Amazingly low carbon footprint

From Carbon Brief:

Building solar, wind or nuclear plants creates an insignificant carbon footprint compared with savings from avoiding fossil fuels, a new study suggests.

The research, published in Nature Energy, measures the full lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of a range of sources of electricity out to 2050. It shows that the carbon footprint of solar, wind and nuclear power are many times lower than coal or gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS). This remains true after accounting for emissions during manufacture, construction and fuel supply.

Project leader Dr Gunnar Luderer, who is an energy system analyst at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research (PIK), told Carbon Brief: “The most important finding [of our research] was that the expansion of wind and solar power…comes with life-cycle emissions that are much smaller than the remaining emissions from existing fossil power plants, before they can finally be decommissioned.”

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Carbon footprint of various generation types.
BECCS = bio-energy with carbon capture and storage
Source: CarbonBrief

Notes:

1. Even leaving off the carbon footprint of the construction of coal power stations, and even including CCS to reduce smokestack emissions, renewables have still one or two orders of magnitude (10-100 times) lower  carbon footprints.  And of course, CCS makes coal-fired power stations uneconomic.
2. This analysis assumes that the grid has been decarbonised.  The advantage today is less, but still substantial.  However,
3. it is possible to make steel using a carbon-neutral process (methane created by the Sabatier process) and it would be possible to use CCS with cement.  That carbon cost is shown in the dark brown bars above.