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Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

theguardian.com

1–10 of 121 posts

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#4
For a context: France relies heavily on automotive transport, plus it's a home to enormous agricultural sector, tractors are literally everywhere in the country during the summer. To a certain degree, structurally it resembles USA a lot.

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#5
In related current news:

Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2026/07/11/irish-datacen...

  The latest figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that giant server farms now account for nearly a quarter of the country's metered electricity consumption.

  Their share rose to 23 percent in 2025 after passing 20 percent in 2023 and 14 percent in 2021 – up from just 5 percent way back in 2015.
Luckily this will all be offset by the pot of gold at the end of the AI rainbow.

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#6
But... Datacenters don't burn anything, right? Powerplants do and we try to switch all the transport and heating and whatever to be electric.

So the answer is to build the damb nuclear power and a lot of it and price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#7
post #5

In related current news: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2026/07/11/irish-datacen... The latest figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that giant server farms now account for nearly a quarter of the country's metered electricity consumption. Their share rose to 23 percent in 2025 after passing 20 percent in 2023 and 14 percent in 2…

23 percent is a bit fucked actually

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#9
post #3

Man, we are cooked, literally

No, wait! The increased productivity will lead to a decoupling of the economy from resources consumption and GHGs emission. Just one more data center. /s

It’s such a tiring narrative isn’t it ?

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#10
post #6

But... Datacenters don't burn anything, right? Powerplants do and we try to switch all the transport and heating and whatever to be electric. So the answer is to build the damb nuclear power and a lot of it and price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere

> price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere

This is the only relevant bit actually. The rest will follow from there. And in principle, at least in Europe, we already have some mechanisms to do this. We'd "just" have to up the prices.

BUT of course with the right wing on the advance, and with them having identified basic physics (i.e. climate change) as a culture war terrain, this keeps being watered down... Oh well... This is why we can't have nice things... like a future...

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