent millions more deaths from use of solid fuel based indoor cook stoves in low-income countries Efbrazil (talk) 19:12, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm keen on having an option with the number of millions not specified. We can add it as an option (and I'll drop one of the Bs to make sure we're not exceeding 4 options), but you will not gain my support for so much detail in the lede. (also, in terms of prose, drop also, end do some magic with the last bit of 'solid fuel based indoor cook stoves' (I hate pointing out bad prose which I cannot fix myself)). FemkeMilene (talk) 19:25, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Could you strike options A, B1, and B2, since the sources in the article no longer back up those numbers? Also, I would like you to propose wording with numbers that you think reflect reality. My impression is that anything I propose is going to be shot down at this point because I am proposing it. I'm not attached to any one wording, I'm just trying to prevent blatant misinformation. Efbrazil (talk) 21:03, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
I was just going to say I could go with some version of G. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:54, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

Hi everyone. This looks to me like one of those "slow down to speed up" times. I think we have an excellent chance of finding wording that everyone can live with if we get a clearer picture on what exactly we're arguing about. Could you all please help by answering the questions below?

  1. Deaths attributed to cooking-related air pollution: Do we have agreement that deaths from cooking-related air pollution should be mentioned and quantified in the lede? The issues that we would need to sort out are: A) what range of numbers of millions to include, and B) how to describe the source of pollution (type of fuel vs. how the fuel is burned)
  2. Deaths attributed to fossil fuel air pollution: Do we have agreement that deaths from outoor air pollution should be mentioned and quantified in the lede? The issues we need to sort out are how to quantify this. The main options seem to be A) Present 3 million annual deaths from outdoor air pollution and say that coal and biomass burning are major contributors, B) Present the estimate of 1 million annual deaths that could be prevented by meeting the Paris agreement commitments, and C) Present 3.6 million annual deaths from fossil fuel air pollution (OWID, 2015)
  3. Additional context: Efbrazil you've mentioned a few times that certain numbers would be misleading without additional context. What additional context do you feel is needed?
  4. Is there anything else that people disagree on? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:54, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
  1. My preference is to not present the issue, but if we do present the issue, we must present context. First, the number of deaths per year is either below 1.6 million or 3.8 million, depending on source. Second, the fix is to get everyone cooking with biogas, ethanol, LPG, natural gas and electricity (not necessarily "sustainable"). It is possible that sustainable energy can be part of the solution, but it's certainly not necessary or the most straight forward fix.
  2. I had not seen the 3.6 million number- that's high, as their source also claims 5.55 million deaths per year if you factor in nonfossil anthropogenic sources as well. It also runs counter to their own Web site, which claims 3.4 million deaths per year from all air pollution, regardless of source. I guess I'd feel comfortable with "over 3 million" plus clarifying that the deaths are related to poor pollution controls in middle-income countries, where rates are 10X what they are in sub-saharan Africa and also wealthy countries (where rates have been falling for decades due to pollution controls).
  3. Most people will only read the lede, and if they are bluntly told something simple like "It is a major contributor to air pollution, which kills 7 million people per year" then their take away is that fossil fuel industry is killing 7 million people per year, and switching to windmills and solar panels is how you zero that number out. What I think the necessary context is I raised in the two points above, and I attempted to wordsmith all that context into 1 sentence in option G above.
  4. Nope! If you are happy with a variant of G though, please propose it. Efbrazil (talk) 23:29, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    Thanks. Some more questions: Regarding #1, 1A) Why is your preference to not present the issue? 1B) It appears that your proposal G presents "the fix" by saying "A targeted shift to sustainable energy sources would also help...". Is this what you mean by presenting the fix? Regarding #2, I think it's a major oversimplification to attribute the 10x differences in death rates to pollution controls. OWID says the rates are affected by healthcare quality and availability, population age, and natural particulate matter (sand and dust) to a very large extent. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 00:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
@Clayoquot 1A) I should have said that I would rather not present deaths from indoor cook stoves in the lede unless we can provide proper context, and providing that context takes space. We must make it clear that the solution to indoor cook stoves is not windmills and solar panels, but rather a shift from low to middle income living standards, and that cooking fuel can shift from solid fuel to propane or gas and the issue is fixed. That plus the issue of intergenerational sustainability raise the question to me as to whether indoor cook stoves are a sustainable energy issue at all (although I realize most people will say yes).
1B) It's more qualified than the original text, which pretty squarely points the finger for those 3 million deaths at fossil fuels. While many factors play a role in outdoor pollution, my understanding is that pollution controls are the primary factor separating the death rates of middle and high income countries, and are the primary reason that pollution deaths have been falling for decades in high income countries. For those reasons, I think pointing towards pollution controls is more accurate than simply saying that the deaths are from non-sustainable power generation, as that again leaves readers of the lede with the impression that the primary solution to air pollution is windmills and solar panels. Regardless, I think we should make it clear why wealthy countries have rates of pollution death that are up to 10X less than middle income countries even though they consume much more fossil fuel energy. Efbrazil (talk) 17:59, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
@Efbrazil: On the cooking issue, I think I'm getting a clearer sense of what you mean by context. You want the article to describe a solution to cooking-related mortality that requires consuming fossil fuels at middle-income levels, and position it as "the solution", and you feel it is inappropriate to discuss cooking-related mortality without also describing this solution. You haven't provided any sources that say this is the solution. Nor have you provided evidence that other reliable sources avoid stating the problem unless they discuss solutions at the same time.
The cooking issue seems ripe for an RfC, so I'll draft a question focusing specifically on whether cooking-related mortality should be included in the lede with the context that you want, included in the lede without that context, or not included at all.
Regarding 1B, I don't think your premise about why wealthy countries have fewer air pollution deaths is supported by the sources, as I described in the Distribution of air pollution deaths below. Would you like to comment there? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:58, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
@Clayoquot: Cook stove death source is here, quote: It is typically only when households shift within the middle income bracket that fuel sources transition from solid fuels into non-solid fuels (which would be considered cleaner fuels and technologies) such as ethanol, natural gas and finally electricity.
Regarding 1B: I'll look into better sourcing, but here is a quote from one source: This transition across Europe and North America was achieved through a number of economic, technological, and policy measures. National regulation and regional policy agreements played a crucial role this clean-up; the first being the 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) signed by 35 countries across North America, Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc. Since then, a number of progressive Sulphur Protocols and European directives have set regulatory limits on SO2 emissions from large power stations and industrial processes. This has forced the adoption of emissions reduction technologies such as ‘scrubbers’ which strip the gases of sulphur before being emitted, as well as a migration away from cheaper coal and oil sources which typically have higher sulphur contents. Efbrazil (talk) 22:21, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Re 1A, On second thought, instead of proceeding to an RfC, it would be better to start by writing more about the cooking problem in the body of the article so we can get a better sense of what, if anything, to condense for the lede. That OWID source is good, but it doesn't support a claim that moving into a middle income bracket is "the" solution. It supports a claim that this is "one" solution. I'll look into drafting something that talks about solutions and their sustainability issues. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:12, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

