The Climate and Cloudflare
blog.cloudflare.com
blog.cloudflare.com
However they have only covered the energy generation related footprints of the PoPs and offices.
My bet is they have a small army of sales reps that fly one or more times a month, and that they consider frequent fly-togethers a core part of their embrace of remote workers. Probably something on the order of single digit million miles per year total?
To be carbon neutral, you'd have to buy carbon offsets like Google [1] do. There's a lot of really complicated accounting that goes into making sure that you aren't just pushing the dirt from one place to another when you think about renewable energy and carbon offsets.
[1]: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en...
The RECs bit is interesting, but the cache efficiency bit is about as interesting as saving energy by not washing your hotel towels every day -- technically true, but overuse that line and it smells like greenwashing.
More interesting topics would be talking about how to move their operations energy balance from RECs to actual renewables. Google is legitimately the corporate leader in this space (and general-corporate, not just tech-sector-corporate) -- they've given lots of talks about how they went from REC offsets to buying stakes in renewable farms to now their goal is to match consumption with renewables every hour instead of every day/month (ie the time shifting of renewables issues). GCP's tagline is they're the greenest cloud provider... that line is cute too, but there's more legitimacy and seriousness behind that claim than a metaphorical "help us save water and energy by not washing towels every day" flyer.
Other more interesting takes on this topic are:
- optimizing data center operations to minimize energy (again google/deepmind wrote the classic "AI can save HVAC costs" whitepaper on this)
- actual placement of data centers around renewable hubs (when wind became a big industry in Iowa, for example, all the big tech companies brought some data centers there to take advantage of it)
- looking at energy across the entire company (eg Amazon not really doing much around electrifying the transportation its service depends on)
Of course, in the increasingly religious climate (again, on both sides of the issue) scientists do not dare speak up for fear of losing everything from research grants to their jobs. It is as horrific a transgression of what science is supposed to be about as imaginable. It's politics silencing science.
To be absolutely clear (because these days you have to issue a disclaimer): Yes, climate change is real. Yes, we made it worse.
OK. Calm down. Explain.
Let's take irrefutable scientific evidence first: Based on ice core atmospheric samples we know that CO2 levels, over the last 800,000 years (and likely a lot longer) have fluctuated up and down about 100 ppm. We also know, from the same data, in rough terms, that it takes about 25,000 years for a 100 ppm rise and about 50,000 years for it to drop back 100 ppm. Again, rough strokes. It has never happened much faster or much slower than this. Let's say +/- 50%.
OK, so, the planet, THE ENTIRE PLANET, without a single human being, building, machine, power plant, cars, trains, planes, ships, etc. The entire planet, needs about 50,000 +/- 25,000 years to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration by 100 ppm. Hard to refute this based on the very reliable evidence we have from ice core samples.
In science we have been known to use simple analytical techniques to get a sense of proportion about things, about what the answer should or might be. A simple example of this is to check the units after a calculation to make sure we ended up with apples rather than oranges. Another example is to check the proportion or scale of things. If you accelerate a 1 Kg object with a 1 N force you don't expect to reach the speed of light in one second. That answer would be wrong and it doesn't take a lot to understand this.
Back to earth and our problem.
Here's the answer politicians (and others) need to provide:
Given that a planet devoid of humans and anything human-made requires at least 50,000 years to reduce atmospheric CO2 by 100 ppm:
How do you propose to "save the planet" in just a few years by any method whatsoever, even the elimination of all human life and human creations on earth?
That is the question someone has to answer.
People are proposing to accelerate a process that would require a planet-scale system from a rate of change of 100 ppm in 50,000 years to, say, 100 ppm in 50 to 100 years. That is a ONE-THOUSAND-FOLD improvement on the rate of change!
To press the point further: If humanity did not exist and all of our toys were gone it would take at least 50,000 years.
Very simple analysis reveals that the narratives out there are laughable at best.
What's the next question then?
OK, say we develop a technology that could accelerate this rate of change --again, PLANETARY SCALE-- a thousand fold.
How much energy would be required in order to reduce CO2 by 100 ppm in 50 to 100 years?
How many and what kind of resources? Mining? Manufacturing? Surface area? Water?
How much pollution will be generated by this process? Remember, it is going to have to run 24/7 for a hundred years.
