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Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

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Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#31

Post by gspr »

namdnay wrote: post #14

I'm always suspicious about carbon offsets. From what I've seen buying flights for example, the price seems surprisingly low. Either being carbon neutral is not as economy-killing as some say, or the true price is much higher. Does anyone have more expertise on this?

I once thought the same as you, so I did a quick estimation calculation. This is very back-of-the-envelope, so take it with a pinch of salt.

The flight in question was a roughly 1500 km + 1500 km = 3000 km roundtrip. I remember the airline offered to make my flight CO₂-neutral for about €20 or so. ICAO's emissions calculator [1] put my total contributed CO₂ emissions at about 280 kg. An economically very very inefficient baseline for counteracting CO₂ emissions is just extracting it from the air and storing it [2]. This is hard and expensive because the concentrations are so low in the atmosphere in general (away from emissions sources), but even in that case, numbers from pilot projects come out at $94-$232/ton [3]. Taking the optimistic estimate, that would mean my emissions could be undone for as little as roughly $26. Things seem to work out in roughly the right ballpark.

Of course the airline doesn't use direct air capture for this offsetting, but I looked into it and seem to recall the money going to sane projects. Another comment points out some of the much lower-hanging targets for emissions reductions out there, and they are of course much more effective per buck spent than direct air capture: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469438

[1] https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/P...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_air_capture

[3] https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30225-3

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#32

Post by YetAnotherNick »

roenxi wrote: post #15

This is quite impressive, but it is also somewhat meaningless. I suppose I'd draw an analogy to a cake shop boasting that it had achieved net-no industrial accidents over its existence - a great record, but also not really a particular stretch to achieve. Carbon emissions aren't about servers. They are about, in order of priority: * How do we feed people cheaply without fossil fuels (both as fertiliser & for crop tra…

Yes, I agree that the title should be "Google data centers achieves zero carbon footprint", but still it is not zero effort to achieve it. I would imagine data centers to use non trivial power to run.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#33

Post by extropy »

ForHackernews wrote: post #25
namdnay wrote: post #14

I'm always suspicious about carbon offsets. From what I've seen buying flights for example, the price seems surprisingly low. Either being carbon neutral is not as economy-killing as some say, or the true price is much higher. Does anyone have more expertise on this?

Because so few people are interested in offsets right now, there's a huge amount of "low-hanging fruit" options for cheap things humanity can do to offset carbon emissions. For example, look at some of the projects here: https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissio... Many of them just involve getting very poor people access to clean water (so they don't have to burn hydrocarbons to boil the water) or…

Not buying the access to clean water = less burning of hydrocarbon.

The poor people by definition are resource strapped and will use any means of energy available, just for different purpose.

On the cynical side: clean water -> less mortality -> more population -> more carbon use to sustain said population.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#34

Post by onion2k »

roenxi wrote: post #15

This is quite impressive, but it is also somewhat meaningless. I suppose I'd draw an analogy to a cake shop boasting that it had achieved net-no industrial accidents over its existence - a great record, but also not really a particular stretch to achieve. Carbon emissions aren't about servers. They are about, in order of priority: * How do we feed people cheaply without fossil fuels (both as fertiliser & for crop tra…

a cake shop boasting that it had achieved net-no industrial accidents over its existence

I'm curious about how you offset an accident to get back down to net no accidents. Can you explain?

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#35

Post by YetAnotherNick »

masswerk wrote: post #13
jurgenaut23 wrote: post #3

How about the carbon footprint of their users while using their services?

Also, network traffic is about 40% (estimated) of the energy consumption of IT according to the statistics I've seen.

I could bet that this is wrong. Network taking almost equal energy as CPU does not seem correct. Any sources?

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#36

Post by cmrdporcupine »

taf2 wrote: post #28
roenxi wrote: post #15

This is quite impressive, but it is also somewhat meaningless. I suppose I'd draw an analogy to a cake shop boasting that it had achieved net-no industrial accidents over its existence - a great record, but also not really a particular stretch to achieve. Carbon emissions aren't about servers. They are about, in order of priority: * How do we feed people cheaply without fossil fuels (both as fertiliser & for crop tra…

Not sure it’s correct way to view the problem but in my mind if google could 1. Ensure all employees traveling to work had zero emissions 2. The production of energy to power their offices and servers produced zero emissions 3. The sourcing of materials to build and maintain the energy production produced zero emissions 4. The food required to feed the people working for them produced zero emissions I think 3 and 4 a…

At Google at least there's some reasonable support for EV charging at work. The Mountain View office support for this is better than my own (Waterloo) where we have only 4 chargers for the entire office -- located indoors underground right in the office building making them competitive spaces that people use even though they don't need it.

But the infrastructure in California is actually quite impressive, and they were early to the game on that.

But better than making driving less CO2 intensive is to have people not drive at all.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#37

Post by seppel »

ForHackernews wrote: post #25
namdnay wrote: post #14

I'm always suspicious about carbon offsets. From what I've seen buying flights for example, the price seems surprisingly low. Either being carbon neutral is not as economy-killing as some say, or the true price is much higher. Does anyone have more expertise on this?

Because so few people are interested in offsets right now, there's a huge amount of "low-hanging fruit" options for cheap things humanity can do to offset carbon emissions. For example, look at some of the projects here: https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissio... Many of them just involve getting very poor people access to clean water (so they don't have to burn hydrocarbons to boil the water) or…

> Because so few people are interested in offsets right now, there's a huge amount of "low-hanging fruit" options for cheap things humanity can do to offset carbon emissions.

Yeah, that the trick. To put it boldly: What they offer is not sustainable. This means that these green initiatives hide the real price of CO2 or at least give a very wrong impression.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#38

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

jsmith99 wrote: post #29
jurgenaut23 wrote: post #3

How about the carbon footprint of their users while using their services?

That would be a fair argument against, say, an oil company claiming its operations (ie distribution) are carbon neutral while ignoring the use to which people put its products. But most tech firms' products encourage users to stay at home on the couch and produce less carbon, if anything. Probably the only Google product that encourages users to produce CO2 is Maps.

Youtube, too; e.g I could take a walk in the neigh-borough or watch a car racing video (where Google pays for the gas by sharing ad revenues).

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#39

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

extropy wrote: post #33
ForHackernews wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because so few people are interested in offsets right now, there's a huge amount of "low-hanging fruit" options for cheap things humanity can do to offset carbon emissions. For example, look at some of the projects here: https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissio... Many of them just involve getting very poor people access to clean water (so they don't have to burn hydrocarbons to boil the water) or…

Not buying the access to clean water = less burning of hydrocarbon. The poor people by definition are resource strapped and will use any means of energy available, just for different purpose. On the cynical side: clean water -> less mortality -> more population -> more carbon use to sustain said population.

clean water -> less mortality -> less population (as people stop having extra children) -> roughly the same amount of carbon.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#40

Post by srtjstjsj »

extropy wrote: post #33
ForHackernews wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because so few people are interested in offsets right now, there's a huge amount of "low-hanging fruit" options for cheap things humanity can do to offset carbon emissions. For example, look at some of the projects here: https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissio... Many of them just involve getting very poor people access to clean water (so they don't have to burn hydrocarbons to boil the water) or…

Not buying the access to clean water = less burning of hydrocarbon. The poor people by definition are resource strapped and will use any means of energy available, just for different purpose. On the cynical side: clean water -> less mortality -> more population -> more carbon use to sustain said population.

It's pretty well established that lower mortality leads to less reproduction and lower overall population. When mortar is high, proof reliability over correct with extra "cushion" children.

Wealth is a far larger source of pollution than life.

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