No to saying "coal and biomass burning are major contributors" to outdoor air pollution. In developed countries, transport sector plays a big role. Current text in the article will also need to be fixed. If we are using ourworldindata stats, we can also mention combined outdoor and indoor air pollution is the 4th leading cause of death worldwide. As for indoor air pollution, this is the latest review article:

"Household air pollution is responsible for 2.9 million annual deaths and causes significant health, economic and social consequences, particularly in low- and middle-income countries" 2019 review article

I still support mentioning all issues and numbers comprehensively.

I also suggest pausing the RFC for awhile and going over the sources. Our World in Data seems low quality. For example in p 23, in Figure 15, death rates due to ambient PM2.5 in Europe (largely high income) is higher than SE Asia, which is middle income. Bogazicili (talk) 01:04, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Good idea, I've started an analysis of sources here: Talk:Sustainable energy/Air pollution sources. Please add to it if you can. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:59, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
1) Mentioned yes, I'm starting to lean more against quantifying it, at least with a specific number. The only numbers I want to see in a lede are canonical numbers, and I initially though air pollution (7 million) was one of those, but I seem to be mistaken. If it's unclear what the exact number is, I prefer to keep it out.
2) Same here (also for symmetry, I wouldn't want to quantify one, but not the other). I argue against tying air pollution to Paris, as that is an agreement about climate mitigation, not about sustainable energy, and so doesn't capture the switch to clean cooking which also affects outdoor pollution significantly. We risk focussing to much of climate change. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:33, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
I still need to go over few more sources to clarify my position. FemkeMilene, I only clarified the part about Paris agreement because Efbrazil was trying to portray that one million number as the consequence of getting rid of all fossil fuels, which is incorrect and original research. Bogazicili (talk) 20:03, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
I think I said carbon neutral instead of "getting rid of all fossil fuels", but otherwise yeah, my mistake. I'm not sure why the WHO would mention 2050 since Paris doesn't appear to set any substantial goals there. My mistake was conflating the 1.5 degree goal with Paris, and the 1.5 degree goal has carbon neutrality by 2050. Efbrazil (talk) 21:52, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Clayoquot,Femkemilene, Efbrazil, here are some initial ideas and sources:

1) Textbook source that explains cook stove issue [13]

"Depending on which set of estimates is used, some 3 million to 4 million premature deaths are thought to be caused annually by HAP"
solid cookfuel stoves need to be replaced with gas (eg: LPG) or electricity
"Any kind of gas burns cleanly, including biogas and natural gas, but LPG is usually the first to reach rural areas"
electric induction stoves are "cheaper than cooking with subsidized LPG"
indoor effects outdoor pollution: "in India, for instance, as noted, an estimated 25–50 percent of primary ambient PM2.5 comes from household cooking."
"How far might induction stoves be pushed into rural areas when electricity supply becomes more reliable? Ecuador, for example, is replacing every stove in the country with an induction stove, and other countries with excess hydropower are considering taking such an approach. Could induction stoves be linked to local power made from renewable energy sources? This is an exciting prospect. Even when linked to coal power, induction stoves create substantially less pollution exposure and only minor increases in greenhouse gases"

So I hope above makes it clear why this is a sustainable energy issue. Electric induction ovens are cheaper and cleaner than gas ovens, although replacing solid cookfuel stoves with LPG would still be beneficial in terms of HAP.

2) For overall air pollution, in addition to death numbers, we should also add health effects, especially in children such as cognitive effects [14]. Also economic effects (this is for Europe only [15]). Not suggesting anything super detailed in the lead, but we can mention effects other than deaths. Bogazicili (talk) 23:12, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if LPG almost always happens before electrification or not. I think it's fair to say something like "New electrification in low income regions reduces usage of solid fuel cook stoves, which kill over a million people per year". All sources agree that there are over a million deaths per year from solid fuel cook stoves, and new electrification makes it clear that fixing the issue is not necessarily tied to renewables, but can be solved by electrification in general. Efbrazil (talk) 15:37, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposal H

Since the lede currently says nothing about air pollution, and we all agree that saying something about it could be good (or at least acceptable), I'd like to float an interim wording suggestion, H: Add "A targeted shift to sustainable energy sources would also reduce the millions of annual deaths caused by air pollution from unmitigated fossil fuel usage and from smoky cooking fuels." Would that be OK for the time being? We can then work on getting consensus on specific numbers. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:20, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Seems okay to me. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:11, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Strongly support - saw this after writing a long comment in the lowest discussion but have not read all the above. Chidgk1 (talk) 16:58, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Yes if you cut out smoky cook stoves - I do not want to see "sustainable energy" connected to "smoky cook stoves" without more information. My understanding is that a shift to sustainable energy sources could actually increase deaths from smoky cooking fuels because it might deter countries from switching solid fuel cook stoves to cleaner fossil fuels, which is how the indoor air pollution problem has been solved to date and is the cheapest / fastest solution going forward. So to tweak your wording, I would simply leave off the information on smoky cook stoves for now, then have us address that separately. So I support adding "A targeted shift to sustainable energy sources would also reduce the millions of annual deaths caused by outdoor air pollution from unmitigated fossil fuel usage." Efbrazil (talk) 18:17, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Hang onto this proposal, I'd like to look at cook stoves issue a bit more. I also think we should add air pollution is one of the leading causes of premature death worldwide. Also keep in mind that there are studies that revised up the estimates:
"Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the University Medical Center Mainz now calculated in a new study that the global, public loss of life expectancy caused by air pollution is higher than many other risk factors such as smoking, infectious diseases or violence." [16]
The above source also has a map that contradicts Our World in Data source. Some low income countries seem to have the highest rate. Some higher income regions also have much higher rates [17] Bogazicili (talk) 20:11, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
@Bogazicili: Thank you, I'm looking forward to seeing what you find. In case you weren't aware, anything we say about air pollution mortality needs to be sourced to WP:MEDRS guidelines. If it weren't for the MEDRS requirement, I'd be citing this study that attributes 8.7 million deaths globally to fossil fuel air pollution. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:32, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
@Bogazicili: I think the map you pointed to is aggregating both cook stove deaths and outdoor air pollution deaths, while the Our World in Data map is showing those data sets as 2 separate maps, with outdoor air deaths concentrated in middle income countries and indoor air deaths in concentrated in low income countries. Efbrazil (talk) 21:38, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
@Bogazicili:, do you still want us to hang on before implementing proposal H? If you're OK with proposal H, I'll add "A targeted shift to sustainable energy sources would also reduce the millions of annual deaths caused by air pollution from unmitigated fossil fuel usage" to the lede. We'll keep working on the issue of air pollution from cooking. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:34, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Clayoquot, I have seen no sources that would contradict that, please go ahead! Bogazicili (talk) 20:21, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Done, thanks everyone :) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:16, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Nuclear and the JRC report

