GREEN IS RELATIVE - NOT ABSOLUTE

While solar, wind and nuclear systems may appear to be Green in that while operating they do not produce any CO2, that understanding is incomplete.

While that is true, the undeniable fact is that all of the many types of electricity generation produce some CO2 since CO2 is produced in the manufacture of the system, and in the case of nuclear in the various activities required to produce, store and/or recycle the nuclear fuel.

Thus, rather than simplistically considering solar, wind and nuclear as being Green, a more proper thought process is to compare the Electricty Generation CO2 Life Cycle.

This has been analyzed by a number of reputable sources. Links to some of these are given at the end of this page.

While the data produced by these sources has some variation, as you would expect from any complicated analysis, the date are generally represented in the following table.

The data in the above table was obtained from Wikipedia.

The data for the Nuclear Generator was obtained from Reference 6 of the Wikipedia report.

Other references:

University of Wisconsin

International Energy Agency