Exactly, people don’t seem to realise that higher demand for energy means higher demand for all sources of energy including fussil fuels.
If doesn’t matter if this datacenter runs 100% on renewables if that means that the overall demand on the powergrid increases and now other clients that used to get (a higher percentage of) their power from renewable are getting it from coal, it’s just a green washing shift blame technique.
There’s one exception - when they are self-sufficient, or even net positive, with renewables.
One example is the Google datacenter in Hamina, Finland. They build it in an old unused paper mill, built their own renewables (3/4ths of their required at this point), and they use the cooling loop for district heating for the city.
That extra heat provides around 75% of the required heating, meaning the city could stop relying on their old natural gas heaters so now the district heating runs on renewables as well.
It’s easy to be an energy neutral datacenter, simply pour enough money to building new renewables that wouldn’t have been built without your contributions, and you don’t tax the power grid.
I’ll begrudgingly concede that this is a good point.
Part of me wants to say “just force these assholes to build renewables without the datacentres” but I know that’s nonsensical.
I guess this is how carbon credit schemes are intended to work, but I’m aware that aside from a few specific cases carbon trading has just been a way to obfuscate carbon emissions.
It doesn’t make any difference whether they use coal, nuclear, or renewables.
If they were using renewables the rest of us would need the coal generated power to keep the lights on.
Exactly, people don’t seem to realise that higher demand for energy means higher demand for all sources of energy including fussil fuels.
If doesn’t matter if this datacenter runs 100% on renewables if that means that the overall demand on the powergrid increases and now other clients that used to get (a higher percentage of) their power from renewable are getting it from coal, it’s just a green washing shift blame technique.
There’s one exception - when they are self-sufficient, or even net positive, with renewables.
One example is the Google datacenter in Hamina, Finland. They build it in an old unused paper mill, built their own renewables (3/4ths of their required at this point), and they use the cooling loop for district heating for the city. That extra heat provides around 75% of the required heating, meaning the city could stop relying on their old natural gas heaters so now the district heating runs on renewables as well.
It’s easy to be an energy neutral datacenter, simply pour enough money to building new renewables that wouldn’t have been built without your contributions, and you don’t tax the power grid.
I’ll begrudgingly concede that this is a good point.
Part of me wants to say “just force these assholes to build renewables without the datacentres” but I know that’s nonsensical.
I guess this is how carbon credit schemes are intended to work, but I’m aware that aside from a few specific cases carbon trading has just been a way to obfuscate carbon emissions.