User:Cloud200 has added a paragraph to the nuclear section using a very technical source. Currently, this fails verification, so I'm moving it here until that is resolved:

In the debate around the place of nuclear power in European Union's Taxonomy of environmentally sustainable technologies, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) published a report discussing the environmental impact of nuclear fission life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, waste management, radiation and safety, recommending that it is included into the taxonomy as environmentally sustainable. In many aspects nuclear power has been found to be comparable to other technologies, including renewable energy, while methods for ensuring long-term safety of the plants and waste exist.[1][failed verification]

I have read the executive summary and the abstract, as well as recommendations elsewhere, and I can't find the specific recommendation that we talk about.

I'm furthermore not entirely sure we want to focus on the EU this much. To dedicate 1/4 of our section on nuclear to one report seems excessive. Furthermore, it repeats information included in other paragraphs. We already say that greenhouse gas emissions are low. Can this source be integrated differently? As it is written very densely, I appreciate if individual pages are given when possible instead of a range, to ease the burden of verification. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:16, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

A concern I have with this kind of passage is that if we have a paragraph on the JRC's position on nuclear power, sooner or later someone will add an equally-long paragraph on the Japanese government's position on nuclear power, and then someone will add Canada's position... and at some point we'll decide to delete all of them just as we did over the course of multiple discussions in Talk:Sustainable energy/Archive 3. I think we should make sure the arguments from the JRC are covered in other paragraphs, and then delete this paragraph. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:04, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
The reason why I believe JRC report is highly relevant here is that it's one of the most up-to-date and most comprehensive reports recently published on nuclear power in general. The report was written specifically to answer the question whether nuclear power can be considered sustainable in the meaning of EU taxonomy and I believe it's weight - as it determines funding of sustainable technologies in 28 member states of EU - is slightly higher than any report from Japan or Canada. But of course, specific topics from the JRC report are certainly worth mentioning explicitly. Cloud200 (talk) 17:27, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
I think it's a good report (even if I need to use all of my brain cells to capture it well). Would you be willing to post some edits to strengthen the existing paragraphs here, so that we can help with verifiability and prose before they go life?
The JRC looked specifically to environmental sustainability, and with a focus on the EU context. While a lot of it can be generalized, I think that this non-generalized nature is an argument against mentioning the existence of the report. The taxonomy is not well-known, so mentioning that introduces jargon making the article less accessible. We should use it as a normal source instead. FemkeMilene (talk) 18:05, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
@Cloud200: We could certainly give the facts and opinions of the report weight that reflects its quality and multinational scope. An issue for me is, OK, say someone comes in next week and adds a summary of a report from Japan. We could tell the contributor that the EU report should have a paragraph and the Japanese report shouldn't. But I don't want to be the person who brings that news to the contributor. Do you? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:35, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
@Clayoquot: Since the concept of "sustainability" is a mix of physical, economical and legal concepts, its definition will unavoidably different between countries so yes, I have no problem with having an overview of "how different countries defined sustainability of nuclear". Having said that, the JRC report goes well beyond EU only context as it discusses in great detail physical aspects such as thermal pollution, waste management, radiation released during operations and disasters and other objective factors that have global reach, and since it's 1) pretty fresh and up-to-date, 2) pretty comprehensive, I believe it's place in the article is well deserved. Cloud200 (talk) 15:55, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
I don't think you will get consensus for explicit mention of the report per the arguments above. What do you think of the compromise of using the report to strenghten existing text? FemkeMilene (talk) 16:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)


References

  1. ^ European Commission Joint Research Centre (March 2021). Technical assessment of nuclear energy with respect to the ‘do no significant harm’ criteria of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 (‘Taxonomy Regulation’) (PDF) (Report). Petten. pp. 9–13. Archived from the original on 2021-03-28. Retrieved 2021-03-28.

"Government policies" ignores the issue of pollution, should it?

The government policies section covers climate and energy security, but ignores the fine particulate matter that causes air pollution deaths. Is that on purpose? Eliminating other pollutants from the air has been a huge success story, and one that needs to be replicated in developing countries: https://ourworldindata.org/outdoor-air-pollution#the-long-term-decline-of-air-pollution-in-rich-countries

It seems we should have a section saying something about that success story when we talk government policies.Efbrazil (talk) 22:41, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I personally agree it's an interesting success story. However if you want to put that success story into a narrative on government policies, you'll need a source that brings up that history in the context of government policies. Just because something has been done in the past doesn't mean a significant POV exists that it should be done in the future. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:52, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree with Clayoquot that we need a good general source to show it's important in that context. I am not quite confident about the current structure. In the meantime, you added this to the lede without mentioning and citing it in body. See MOS:INTRO: Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article. FemkeMilene (talk) 07:22, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Section added. I dug up the best sources I could find (including the WHO and EPA), please add to it if you see more or if you see conflicting information out there. Efbrazil (talk) 18:54, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for doing this :) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:08, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Traditional use of biomass

Regarding As of 2018, about a quarter of all electricity generation came from modern renewable sources (excluding the traditional use of biomass), doesn't "traditional use of biomass" usually exclude commercial uses such as electricity generation? As I understand it, traditional use refers to gathering biomass (usually firewood) for your household and burning it. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:07, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

