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Comment by greglindahl | Hacker News Reader

Paying to have more renewable energy generated is not a gimmick, it's progress.

It's true that there's a storage problem to be solved. That doesn't mean that every single renewables project needs to solve it or become a gimmick.

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The problem is that Google's claim is deceptive. What they are doing is great.

I don't agree it is deceptive, if Google paid for 1GW of renewable electricity to be generated and 1GW is contributed to the grid from renewable sources then everything is as it should be. If the EMF that gets to Google's servers happens to be provided by a nearby coal plant they have still caused 1GW to be produced by renewables. This is how the grid works, and how it has always worked, it's just that no one in the past has cared if it was coal, gas, hydro or something else they were getting it from. Organisations are now willing to pay a small premium to use an equal amount of energy as renewables are generated. Storage matters for the long term goal of a zero emissions grid, but is not necessary for the economics to work out and the benefits to be felt.

Paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 of the NYT article look accurate to me. I have a hard time seeing how anyone who read the article would be deceived.

More than half of the people in this thread think google is running on 100% renewable energy. They have been deceived.

Google is still using dirty energy, they are just offsetting it by returning extra to the grid when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.

"using" is a complicated word. If you don't like the usual way "using renewable energy" is used for electricity, by all means campaign against it, but there's nothing special about Google or this press release for this usage... and the New York Times article this discussion is about is quite clear.

That's not the "usual way" it's used. If I want to use solar power for my home, I don't contribute to a fund building solar panels on a different continent and claim I'm "using renewable energy". However, that's exactly what google is doing here.

Some people put solar panels on their home, other people pay someone else to install solar panels elsewhere. It's extremely common for businesses to choose the second, even if homeowners mostly choose the first.

Yeah I'm sorry this is complete nonsense, this is exactly how it works and has always worked. If Google pays for renewables to be produced, uses some energy that happened to be produced at a coal plant but someone else uses the energy from the solar/wind farm, then the benefit of using renewables has been materialised. It's not a hard concept, but somehow people struggle with the idea.

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