Over 75 percent of the energy produced in France derives from nuclear

Yes, though I would add that that closing modifier works both adjectivally and adverbially.

Hello MartyTargetTestPrep

In D , 1st part of sentence says 75% energy comes from nuclear part in France but 2nd part says 33% of energy.
Why the energy is ambiguous in 2nd part because 75%+33% doesn't add up to 100% , so definitely it doesn't refer to the same group? Why can't we infer this information with data given.

Please comment.

Good point.

Furthermore, notice that the 75 percent is a percentage of "the energy produced in France," whereas the 33 percent "comes from nuclear power in Germany." So, in addition to the fact that 75 percent and 33 percent combined exceed 100 percent, we have the fact that the sentence seems to convey that the two percentages are percentages of two different quantities of energy.

At the same time, the meaning conveyed is still ambiguous, because what "the energy" refers to is not clear. Is "the energy" all the energy generated worldwide? Is it "the energy" generated in Germany? Is it "the energy" generated in Europe? The sentence does not indicate which it is.

Is it also correct to cross off answers A and E because the ,which and ,where are nonessential modifiers and therefore result in a comparison that makes no sense of you leave them out?

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(A) and (E) don't make sense with their modifiers either! (A) seems to be saying that nuclear power is itself 33% in Germany. That's illogical. Nuclear can account for a percent of total energy use, but it cannot itself be a percent. And (E) does the same thing. No need to worry about what happens when we take out modifiers.

Generally speaking, when it comes to stripping out nonessential modifiers, it's better to think in terms of whether the sentence falls apart grammatically than to consider whether the meaning becomes incoherent. The problem is that if the modifier is itself described by another portion of the sentence, the construction might make no sense when you remove it, even if it's not technically an error.

Consider:

Tim loves his daughter, who is obsessed with her class pet, a hamster that juggles tiny bowling pins.

This sentence is fine as is. It has a main clause, followed by two modifiers. But watch what happens when we strip out the part in red:

Tim loves his daughter, a hamster that juggles tiny bowling pins.

Clearly, our new construction raises a lot of questions about Tim. The problem is that we actually had two nonessential modifiers and one happened to describe the other. So even though it's illogical without a nonessential modifier, it is't wrong either.

The takeaway: if you want to remove a long nonessential modifier to see if a sentence has a subject-verb disagreement, go for it. But when it comes to considering logic, evaluate the entire sentence first, as removing modifiers may create a problem that doesn't actually exist.

I hope that helps a bit!

Really tricky, but learned something new.
Thank you very much!

As simple as that C VS D, Just got to ask the question, 33% is being produced in Germany or coming from where. ???
It should be produced in Germany for the correct comparison.
You got to gun it for the meaning here.

Correct Option : C

- Over 75 percent of the energy produced in France derives from nuclear power,
whereas nuclear power accounts for just
- Over 33 percent of the energy produced in Germany

Hi GMATNinja egmat
I rejected choice C, because i feel like the 2 statements being compared are in different voice. One is in Active voice while the other in passive voice and this doesn't seem right as we have seen so many times in other examples.

Please help to clarify.

First, the verbs in (C), "derives" and "accounts" are both active. A passive construction requires some form of a "to be" verb, such as "is derived."

Also, there's no rule that you can't compare an active action to a passive one. For instance: "Tim will drink more Gatorade in 2021 than was consumed in all of 1997." That's fine. Kinda strange, because Gatorade is not exactly delicious. But grammatically fine.

Finally, the other four options all have definitive errors. Check out this post here and let us know if you still have questions.

I eliminated C because i thought this option, specifically the use of the word "account for" changes the meaning.
My thought process was that "Account for" means "to make up or form (a part of something)" according to merriam-webster
and thus, isn't the option C assuming that the energy consists of nuclear power (among others), rather than the energy is derived from the nuclear power?

GMATNinja, could you please help understand this nuance?

Hello Hoji,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, in this context "A accounts for B" simply means that "A makes up B" or "B is derived from A"; thus, "accounts for" does not change the intended meaning of the sentence.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Hi,
thanks for the effort. But I still don't understand how "A makes up B" ="B is derived from A"; they clearly mean something different

Hi,
thanks for the effort. But I still don't understand how "A makes up B" ="B is derived from A"; they clearly mean something different[/quote]

Hello Hoji,

We hope this finds you well.

To clarify "A makes B" does not strictly mean "B is derived from A"; the construction can also be interpreted as "B consists of A".

For example, "Water accounts for 10 percent of this solution." = "Water makes up 10 percent of this solution." = "10 percent of this solution consists of water."

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

I see where you're coming from here. But the two clauses of a sentence don't have to have identical meanings. They just need to have a logical relationship.

The first clause is telling us that of the power produced in France, 75% derives from, or comes from, nuclear energy. The second clause tells us that nuclear power represents 33% of the power produced in Germany. Identical? Maybe not. I guess you could argue that if I'm deriving energy from nuclear energy, I might at some point change it to another form, so maybe we're talking about power with a nuclear origin in France but nuclear power itself in Germany. Fair enough.

The real question is: am I so confident that this difference is illogical that I'd consider it a concrete error? Nah. The essence of the sentence is pretty logical: most of the power is coming from a nuclear source in France, but a much smaller percentage is coming from a nuclear source in Germany. That's reasonable enough, so even if there's a subtle difference in how we're describing that power, I can't treat this as an error.

Put another way, if I'm comparing nuclear power to, say, mangoes, that's a faulty comparison. But if I'm comparing power with a nuclear source to pure nuclear power? That's reasonable enough, and we can move on to other issues.

I hope that helps!

Doesn't the option C is very wordy and repeats nuclear power? So that's why I though option A is fine

If you have a choice between an option that, by repeating a word, offers a clear and logical meaning, and one that doesn't repeat a word, but is also confusing or illogical, the exam is going to prefer the first option every time. Clarity is good.

Check out this post for a breakdown of why the other options are problematic and then let us know if you still have questions.