You're right. Page 48 of the same report, which is about electricity production, doesn't use the phrase traditional use of biomass. So the words modern and traditional should be removed. FemkeMilene (talk) 09:02, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
Done. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:50, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Managing variable energy sources

This is one of the most difficult sections to write. I'm not sure about the following sentence: The final mismatch may be covered via overproduction of variable energy (and curtailing further excess), and by using dispatchable energy, such as hydro, bioenergy, natural gas, or nuclear plants.[102]. The previous sentence already talks about energy storage. Beyond the fact that you can store excess energy, how does overproduction of variable energy help? Also, are you sure nuclear is "dispatchable" energy? My understanding is that dispatchable means you can crank it up when you need it, and that this isn't possible with nuclear. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:29, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

  • Some of the more modern nuclear is dispatchable, but as I understand most of the current fleet isn't. I think I removed it once, and it was put back. I'll review a few articles on this to see what is due.
  • Is not the overproduction that helps, but if you have a lot of mostly unneeded capacity installed, you have more production at times of low wind / low sun. It's an important concept, so would be grateful for your prose magic. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:57, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
My read is that it's not about covering for short term fluctuations, but whether baseload is required for extended disruptions when wind and solar aren't producing. Whether base load is necessary at all is an area of dispute and partly depends on how advanced the electricity grid is and what your assumptions are about how quickly renewables can build out. As Gates says "Nuclear is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day.": https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Bill-Gates-Nuclear-Power-Will-Be-Needed-For-Cleaner-Energy.html Efbrazil (talk) 16:38, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
I refactored the part about overcapacity and removed nuclear for now. The Dispatchable generation article says "Although theoretically dispatchable, coal and nuclear thermal plants are designed to run as base load power plants and may take hours or sometimes days to cycle off and then back on again.[5]" The question for me is whether nuclear is dispatchable enough to be worth mentioning in this context. We could perhaps add a sentence or two about the role of baseload power sources in supporting VRE. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:56, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
I like your rewrite. I'm not that keen on including the discussion to what extent baseload power supports variable renewables, or whether it is relatively incompatible with high shares. I spent some time reading the research on the topic, but it's very technical, and find it difficult to find out what is neutral. FemkeMilene (talk) 10:02, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Distribution of air pollution deaths

I and others have already edited the following passage, but after reading the sources more closely I think we should remove it altogether:

Outdoor air pollution death rates vary by up to a factor of 10 between countries, rising as countries shift from low to middle-income through industrialization, then falling at higher incomes as both air pollution and overall health improves.[1] Nevertheless, air pollution affects both developing and developed countries, including "nine out of ten individuals living in urban areas worldwide".[2] [3]

If the uneven distribution was clearly attributable to differences in energy-related practices, the distribution would be worth mentioning. However, OWID states that the distribution is probably due to many factors that have nothing to do with energy, including population age, healthcare, and the amount of sand and dust in the air. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:12, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

It would be nice to add the evidence that energy-related air pollution deaths can be prevented through pollution controls. There is probably good evidence out there. We don't have to go into the geographic distribution of all air pollution deaths in order to make this point. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:56, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Interesting observation. A few hours later the articles text is "Outdoor air pollution death rates vary by an order of magnitude between countries, and are highest in middle-income countries; 90% of people in urban areas worldwide are also affected.", which does not mention health at all.
I think I think we're risking putting undue emphasis on air pollution at the moment, and I generally support condensing it. I'm neutral to adding a bit more information in notes. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:18, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

One the one hand, as some of you say, if there are not good sources saying that the distribution of air pollution deaths is related to the distribution of sustainable energy I agree that should be taken out. On the other hand I think it is right for the article to heavily emphasize air pollution. The first sentence of the article says it is about both energy use and production. It would be good if we could find an estimate of what proportion of total outdoor and indoor air pollution deaths are due to energy use (e.g. vehicle exhaust, cooking fuels) and production but perhaps there is no such estimate yet I have not found one. But even if the proportion due to unsustainable energy production and use is only 50% that is still an enormous number, and still a big share of overall premature deaths. So I think air pollution should have at least the same amount of emphasis as climate change in this article. I have not read through all your discussion above but I support "Proposal H" above. Chidgk1 (talk) 16:44, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

