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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

Plenty of datacenters that are somewhere generally in the pacific NW can claim to be "Green" because their power supply is entirely hydroelectric.

https://www.nwd.usace.army.mil/CRWM/CR-Dams/

Many of those areas also happen to have the lowest $ per kWh electricity in North American, the only lower rate is available near a few hydroelectric dams in Quebec.

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As anyone who has driven through the Columbia River Basin can tell you wind power is also abundant in Washington. The grid is very clean here but it’s certainly not purely hydro.

I put "green" not in scare quotes but to point out that there isn't any truly consequences-free energy, the datacenter itself may be mostly green but the PNW grid can and does have some peaking carbon-fuel based power plants in the mix, and there's well known environmental consequences from flooding vast areas of land to build a new hydroelectric dam.

Many of the dams we have now were permitted and built in the 1930s-1950s era when the external consequences of building them were barely considered.

Previously, I had multiple data centers in Quincy, WA. Those were hydro green. It is an area that hosts a whole multitude of big hyperscaler companies.

Why is green in scare-quotes?

People make the argument that is a giant datacenter is consuming 50% of some local hydro installation, everyone else is town is buying something else that is less green.

It opens up questions about grids and market efficiency, so your mileage may vary.

> People make the argument that is a giant datacenter is consuming 50% of some local hydro installation, everyone else is town is buying something else that is less green.

I don't think that's a cogent argument. It's akin to saying a vegan commune in a small is buying is buying up 50% of the vegan food, "forcing" others to buy meat-products, and framing this to cast doubts on whether they are truly vegan. Consumers aren't in a position to solve supply problems.

Hydro power is a great thing, it was the first renewable energy that was available in meaningful quantities. However, great sites for hydro power are definitely limited. We will not suddenly find a great spot for a new huge dam. Imagine the only source of vegan B12 to be some obscure plant that can only be grown on a tiny island. In this scenario, the possible extend of vegan consumption is fixed.

In the regions where it works (PNW, Quebec, etc) we could easily build more. The hurdles are regulatory. The regulation isn’t baseless - a dam will affect the local ecosystem adversely. But that’s a tradeoff we choose rather than a fundamental limitation.

The other trade off is correlated with the energy stored : potential for catastrophic disaster in case of failure. as a society, living below is not risk free in the long run.

You've just painted a clearer picture than I did: the crux is that it is a supply-side problem.

Thats a terrible analogy. Maybe if a bio-fuel plant used 50% of the vegan food to produce “green fuel”

There's also discussion of environmental damage from damming rivers

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