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The internet eats up less energy than you might think

nytimes.com

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Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#11

Post by adflux »

beckman466 wrote: post #9
adflux wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for Microsoft, I think they intend to be carbon negative by 2025. And still there's people in the Netherlands complaining that datacentres use up too much of the green energy available in the Netherlands. Truly backwards way of thinking

> Same for Microsoft, > still there's people in the Netherlands complaining that datacentres use up too much of the green energy available in the Netherlands. Truly backwards way of thinking Analyzing and critiquing the moves a massive monopoly -capitalist entity is ‘backwards‘? This sounds quite un-nuanced. Could you elaborate more what you mean? As it stands it sounds like a naive accelerationist perspective.

It is backwards because companies deciding to go CO2 neutral by using sustainable energy sources are contributing towards the Paris agreement. The same people who are complaining the loudest about the datacentres using green electricity, are the same people who would be complaining about the datacentres using fossils fuels, and the same people who use the services delivered by these datacentres.

Companies are facing backlash, yes, for using green energy. How can a company ever go green as long as this kind of thought patterns are mainstream

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#12

Post by beckman466 »

> cloud data centers are operated by companies including Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

A quick google search about market share reveals: “AWS has 32% of the market, followed by Azure at 19%, Google at 7%, Alibaba Cloud close behind“

Why is Alibaba listed first in the list in the NYT article if American data centers together have 58% market share?

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#13

Post by jarvelov »

beckman466 wrote: post #12

> cloud data centers are operated by companies including Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. A quick google search about market share reveals: “AWS has 32% of the market, followed by Azure at 19%, Google at 7%, Alibaba Cloud close behind“ Why is Alibaba listed first in the list in the NYT article if American data centers together have 58% market share?

Seems like they listed them in alphabetical order for some reason.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#14

Post by Swenrekcah »

beckman466 wrote: post #12

> cloud data centers are operated by companies including Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. A quick google search about market share reveals: “AWS has 32% of the market, followed by Azure at 19%, Google at 7%, Alibaba Cloud close behind“ Why is Alibaba listed first in the list in the NYT article if American data centers together have 58% market share?

The list is alphabetical

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#15

Post by [deleted] »

beckman466 wrote: post #12

> cloud data centers are operated by companies including Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. A quick google search about market share reveals: “AWS has 32% of the market, followed by Azure at 19%, Google at 7%, Alibaba Cloud close behind“ Why is Alibaba listed first in the list in the NYT article if American data centers together have 58% market share?

[deleted]

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#16

Post by southerntofu »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #3

Something that the article does not mention is that most of the large cloud providers are committed to 100% renewables when it comes to their energy usage. E.g. Google has been working on this for ages and most / all (?) of their data centers are running on clean energy. Most of the non sustainable energy consumption happens on the consumer side where most of us are dependent on grids that are also shifting to more s…

Is the datacenter disconnected from the electric grid? Does it not have huge tanks of petrol to run backup generators? Was the datacenter built from locally-sourced materials? Those are the easy questions.

What "renewable" energy does it run and how was it produced? What's the carbox/fossil profile of those energy sources? How long do they need to run, and in what conditions, in order to offset this initial fossil energy invested? Those are the medium-difficulty questions. And as i much as i hate Michael Moore's rhetoric, "Planet of the humans" does a pretty good job of explaining why these questions are important.

What is the ecological impact of the cloud? Why do countryside folks have to have their data run across the country just to exchange messages with their neighbors, and what's the impact of that? What's the impact of a song that you downloaded from Youtube (replicated, dedicated centralized infra) instead of Bittorrent (decentralized, already-in-use hardware)? What's the impact of streaming this same song over and over? What's the impact of online advertisement and web trackers? How many people are working in concrete offices in a city in order to maintain that hellish infrastructure? Where does all the sand and minerals come from to build all that infrastructure as well as all the electronics you find in there? Those are the hard questions and when you answer them you'll never fantasize about green capitalism ever again.