I think I made the last edit and that was a quick temporary edit given the current sources, and I didn't want to take things out unilaterally. Other sources contradict the wording (rates in Europe and Africa are much higher than in South America for example [18]). I'm just looking for secondary sources to clarify this part: "Outdoor air pollution death rates vary by an order of magnitude between countries, and are highest in middle-income countries" Bogazicili (talk) 21:08, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree that air pollution should be given more weight rather than less. I removed the part about geographic distribution because it seemed really strange to focus on this particular aspect of air pollution. I can definitely see us talking more about the health effects of air pollution, as Bogazicili described. And a statement about the effectiveness of pollution controls in reducing health risks would be warranted as well.
We do have sources that directly estimate energy-related deaths. Different studies yield different estimates and ideally the article should convey the range of estimates. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:32, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
@Clayoquot: The point about income distribution is very important, as it helps the user understand that this issue is primarily an issue in middle-income countries, not in the high-income countries that consume more fossil fuels on a per capita basis, and not in low income countries where fossil fuel use is low. Can you please add the information back? As a secondary issue we haven't raised but are in the sources, in high income countries only about half of air pollution deaths are from fossil fuels. Efbrazil (talk) 22:33, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm really sorry, but I can't. For one thing, I've just noticed that the passage was a copyright violation. The original source says, "Death rates tend to rise as countries shift from low to middle-income through industrialization, before falling again at higher incomes as both air pollution and overall health improves."[19] Second, your premise that outdoor air pollution is not an issue in low-income countries is very debatable; The Lancet (2020) says "ambient air pollution, disproportionately impacting on the health of communities with a low socioeconomic status. Indeed, some 91% of deaths from ambient air pollution occur in low-income and middle-income countries." Third, I just don't get what point the reader is supposed to take away from all this. Your argument so far has been to say that the reader needs to understand that air pollution deaths don't necessarily correlate to fossil fuel use. Why would the reader need to understand this? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:29, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
In an article about sustainable energy we need to accurately describe the benefits of deploying sustainable energy. Deploying sustainable energy in high income countries will do very little to address the air pollution problem, either indoor or outdoor. Don't you think that's worth mentioning? Efbrazil (talk) 17:35, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
The cited source doesn't even remotely support a claim that deploying sustainable energy in high income countries will do very little to address the air pollution problem. Even if I were to break every policy by using my imagination to ignore the confounding factors that the source gives, the source could support at most a claim that the amount of benefit is less for high-income countries relative to middle-income countries. If you want to try to quantify the degree(s) to which moving towards more sustainable energy would address the air pollution problem, you will need a source that specifically tries to answer this question. I would have no problem with that. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:14, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Ritchie, Hannah; Roser, Max (2019). "Outdoor Air Pollution". Our World in Data. Retrieved 1 April 2021. In Egypt, which had the highest death rate in 2017, 114 deaths per 100,000 individuals were attributed to outdoor air pollution. In Sweden, Finland and New Zealand the death rate was less than 10 per 100,000 – this is more than ten times lower than in Egypt. Death rates are particularly high across middle income countries – following Egypt, many countries across Asia and Central Europe have high death rates including India, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh. This distribution is reflected in the patterns we see when we look at death rates versus income. Death rates tend to rise as countries shift from low to middle-income through industrialization, before falling again at higher incomes as both air pollution and overall health improves.
  2. ^ Kurt, Ozlem Kar; Zhang, Jingjing; Pinkerton, Kent E. (2016). "Pulmonary health effects of air pollution". Current Opinion in Pulmonary Medicine. 22 (2): 138–143. doi:10.1097/MCP.0000000000000248. ISSN 1531-6971. PMC 4776742. PMID 26761628.
  3. ^ Vandyck T, Keramidas K, Kitous A, Spadaro JV, Van Dingenen R, Holland M; et al. (2018). "Air quality co-benefits for human health and agriculture counterbalance costs to meet Paris Agreement pledges". Nat Commun. 9 (1): 4939. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06885-9. PMC 6250710. PMID 30467311.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
From https://ourworldindata.org/outdoor-air-pollution#the-long-term-decline-of-air-pollution-in-rich-countries:
quote: A common narrative we see in public discussions is that levels of air pollution are at their highest levels in history. With continued urbanization, densely-populated cities and city driving, this narrative can be easy to believe. But for rich countries today, this is far from true. Air pollution levels today are at some of their lowest levels in decades.
And from here: https://ourworldindata.org/london-air-pollution
quote: the often-forgotten history of air pollution in today’s rich countries offers an important lesson about what is possible for world regions with lower levels of prosperity today. After air pollution worsens at the initial stages of development it declines at later stages and can reach historically low levels. As we see, from 1700 on, London experienced a worsening of air pollution decade after decade. Over the course of two centuries the suspended particulate matter in London’s air doubled. But at the very end of the 19th century the concentration reached a peak and then began a steep decline so that today’s levels are almost 40-times lower than at that peak.
The graph shows that Delhi in 2010 has suspended particulate matter concentrations of 481, versus London at 20 PPM and continuing to fall. The graphs show the Kuznet curve for SPM across the US and Britain, which they claim have the best SPM tracking measures.
To go further, air pollution in wealthy countries appears to only half come from fossil fuels: https://phys.org/news/2020-07-sources-deadly-air-pollution-states.html
quote: about half of all PM2.5 air pollution-related deaths are from burning fossil fuels, with the remaining largely from animal agriculture, dust from construction and roads, and burning wood for heating and cooking.
I think all that backs up the claim that deploying sustainable energy in high income countries won't accomplish much reduction in deaths as a percentage of overall air pollution deaths. Your thoughts? Efbrazil (talk) 21:23, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
Those sources won't cut it. Within Wikipedia, the only sources that you can use to support your hypothesis are WP:MEDRS sources that say deploying sustainable energy in high income countries won't accomplish much reduction in deaths as a percentage of overall air pollution deaths. Our No original research policy forbids us from drawing conclusions that aren't explicitly drawn in the sources. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:35, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
BTW your hypothesis is likely to be at most a minority point of view. Strong sources like this one say, "Studies using a variety of approaches consistently find a high value of air quality and health benefits to clean energy. This research has increased awareness that co-benefits are an important component of energy policy valuation." Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:47, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
"much reduction in deaths as a percentage of overall air pollution deaths": You've not shown that this is a relevant question. Both in middle-income countries and in rich countries, switching to more sustainable sources of energy makes a big dent into their pollution deaths. Richer countries have already switched to somewhat more sustainable uses of energy, filtering out pollution. FemkeMilene (talk) 07:26, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
I think in putting this information in the government regulations area the information I wanted to see presented is out there. Efbrazil (talk) 19:07, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Pause soon for GA?

Our review for Good Article Status has been on hold for the past week and a half because this article has been undergoing heavy editing. I've just done a copyedit and would feel comfortable asking the nominator to do a final evaluation for GA soon, if the timing works for the group as whole. Would you all be comfortable if in say, 48 hours, we all pause significant or potentially-controversial edits so the GA review can finish? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:39, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to agree not to add any more new text (I've been doing that horrible boring task of source formatting... ), but shouldn't we finish the important discussions of already-included text? We've got mention of cooking air pollution edit warred out of the lede, and I'd like to see a confirmation that this represents consensus now. We've got a phys.org source for medical content (about a slightly overrepresented country, so easiest to delete?). I don't know if we've found all close paraphrasing recently introduced (I'll check that now). FemkeMilene (talk) 09:00, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
OK, let's focus on the issues you identified. I'd very much like to get cooking air pollution back into the lede, but the dispute was so stressful last time that I've been procrastinating on re-engaging there. Having thought about it a lot more this morning though, I have some ideas for moving forward. I think one of the issues is that the article sometimes frames sustainable energy as being a type of product, something that goes into sentences like "My house is built with sustainable materials and runs on sustainable energy." The higher-quality sources don't tend to use this conscious-consumer kind of lens. In the higher-quality literature, sustainable energy is talked about more like a goal, a set of criteria, or a loosely-connected set of movements. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:28, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
I've done some revisions to the lede to include cooking air pollution. Ideally we should put some quantities on the different sources of air pollution deaths but I think that can wait, unless someone has ideas on how to do it. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:41, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
My preference is now not to quantify it in the lead, as I feel numbers distract from the narrative/prose, they are not canonical, and quantifying requires more words than is due for the topic. I'm happy with the current wording, which doesn't put all the blame of air pollution on fossil fuels. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:17, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, BTW, for doing the source formatting! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:59, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

I think all of @Femkemilene:'s issues above have been addressed. If there are no other objections, I'll ping our GA reviewer in 24 hours, and will at that time ask everyone to refrain from adding new material or making potentially controversial edits until he has had a chance to finish his review. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:36, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

.... I will ping the GA reviewer now and hope things can stay temporarily quiet. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:12, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Where should low-temperature geothermal go do you think?

