Hacker News Reader

Comment by teruakohatu | Hacker News Reader

> This is just PR and carbon greenwashing.

> All current power plants are completely unsuitable as single power source for a data center

I don’t think this is a fair assessment.

For example, there is a data center being built in New Zealand that will be grid connected but the power will be supplied from a huge hydro dam that has to have generators shutdown if the load is not great enough. Its primarily purpose is to power an aluminium smelter and there is not enough transmission capacity to transfer all the electricity elsewhere.

Another counter example is home solar. If a house is grid connected it’s still producing green energy even if it still sips gas generation at night.

View on HN

I call this greenwashing because Meta throws minor amounts of money at an existing plant, then basically claims all the credit for all the CO2-less electricity that is produced there.

This is IMO just a CO2 accounting trick, basically, and does not really achieve anything, because all that happens is that the average electricity user in that area gets a bit "dirtier" (on paper) while Meta becomes "zero emission" (on paper), meanwhile nothing actually changed.

Don't get me wrong, this is not harmful, but building new emission free power or replacing fossil plants is much more useful than paying some cash to basically shift blame around.

> For example, there is a data center being built in New Zealand that will be grid connected but the power will be supplied from a huge hydro dam

Sure-- but you still really want that grid connection, both to sell power when you have too much and also to buy power when the turbines are being maintained or water is running low. My point here is just that it almost never really makes sense to couple plant and datacenter directly and skip the grid connection.

The technical term for this is "additionality" and Google has been aware of this for over a decade when purchasing green power, so there's no real excuse for Meta to be doing it.

https://sustainability.google/operating-sustainably/stories/...

> To ensure that Google is the driver for bringing new clean energy onto the grid, we insist that all projects be “additional.” This means that we seek to purchase energy from not-yet-constructed generation facilities that will be built above and beyond what’s required by existing energy regulations.

Unless the nuclear plant would shut down without their money, they're just taking carbon credits from the wider grid. Amazon had one of their nuclear plans rejected for this exact reason.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com