In case you're interested in such topics, and what to do about it, but can't stand for Michael Moore, i strongly recommend the "End:Civ" documentary: https://youtube.com/watch?v=L4ccAJJrrjM

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#17

Post by beckman466 »

jarvelov wrote: post #13
beckman466 wrote: post #12

> cloud data centers are operated by companies including Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. A quick google search about market share reveals: “AWS has 32% of the market, followed by Azure at 19%, Google at 7%, Alibaba Cloud close behind“ Why is Alibaba listed first in the list in the NYT article if American data centers together have 58% market share?

Seems like they listed them in alphabetical order for some reason.

Ah yes now I see it, thanks. It still seems a weird decision

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#18

Post by southerntofu »

adflux wrote: post #11
beckman466 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same for Microsoft, > still there's people in the Netherlands complaining that datacentres use up too much of the green energy available in the Netherlands. Truly backwards way of thinking Analyzing and critiquing the moves a massive monopoly -capitalist entity is ‘backwards‘? This sounds quite un-nuanced. Could you elaborate more what you mean? As it stands it sounds like a naive accelerationist perspective.

It is backwards because companies deciding to go CO2 neutral by using sustainable energy sources are contributing towards the Paris agreement. The same people who are complaining the loudest about the datacentres using green electricity, are the same people who would be complaining about the datacentres using fossils fuels, and the same people who use the services delivered by these datacentres. Companies are facing…

> How can a company ever go green as long as this kind of thought patterns are mainstream

It's fundamentally impossible. Capitalism is what brought this ecological madness down on it, because of its shortsighted profit incentives. The very same system cannot fix the problem, because nothing has changed.

Pointing out companies who used fossil fuels was intending to allow us as a society to realize we need to reduce consumption/production, not pretend we should shut up and live happily as long as we paint every single polluting thing with a green chemical glowing paint.

There is no such thing as green capitalism and there will never be. Consumerism, private property and competition is what destroyed this planet. Whether we go on and destroy new ones (hello Musk, Bezos and other psychopaths) or destroy the capitalist system depends on our understanding of those issues.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#19

Post by user_7832 »

adflux wrote: post #11
beckman466 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same for Microsoft, > still there's people in the Netherlands complaining that datacentres use up too much of the green energy available in the Netherlands. Truly backwards way of thinking Analyzing and critiquing the moves a massive monopoly -capitalist entity is ‘backwards‘? This sounds quite un-nuanced. Could you elaborate more what you mean? As it stands it sounds like a naive accelerationist perspective.

It is backwards because companies deciding to go CO2 neutral by using sustainable energy sources are contributing towards the Paris agreement. The same people who are complaining the loudest about the datacentres using green electricity, are the same people who would be complaining about the datacentres using fossils fuels, and the same people who use the services delivered by these datacentres. Companies are facing…

If I'm not mistaken, the backlash wasn't because MS was using green energy, but rather the Dutch government had promised green energy to its citizens, and then when the wind farms were built, in a surprise move MS announced that it's building servers to use the energy (that was initially intended to go to the Dutch public). Basically the server was a "convenient" way for the Dutch govt to technically build new renewables as per the requirement (also see: the Urgenda Climate Case against the Dutch Government) while the new (and otherwise unplanned MS server) used up all the new energy.

It's in no way bad that the server uses clean energy, but the critique is that the government wriggled their way out, Microsoft got to boast about servers running on clean energy while the Dutch citizens were still stuck with the older CO2-intensive power source mix despite the govt's "commitment" to cleaner power.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#20

Post by southerntofu »

ppf wrote: post #8

This article is very light on details. I'm also not sure what the difference between "traditional data centres"and "cloud data centres" is. It also completely ignores (as does everyone else) the 700lb gorilla in the room - the embedded energy content of all of the computing equipment, from the video camera used to film content, to the networking equipment and data centre servers, to the final device used to consume t…

> "traditional data centres"and "cloud data centres"

There is no difference hardware-wise. The difference is our cloud overlords have been promoting "on-demand scaling" as a proof "serverless hosting" is superior to traditional ways because it's greener and "we can shutdown machines when there's no demands". Which is arguably true, but so short-sighted it hurts to think journalists will fall into this trap.

> to the networking equipment and data centre servers

Sorry i don't have the data at hand, but some people estimated just that. Internet infrastructure as a whole was estimated to use several percent of the world's electricity. Those numbers did not count resources/energy for production of the hardware or the infrastructure, only recurring "costs".

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