Moved from user talk by FemkeMilene

I don't know that it's accurate to say that low-temperature geothermal isn't geothermal. The IPCC groups them together in AR5. From page 413 here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/renewable-energy-sources-and-climate-change-mitigation/geothermal-energy/

quote: Although it is debatable whether geothermal heat pumps, also called ground source heat pumps (GHP), are a ‘true’ application of geothermal energy or whether they are partially using stored solar energy, in this chapter they are treated as a form of direct geothermal use. GHP technology is based on the relatively constant ground or groundwater temperature ranging from 4°C to 30°C to provide space heating, cooling and domestic hot water for all types of buildings. Extracting energy during heating periods cools the ground locally. This effect can be minimized by dimensioning the number and depth of probes in order to avoid harmful impacts on the ground. These impacts are also reduced by storing heat underground during cooling periods in the summer months.

The U.S. government also groups them together under "Geothermal Heating and Cooling" here: https://www.epa.gov/rhc/geothermal-heating-and-cooling-technologies

The IEA tries not to group heat pumps into geothermal, but says many countries do so, which confuses the data. See here: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/a1bd577e-14d0-4d4c-8b01-4e20ae1ded07/REN_Documentation1.pdf

Having said all that, I don't particularly care where it goes in, so long as it goes in. Would you prefer it in the "Sustainable energy technologies" section since the ground is acting as a thermal battery? Efbrazil (talk) 23:53, 10 April 2021 (UTC) FemkeMilene (talk) 08:47, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

If we explicitly include it, which I think is undue, it should be in concert with other heat pumps. IEA and REN21 group it with other heat pumps. We should not contribute to the confusion here. FemkeMilene (talk) 09:43, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
As a matter of importance, the IEA says heat pumps could provide over 90% of space and water heating requirements globally, but currently provide only 5%: https://www.iea.org/reports/heat-pumps
Heat pumps are estimated to be about 65% more efficient than other methods:https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/5-things-you-should-know-about-geothermal-heat-pumps
Put those numbers together, and more than half of the energy requirements for heating globally could be eliminated by way of heat pumps.
Additionally, geothermal heat pumps flatten the electric demand curve by eliminating the extreme summer and winter peak electric supply requirements: http://www.icax.co.uk/interseasonal_heat_transfer.html
Isn't all that worth mentioning? Efbrazil (talk) 18:52, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
Information added to the heating and cooling section. I left out the "half of energy requirements" thing as that's a matter of combining 2 sources- neither source says that on their own. Efbrazil (talk) 23:42, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
Could you make sure that you include source information such as publication date and authors? The last sentence needs a better source, as industry sources are usually too specific and potentially biased towards their own product and region. FemkeMilene (talk) 20:09, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Done, thanks for the heads up on that. Efbrazil (talk) 21:43, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Should we add a government policies section on "Sustainable energy pathways"?

Right now we are doing a good job of presenting a hodge podge of things to consider, but we aren't tying them together in a way that talks about relative importance or relative need for investment. The IPCC in their 1.5 report has a lot on relative investments to be made, comparing investments in energy efficiency to new power source areas and so on. There are also entire reports focused explicitly on sustainable energy pathways, like https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/energy/se/pdfs/CSE/Publications/Final_Report_PathwaysToSE.pdf What is their end goal, and what policies and investments need to be made to get there?

The section would also let us shift the focus from being purely additive, as in "we could do this and this and this", and give us instead an opportunity to talk about "we need to stop doing X, Y, and Z". I'm going to be away until next week, but I'm hoping someone wants to take a crack at this in the mean time. Thoughts? Efbrazil (talk) 19:44, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't think so: we already have a government policy section on its own. To split that information over multiple sections leads to duplication. FemkeMilene (talk) 20:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
I think you misunderstand. I mean add "Sustainable energy pathways" section underneath the "Government policies" header. Efbrazil (talk) 20:12, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
That seems to overlap strongly with other subsections. I will later suggest a simplification into environmental policy, and social economic policy, to make sure we don't add more and more subsections to that heading. My three top sources about sustainable energy (books on the topic, and on the topic alone), don't dedicate this much space to government policies. I'll see whether I can condense it, for instance by removing the focus on the Anglosphere. FemkeMilene (talk) 20:41, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
A few other sections mention pathways as an aside, but several sections don't discuss pathways at all, and nowhere do we attempt to synthesize the information we present to discuss relative importance and what our what our end state should look like. Maybe that should just be a lead paragraph or two in the "government policies" section, if you don't want a new section? Efbrazil (talk) 21:00, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
I was poking about for good sources on this. One issue is how sustainable energy pathways would differ from what SR 15 proposes, and my thought is "not by much".
Curiously, we aren't using IRENA as a source, and they have a pretty comprehensive 2050 pathways report that's being used in the renewables article (an older version, but still...): https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/Apr/Global-energy-transformation-A-roadmap-to-2050-2019Edition
Anyhow, it's not clear to me how renewable vs sustainable vs SR 15 pathways would differ. I think an intro paragraph in the government section would be a good idea to spell that out. Efbrazil (talk) 23:13, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
The IPCC pathways are designed to combat climate change. This means they do not try to maximise food security, energy security, equal access to energy, and many other aspects of sustainable energy. We risk putting undue attention to one environmental issue associated with unsustainable energy. The report does have an entire chapter about how sustainable development and climate change interact, which should be used for this article. I will have a look and how to include that report and condense the text about climate policy back to about three paragraphs.
IRENA is a bit of a lobbying organisation, so there modelling should be considered with caution. It also seems to focus on one element of sustainable energy: climate change. FemkeMilene (talk) 07:25, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
I see that there is a section called pathways in chapter 5 (the chapter on sustainable development ) of the is SR1.5 report, which I find difficult to translate into something useful for Wikipedia. If we can extract useful information from that chapter, which isn't only focused on a single dimension, it could be used as an introductory paragraph to the government policies section. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:07, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposed change of Marine energy --> Emerging energy sources

Putting marine on par with other renewable energy sources doesn't make sense to me as it doesn't contribute significantly to the renewable energy power mix.