Will the process itself raise the temperature of the planet? Remember, we are trying to affect a planetary-scale system, not your backyard.
What are the ecological and other side-effects of deploying such massive natural and energy resources over a century?
Again, simple analysis reveals that even if we transported the entire United States into space (beam me up!) nothing would change. In fact, CO2 levels would continue to rise exponentially.
These people are demented.
The scientific community needs to rise against this madness and speak the truth. When you have scientists scared for their lives not to tow the politically convenient line you have the makings of a disaster worse than what we purportedly tried to fix in the first place.
What's the solution then?
I don't know. Nobody knows. Because there is no money in approaching this problem from a perspective that will go counter to what politicians need to use to win elections. And so, any researcher daring to do so is likely to end-up driving Uber for a living.
Here's what we do know: Plant billions of trees! This is the natural technology WE KNOW captures CO2 and WE KNOW how to deploy at scale without massive ecological and other consequences. Deforestation is part of the reason humans have contributed to this issue. Plant damn trees!
Here's something else we know: It will take THOUSANDS of years for a meaningful reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere. Generations. Hundreds of generations. Humanity might not even be around by the time this happens. So, let's cool it with all the crazy stuff and virtue signaling and start talking about real scientific reality for a change.
Easy example: Make front lawns in a megalopolis like Los Angeles illegal. No more grass in front of homes. It's a waste of water. And, to add insult to injury, there's all those damn gas-powered mowers, blowers and trimmers. It's a travesty. Instead, require one to two trees per home in the front instead of grass. It will make streets beautiful and capture CO2. It's a better use of water and you eliminate mowers, blowers and trimmers burning gas for no reason at all.
Anyhow, I could go on. Cloudflare would help the universe far more if they planted trees like it's the end of the world. It isn't, of course, but if we keep talking about the wrong solutions it will be, eventually, at least for humans.
Disagree? No problem. Explain how you would accelerate the planetary-scale historical rate of change a thousand-fold and not turn the planet into an ecological disaster in the process. Simple.
If we converted the ENTIRE planet to the most optimal forms of renewable energy, atmospheric CO2 concentration would continue to rise exponentially.
https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...
This research came out of Google. What I find admirable is that the researchers went into this to prove that renewable energy sources were the solution to our problems. In fact, they went in convinced they were correct in having reached this conclusion prior to doing the research. Instead, they discovered they were wrong. And they went ahead and said so.
These days, when science and politics are so intertwined, the latter polluting the former, it is refreshing to see such honesty. That's what science is about: Verifiable, reproducible, evidence-based conclusions, not religion or politics.
Bravo Google Research for doing this work and publishing a conclusion that was diametrically opposite your own assumptions.
EDIT:
This down vote also demonstrates my point: This issue has become a religion (on all sides). Facts and science don't matter any more. People believe what they believe and simply refuse to consider they might just be wrong. Which happens to be the case for nearly EVERYONE who thinks they know the subject. If you think you do, see my first post and answer my questions.
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical...
More ice core data:
"Planting 1.2 Trillion Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions, Scientists Find"
I'll expand on what I said before: Make front lawns illegal throughout the US. Require two or more trees to be planted (use some kind of a formula for the exact amount). We can probably get to half a billion trees just with this approach. However, this has the added effect of eliminating emissions from gas powered mowers, blowers, trimmers, etc. We would consumer less water to grow lawns, capture CO2 effectively to grow trees and reduce emissions from the aforementioned demonic devices in the process. I call that a good start until we figure out other methods that might operate at scale without destroying the planet in the process. Actually, there are at least a couple more things at scale we could do that would be net positive on many fronts. More on that later.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-cou...
The truth is that, short of a ground-braking discovery of a kind that is hard to describe we are not going to "save the plante" for thousands of years. No matter what we do.
We need to stop talking about destroying entire economies, solar panels, killing cars, trains and planes, and the ridiculous idea of buying carbon credits (really?) and start talking about the reality of this problem.
It is a planetary scale problem with a natural rate of change in the order of 100 ppm per 50,000 years. Anyone talking about "saving the planet" for the next generation or anything even remotely close needs to explain how we are going to accelerate this rate of change a thousand-fold without killing everyone in the process and using-up more energy than this planet can produce.
