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Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

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Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#141

Post by p1mrx »

IshKebab wrote: post #125
notatoad wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

carbon-free energy on every grid where they operate also sounds like a significantly more ambitious goal than net-zero across the company, because it means actual reduction in emissions, rather than relying on offsets. if it's a serious committment to being carbon-free, i think this sounds like a positive change. if it's a moonshot that they have no real intention of actually meeting, then it's a lot less impressive.…

> carbon-free energy on every grid where they operate also sounds like a significantly more ambitious goal than net-zero across the company, because it means actual reduction in emission Not necessarily. In the UK the market for zero-emission electricity is separated from the actual electricity itself. So you basically sell the "greenness" of the electricity separately from the electricity itself. Customers who want…

"24/7 carbon-free energy" is actually a much stronger goal, because (for example) it's physically impossible to buy solar/wind energy on a calm night, so they would need to pay more for an alternative like batteries or nuclear.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#142

Post by nostrademons »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #106
HardCodedBias wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar power is much more expensive if the power must adhere to some number of 9's of reliability. Often data centers need to run at three nines of availability (ie: 99.9) and at that level of availability the price of solar power is many multiples of conventional power due to the cost of batteries and over provisioning.

this is not true. solar+battery+natural gas backup is cheaper than any other form of power by a lot.

Hydro is cheaper, if you have access to it. That (and cooling) is why many data centers are built next to rivers like The Dalles.

But your point otherwise stands; solar + battery is cheaper than any fossil fuel form of power.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#143

Post by yieldcrv »

dotnet00 wrote: post #55
yieldcrv wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has maintained steep tariffs on solar panels. Because the US should be doing it domestically, just like China is. The incentive to do is partially based on tariffs, but the incentive hasn't spurred the private sector and supply chain maintainers into action, and a more comprehensive strategy would need to be done. There is no consensus for further subsidies from the national government to spur this productio…

Just saying that the US should be doing it domestically and companies aren't interested isn't useful. It's kind of like saying "young people just don't want to work hard anymore!".

okay. I thought it was insightful enough. I've worked in many economic unions where that mismatch existed and needed further investigation to steer organizations towards the desired outcome.

pointing out that the current efforts don't do that is all that needed to be said. your criticism of that comment, to me, proved that you understood the comment enough that one needs to look further into the motivations.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#144

Post by jltsiren »

notatoad wrote: post #77
gjm11 wrote: post #19

I think there's less to this than meets the eye. Previously, on https://sustainability.google/operating-sustainably/ : "We've set a goal to achieve net-zero emissions across all of our operations and value chain by 2030." and, in a table later, "Reduce 50% of our combined Scope 1, 2 (market-based), and 3 absolute emissions by 2030. Invest in nature-based and technology-based carbon removal solutions to neutralize our…

carbon-free energy on every grid where they operate also sounds like a significantly more ambitious goal than net-zero across the company, because it means actual reduction in emissions, rather than relying on offsets. if it's a serious committment to being carbon-free, i think this sounds like a positive change. if it's a moonshot that they have no real intention of actually meeting, then it's a lot less impressive.…

It would have been an ambitious goal in 2010. But the fundamental issue with it is similar to buying offsets.

If you are connected to the grid, the power you use is effectively generated by the power plant with the highest marginal costs. That often means fossil fuels. It doesn't matter whether you are buying generic power from the grid, or if you have a contract stating that the power you use is generated by renewables or nuclear. If you disconnect from the grid, the overall demand goes down, and some of the most expensive generation capacity is no longer needed.

In the long term, if there are many customers buying explicitly carbon-free power from the grid, it may increase the construction of new carbon-free generation capacity. But that effect is difficult to quantify.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#145

Post by p1mrx »

simianwords wrote: post #104
notatoad wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

carbon-free energy on every grid where they operate also sounds like a significantly more ambitious goal than net-zero across the company, because it means actual reduction in emissions, rather than relying on offsets. if it's a serious committment to being carbon-free, i think this sounds like a positive change. if it's a moonshot that they have no real intention of actually meeting, then it's a lot less impressive.…

What’s the real difference? Don’t offsets also do the same thing? If I emit 5g of CO2 but purchase similar in offsets - the offsets have to achieve a reduction of 5g unless something like a scam is going on.

The biggest problem with carbon offsets is that they're not pinned to a particular time of day.

If you buy a 1 GWh block of wind/solar energy for a month, you're not doing anything to supply clean energy when it's dark and the wind isn't blowing.

"24/7 carbon free" means increasing the time resolution from 1 month to 1 hour, and funding projects that deliver clean energy when you're actually using it. This includes stuff like batteries, nuclear, and geothermal.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#146

Post by p1mrx »

jltsiren wrote: post #144
notatoad wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

carbon-free energy on every grid where they operate also sounds like a significantly more ambitious goal than net-zero across the company, because it means actual reduction in emissions, rather than relying on offsets. if it's a serious committment to being carbon-free, i think this sounds like a positive change. if it's a moonshot that they have no real intention of actually meeting, then it's a lot less impressive.…

It would have been an ambitious goal in 2010. But the fundamental issue with it is similar to buying offsets. If you are connected to the grid, the power you use is effectively generated by the power plant with the highest marginal costs. That often means fossil fuels. It doesn't matter whether you are buying generic power from the grid, or if you have a contract stating that the power you use is generated by renewab…

"In 2024, we increased our 24/7 CFE percentage from 64% to 66%, and nine out of 20 grid regions with Google-owned and -operated data centers achieved at least 80% CFE."