In terms of use, these charts are a good summary. Tide is shown but barely registers, and wave isn't even counted:

I think better treatment would be to rename "Marine energy" to "Emerging energy sources" and then also mention Algae fuels, Solar updraft towers, and Artificial photosynthesis, as they all have articles and seem semi-serious (unlike "Space-based solar power" for instance). The renewable energy topic has more options, but a lot of it is unsourced or just looks like stuff that belongs in other categories: Renewable energy#Emerging technologies

Thoughts? Efbrazil (talk) 19:26, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea in general to have a section about sustainable energy research, covering not just new energy sources but also things like batteries. Some things I've heard from multiple quality sources is: 1) Energy R&D is drastically underfunded compared to, say, pharmaceutical R&D, because the return on investment takes so long, and 2) A wise strategy is to invest in dozens or hundreds of different early-stage ideas rather than to focus on a few promising candidates, because humans are not good at choosing promising candidates (marine energy might actually be a good example of this). We could also talk conceptually about the categories of things that would be game-changers, e.g. liquid fuels, large-capacity electricity storage, and super-cheap electricity.
If we write the section at this kind of conceptual level rather than having it take the form of listing individual technologies, we'll have a chance at having the content not become out of date quickly, and even more importantly have chance at it not being a magnet for spam and hype about how such-and-such is going to be the next big thing. When I first started working on this article, I had to remove an unbelievable amount of crap that was trying to sell me amazing new technologies, space-based solar power included. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:24, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree we should talk about research, without mentioning emerging technologies. By putting algae in the bioenergy section, we can make sure it doesn't get more mentioned than a single word, which is probably appropriate weight. If we make a into a separate section of emerging technologies, that is going to act as a magnet.
About 2), I believe many innovation scientists would slightly disagree. We would not have cheap electric cars or solar panels if governments hadn't chosen favourites to focus innovation on (thanks Norway and Germany!). I believe within business is common knowledge that you should have an innovation portfolio, with a good balance of promising strategies you invest a lot in, in combination with a set of early-stage ideas. The idea of investing "technology-neutral" (not choosing potential winners) is widespread, especially in North America. It will be another topic that requires meticulous research to cover neutrally. I've been teaching on the topic, but I come from a research group that believes in the former, so I'll have to make sure my biases don't come through. FemkeMilene (talk) 09:53, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
I think the new structure, with 'Energy system transformation', lends itself for a subsection about research. I was struggling to find an appropriate location. FemkeMilene (talk) 09:58, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm going to be pulled away until next weekend, so I would appreciate it if one of you two could take a crack at this. A few thoughts:
* Marine needs to go away as an area under "Renewable energy sources" as it does not provide significant energy- it is an area of R&D
* It would be great to have a section dedicated to R&D. It would be helpful if it mentioned real possibilities (like marine) without opening the door to horseshit like space based solar. Maybe if we explicitly use reliable sourcing (as in, the IEA predicts X, Y, and Z). It would also be good to mention real world examples of government intervention, like the Obama stimulus bill. Efbrazil (talk) 19:25, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
I deleted marine for now, which I figure is consistent with not talking about specific experimental technologies. Efbrazil (talk) 21:37, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Of the three books I have (all about sustainable energy and nothing more), two dedicate an entire chapter to marine or tidal energy. The other one does mention it. One of the books is a specific part dedicated to new technologies, in which it does not include marine energy. Marine energy is included as part of wind, solar, and so forth. Hence I'm putting it back until a clear consensus is reached that we should delete it. From the above, I think there is only consensus to include something else about research. FemkeMilene (talk) 07:05, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
Older sources expected more from marine than has emerged. IRENA now groups marine into "Other" and otherwise ignores it. IEA similarly does not give it front line treatment anymore. I don't think it's appropriate to put marine as a top level item. Zero emission natural gas and Algae based fuels are of similar importance in terms of output and we are not covering them. What about changing the section title to "Emerging energy sources"? I don't mind mentioning marine if we also mention other sources that are emerging, but putting it on it's own on par with sources like hydro is unwarranted. Efbrazil (talk) 17:30, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
The three books I have are from 2019 and 2020, so sufficiently new to qualify as a high quality reliable source. I agree that marine energy deserves less space than wind and solar (like it already has), but I am strongly against raising a section that is honey for drive-by editors to include their favourite technology. Maybe we can include it in a future subsection around research, but until then, there is no good reason to delete it. FemkeMilene (talk) 17:36, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

MEDRS source needed

I removed the following as it requires WP:MEDRS sourcing: In the United States half of air pollution deaths are caused by burning fossil fuels, with the remainder caused by animal agriculture, dust from construction and roads, and burning wood for heating and cooking.[1][medical citation needed] Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:31, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for opening talk on this. It's unclear why a medical citation is needed. The article quotes a University of Minnesota study, saying that "Researchers focused on one particularly harmful pollutant: fine particulate matter, also known as PM2.5, which is associated with heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer and other diseases. In examining the data, they discovered that about half of all PM2.5 air pollution-related deaths are from burning fossil fuels, with the remaining largely from animal agriculture, dust from construction and roads, and burning wood for heating and cooking." How is that not sufficient to back the claim in the sentence? Efbrazil (talk) 19:52, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
It is a primary source, which are typically not acceptable for medical facts. It also focuses on one country, which we should avoid. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:55, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
the source seems to be a press release, which frequently overestimate the certainty of certain outcomes and leave out important caveats. A press release is a poorer source than the scientific study itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Femkemilene (talk • contribs)

References

  1. ^ "Identifying sources of deadly air pollution in the United States". Phys.org. University of Minnesota. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
I updated the source to the journal and amended the text a bit to be more precise. I do not see a better source for this type of information, please let me know if you see one. Efbrazil (talk) 19:14, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
It doesn't seem to be a review article (ie: secondary source). It's filed under "letter" [20]. I have also found other sources that I hadn't added because they aren't secondary sources. Bogazicili (talk) 07:12, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
We could back off to something wishy washy like "An area of study is how much air pollution and related deaths are attributable to fossil fuels vs other causes, such as non-combustible sources". If you have more source links that are studying the issue that would be helpful. I believe the issue is important to mention, as otherwise we are saying "air pollution = fossil fuels + biomass burning", which isn't clear. Efbrazil (talk) 18:36, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
Find a secondary source please. Bogazicili (talk) 03:47, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Sources in the lead