Basic scientific principle: You don't get something for nothing. If you are going to produce a planetary-scale change at 1000x the natural rate the side effects could be worse than the problem.
As I said before multiple times, the natural rate of change is what happened when humanity basically wasn't here --certainly our cities, power plants, planes, etc. were not here. Simple conclusion: If we destroy and eliminate ALL of humanity and all things we built it would take about 50,000 years to reduce atmospheric CO2 by 100 ppm. Anyone claiming to make a 1000x improvement to this rate of change while we are all still here (and our toys) has a supernatural problem to answer for.
Yes, sure, let's stop polluting unnecessarily. Swapping lawns and mowers for trees seems like a win-win at many levels. You stop producing pointless pollution, reduce water waste and convert carbon into trees. After that we need to look at reforestation at a massive scale.
I guess my point is that trees is the only "technology" we know we can deploy at scale without killing everyone on this planet in the process and using-up so much energy and resources that we'll create a larger problem.
I have never understood this kind of thing, is it like carbon credits? It is the wildest fallacy ever to think that we can just pollute as much as we want, and then pay some cash into a future-help pot and call it a carbon footprint reduction. How does this actually reduce their carbon footprint? Isn't that impossible? Once you have polluted you have polluted. No amount of money can reduce the pollution you have already put out there, even if you are (at a later date) spending money to clean it up.
There is no possibility of the funds collected being sufficient to undo the damage caused by the pollution. Once the pollution is out there, it's already causing multi-decade damage. Paying out cash to clean it up is a losing battle, like using a bucket to empty a sinking ship with a hole in the hull.
Props to Cloudflare for caring about the environment and working towards a long-term sustainable internet. But I don't get the RECs thing - how is this not just a huge logical fallacy that corporations buy into to make themselves look better?
I don't think they ante up and go about business.
But, it really doesn't work unless everyone has to work with the carbon system, and that carbon trade system has been repeatedly shot down over and over.
But really, I have no idea if it's a good system at all, or if TFA describes that type of system.
Right now, costs of goods do not reflect reality. For example, if a company pollutes a river to save money on producing some widget, people still pay money in the form of lowered property value, future cleanup efforts, medical expenses, etc. Just not neccissarily the people who purchased the artificially cheap widget. If the company can't externalize costs because they still have to pay for polluting, the increased cost is reflected in the price of the widget and market forces will lower the demand, reducing overall pollution caused by widget production. Perhaps even invalidating some problematic business models.
That's my understanding anyway.
I'm far from an expert though, hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
They are grandstanding with this post. I see their technology as wildly beneficial to the planet, but the attitude that they can pollute and just "offset it" is ridiculous and I think, a major problem with how we are looking at addressing these problems.
So, the economically sensible thing is spend $100 to make factory B more efficient, instead of spending $10000 to undo the effect of factory A. Same thing: the nature largely doesn't care where the CO2 comes from.
Now, imagine factory B is actually owned by my friend. He doesn't want to (or can't afford to) reduce CO2 footprint on his own, but he tells me, "Hey, if you pay me $150, I will reduce my CO2 emission by one ton."
So the system can work, as long as everybody's honest (or as long as there's some system that verifies that they are honest).
> So, the economically sensible thing is spend $100 to make factory B more efficient, instead of spending $10000 to undo the effect of factory A
This is where my understanding breaks down. I don't think this is true at all. I think the opposite is true - it's economically sensible to remove the pollution immediately from the first factory, not to (conditionally promise to) reduce the future output of another factory.
I don't get it. The planet is heating up and each degree we go is going to cost untold trillions. Saying it is economically sensible to try to reduce future output over not making new output at all is the part I don't get. It's just not true that you can choose to pollute more now and promise that it'll be a reduction in pollution output later and come out ahead. You will come out behind on this. The climate is changing faster than we are able to clean it up.
> So the system can work, as long as everybody's honest (or as long as there's some system that verifies that they are honest).
There is no such system. And in the US, the current Republican government is dismantling all oversight that may have existed or could exist to help this.
Another example: Exxon knew about the damages their products were doing to our health, but they lied about it for 50 years.
So I stand by my points. This idea does not work, and Cloudflare is taking positive credit for "reducing their carbon output" but I think it's just a lie. It simply cannot be true.