Can we add sources into the lead? Currently, there's pretty much no sources, I think the assumption is that it summarizes the body of the article which is sourced. But, not having any sources makes claims harder to verify and also makes it more likely for incorrect claims to be added into the lead in the long term, I think. Bogazicili (talk) 10:42, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Citations gives us a lot of flexibility here. I agree that we should shift towards having more citations in the lead, for the reasons you give. Let's wait for input from others though, as sometimes people have strong feelings on this kind of thing. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:38, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
I have a moderately strong preference for no sources in the lede. Saves on source formatting (so my sanity) and users that put unsourced stuff in the lede are usually the same users that put stuff in the lede that isn't in the body / fails verification. My experience in CC is that incorrect claims were equally frequent with or without sources in the lede, and that the former leads to more mistakes in terms of not having unique info in the lede. FemkeMilene (talk) 21:32, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
I lean towards having more sources in the lead (in general). This shouldn't lead to more work because the references would not be new but the same ones that are in the main text. But I agree that the main focus of the lead should be a good summary of the article; for those summary sections, no references are needed. For example: "Sustainable energy includes renewable as well as non renewable energy sources. Renewable energy sources include xxx ". But when quoting numbers, a reference is always a good thing. EMsmile (talk) 06:30, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Surface power density

@Cloud200: thanks for getting an updated source about power density. I think it's an important concept to include in the discussion of nuclear energy. Unfortunately, the source you provided seemed to be about one country, whereas the sentence implies it's about the globe. Furthermore think it is insightful if we have a comparison between nuclear and fossil. There is often the misconception that renewables take up more space than coal, and I think that by leaving out fossil fuels, people may come away with this idea.

Furthermore, the quality of the prose has decreased. You lose readers if you just bombard them with numbers. Think we should leave out the specifics about LCOE, because readers will not be able to understand these numbers without context. FemkeMilene (talk) 20:18, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

With surface power density of 135.10 W/m2 coal definitely beats renewables by at least two orders of magnitude and that's a fact - the thing is, land surface is generally considered a non-renewable. Of course, coal comes with its own issues such as high greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. Then, you are absolutely right about LCOE being a complex topic and there's an ongoing discussion on how to make it better in the LCOE article, but I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the previous version article literally said "nuclear is 4x more expensive" based on a single study by a private investment bank with rather opaque assumptions and methodology so providing a range sounds like a significant improvement to me. As always, I'd be very happy to improve even further. If we were to be 100% fair, we would probably just go and provide an impartial comparison of the following indicators for various sources of energy:
Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of energy sources
Surface power density
Capacity factor
LCOE

Cloud200 (talk) 21:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree the previous statement on prices was also not good, as discussed above. Renovating old nuclear is basically the cheapest form of energy. I suspect a statement about that new nuclear is generally relatively expensive is warranted if mentioned by ''overview sources on the specific topic of sustainable energy''. Your list of topics is not what I'd expect to see in such a source. I'll check my sources when I can carve out some time. FemkeMilene (talk) 21:13, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
We discussed that in great detail in Talk:Cost of electricity by source/Archive 2#Additions of old studies, discount rate. The confusing part is that LCOE is a financial indicator that makes most sense when calculated for a specific investment in specific conditions, most importantly discount rate which can be only determined by the investors themselves. What IPCC, NEA, BNEF and Lazard are doing is two calculations: ex-post calculation for an existing portfolio of projects, and ex-ante forecast for a generalized new projects based on the former. There is a number of challenges, most importantly related to a representative selection of the existing projects for the calculation and this is where the majority of criticism of BNEF and Lazard is directed - these are private investment banks and their methodology is not transparent. The criticism is justified by discrepancies such as Lazard's median LCOE from nuclear estimated at $160 and BNEF at $190 while actual costs of Finland's OL power plants is... €30/MWh, which obviously raises questions about why BNEF and Lazard made such an overshoot. Since they don't publish details of their methodology we can't say that - presumably, they chose only the worst cases (significantly delayed projects) and extrapolate that to all projects, but that there was an overshoot in their estimates is a fact. IPCC and OECD LCOE calculations are much more transparent and they model very different scenarios for new plans, including various discount rates, and their prices for nuclear are much closer to what is actually observed on the market. So the outcome of that discussion is really that 1) LCOE estimates for new nuclear plants are very sensitive to sample selection and financial assumptions, 2) as result LCOE estimates are wildly different between different parties, 2) LCOE cannot be used as an ultimate "cost of energy" indicator without understanding all these sensitivities. Cloud200 (talk) 08:17, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for that explanation! I'm not sure which power plant you're referring to in Finland, but is it possible that this is not about the new built one, which seems to have exceeded costs? There is a huge discrepancy between new-built nuclear, and expanded lifetimes nuclear in terms of costs.
The €30/MWh LCOE is for Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant projected for all three reactors OL1, OL2 (operational) and OL3 (in construction) as calculated by the investor (TVA) and including delays. The same number for existing OL1, OL2 reactors is €20/MWh. Detailed discussion in this article[21] (in Swedish, but easy to translate). Cloud200 (talk) 06:57, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
Now about this article: having random numbers without context is not useful for readers. They will not understand what LCOE is, nor how LCOE compares between various different technologies. We need to either leave the numbers out, up with them in more qualitative terms which reflect the uncertainty around the numbers, and the vast differences between countries. FemkeMilene (talk) 08:34, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
I 100% agree with the latter - for the Cost of electricity by source I proposed that we clearly explain the meaning of LCOE and its limitations prior to throwing numbers at readers, but that article is specifically about LCOE. In this article we don't really need detailed discussion on prices as it doesn't have much to do with sustainability - I edited the statement only because it was biased by use of the single Lazard estimate. Cloud200 (talk) 06:57, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
I've removed the sentence from the article. For comprehensiveness, we may need to add something back. I'll take your comments into account about the neutrality of various providers of cost estimates, and will only give some qualitative estimation, if any. FemkeMilene (talk) 16:21, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
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