Grandparent post has a "perfect is the enemy of the good" fallacy. Banning all emissions is simply not possible. That doesn't mean that efforts to limit emissions aren't worthwhile. And that's what cap & trade programs do; the government sets a cap on carbon emissions based on the best available science for what the planet can tolerate before we get unacceptable levels of warming, and then companies can trade carbon credits amongst themselves to allocate who reduces their emissions and who pays other people to reduce their emissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program
> Since the 1990s, SO2 emissions have dropped 40%, and according to the Pacific Research Institute, acid rain levels have dropped 65% since 1976.
...although it seems debatable whether it is more effective than plain regulation.
> However, although it reduced emissions by 40%, the US Acid Rain Program has not reduced SO2 emissions as much as the conventional regulation applied in the European Union (EU), which reduced SO2 emissions by more than 70%. Therefore, the effectiveness of the emissions trading element as a mechanism has been criticised, ...
We can make it a concrete example.
Build a nuclear plant first.
Alternative 1: use the nuke plant to do carbon capture from the atmosphere while next door ten coal plants run and pollute as before.
Alternative 2: produce electricity so all the ten coal plants stay off.
The latter approach has about 10x the CO2 reduction effect.
REC's are just a bit more abstract. Emissions avoided are as good as emissions removed from the air. First rule of conservation. So instead of contracting Carbon Engineering, who is still working down their cost per ton, I pay out of my pocket to install solar panels on the roof of somebody else's factory, averting the carbon emissions their electricity demands would create. So again, in net, flying my planes produces carbon, but buying a ticket on my plane also pays for solar panels that save carbon.
Wait, sorry, it's one more level of abstraction- I didn't actually install those solar panels, I just paid a chunk of money to somebody to help them install solar panels when they couldn't otherwise- it's a pain to do things in units of "one whole solar installation", and I don't want to worry about the details like which roof to put them on.
Sure, it would be great if we could halt all carbon output today, right now. But we can't. So REC's help send more money to the renewable energy industry, bring more capacity online faster, and advance their R&D quicker than would otherwise. REC's aren't a tool for getting us to zero; they are part of getting the ball rolling in a downward direction.
> Thus my planes are carbon neutral,
How though? The carbon went into the atmosphere first. Then - some time later, how long? - an equivalent amount has been removed. But that takes time and that time is lost forever, the heat has been captured and the Earth warmed, already.
> Emissions avoided are as good as emissions removed from the air.
These two things are not equivalent. Emissions avoided are fare better that emissions removed from the air. Emissions removed from the air have already produced a warming effect on the Earth, while avoided emissions have not.
> So again, in net, flying my planes produces carbon, but a ticket on my plane also pays for solar panels that save carbon.
This doesn't make any sense though. You have still made a large carbon output, and your assumption is that without your plane, the house would never convert to solar but that simply isn't true. It's a false dichotomy and I don't understand how these two things could be equal to each other (removal vs. non-output). They are physically different processes with different consequences.
> to help them install solar panels when they couldn't otherwise.
This doesn't make sense to me though.
> REC's help send more money to the renewable energy industry, bring more capacity online faster, and advance their R&D quicker than would otherwise.
That's good! But it has nothing to do with Cloudflare "reducing" their carbon footprint.
Also, how do you "not understand" that someone might not be able to install renewables without financial assistance? It's a huge capital outlay, often with marginal payoff.
If my household budget followed this reasoning, I could offset my Starbucks today by avoiding purchasing one tomorrow.
Every stage in the REC calculation - "solar panels they wouldn't have purchased otherwise", "emissions that would have happened without the solar panels", etc - are ripe for very profitable and fictional adjustments.
The gap between the actual cost of removing carbon from the air, and the cost of an REC, gives a hint as to the difference in how meaningful they are.
I can agree REC's could be abused. Although this part: gap between the actual cost of removing carbon from the air I think reflects the immature science of removing carbon from the air, more than anything else. Renewable energy is fifty or seventy years along its development, carbon capture is pretty young, maybe a decade?
"What we do is find people who want a carbon neutral environment but can't afford one and package their investments up into one giant carbon emissions security and chop them up in a way that we can sell them to banks."
Problem solved!