Look at those numbers. 100% still is a very ambitious goal. Currently 0 global customers are buying 24/7 carbon free power from the grid, and even getting from 0 to 1 will require a lot of boots on the ground building real infrastructure. Afterwards, getting from 1 to [everyone] is just a matter of scale.

Even the "lazy" strategy of buying up capacity from existing nuclear plants requires outbidding the existing customers (if the law allows it), and only works in regions where nuclear plants actually exist.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#147

Post by kjkjadksj »

_mlbt wrote: post #36
kjkjadksj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those just invalidate totalitarianism. On the other hand, the US government uplifted itself from the great depression and won WWII thanks to a centrally planned economy. People like to forget about that fact though.

How do you achieve nation or world scale communism without totalitarianism? I am one of many people who know the history of communism’s failures and will never accept it willingly.

We already have communism to a certain degree in every democratic government. You already accept it willingly. It is just a matter of expanding more government programs on top of sectors being squatted by rent seekers looking to make money without actual contribution to the economy beyond rent seeking from those that do contribute to the economy. The only hard part is that rent seekers tend to have an outsized influence on politics than workers.

Really, what is the utility of a rent seeker? By definition they are a leach on the actual productive elements of an economy. A waste. An inefficiency. I mean, you pay someone to do something, but you have to pay them even more than what might be required because they have this nonworking person sustaining themselves on rent seeking you also need to pay stuck on that back of that worker. That is the situation in so many economic sectors. It leads to a huge loss of money and productivity objectively. It leads to businesses outsourcing labor due to the artificial costs brought on by speculative rent seekers in a given local economy.

My landlord has no job. They collect probably 16k in rent a month from all the units in the small complex in which they raise rents yearly. In terms of investment in the property they once hired a handyman to cauk my sink so probably not even $200 a unit a year in overhead on average. They don’t do renovations or any work between tenants beyond sweeping up the floors and they try and keep as much security deposit for themselves as possible for stupid things. I pay a substantial portion of my income not to upkeep the roof over my head, but to ensure my landlord can have an upper class existence in a high cost of living area while not having to work a job and contribute any labor or ideas.

Does that seem like a good system to you? Enabling freeloaders to leech off the people doing the actual work that makes the world spin, to a point where they are paid far more than most workers? Passing that lifestyle to their nonworking children through inheritance? Essentially creating a hidden nonworking feudal kingdom sustained by the functional economy? One that has outsized political and media influence to ensure the boat is not rocked? Really think about what is actually happening in our economy.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#148

Post by murderfs »

worik wrote: post #140
ActorNightly wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so much political as strategic. If nobody else has to make efforts for sustainability, its a "pointless" investment (in the sense that the current shareholders don't really care that much about future over returns within their lifespans)

> If nobody else has to make efforts for sustainability, its a "pointless" investment No. That is not true * Unless you are evil using school yard excuses is off brand. You do the right thing * Carbon free energy is cheaper to produce these days, so the premis is wrong This politics. Burn the planet, it is what Trump would do

> * Carbon free energy is cheaper to produce these days, so the premis is wrong

If it's cheaper to produce, then there's no point in doing anything special, because it'll just take over via market forces. The "problem" with renewables is that the economics are fantastic in the marginal case, but if you need it to take over baseload when the sun is down, wind isn't blowing, etc., it's much more expensive because you need to build energy storage, which fossil fuel generators get for free. Going from 50% of power generation to 100% is going to be many multiples more expensive than 0% to 50%.

Until things like flow batteries become economical, in places without rivers you can dam for generation/pumped storage, it's probably not going to be feasible to go 0% carbon unless you just replace all of your baseload generation with nuclear or something.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#149

Post by jltsiren »

p1mrx wrote: post #146
jltsiren wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been an ambitious goal in 2010. But the fundamental issue with it is similar to buying offsets. If you are connected to the grid, the power you use is effectively generated by the power plant with the highest marginal costs. That often means fossil fuels. It doesn't matter whether you are buying generic power from the grid, or if you have a contract stating that the power you use is generated by renewab…

"In 2024, we increased our 24/7 CFE percentage from 64% to 66%, and nine out of 20 grid regions with Google-owned and -operated data centers achieved at least 80% CFE." Look at those numbers. 100% still is a very ambitious goal. Currently 0 global customers are buying 24/7 carbon free power from the grid, and even getting from 0 to 1 will require a lot of boots on the ground building real infrastructure. Afterwards,…

Buying carbon-free power from the grid was a big thing in Finland (and maybe in wider Europe) around 2010. But companies eventually stopped talking about it, as it's mostly greenwashing with limited real-world impact.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#150

Post by p1mrx »

jltsiren wrote: post #149
p1mrx wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In 2024, we increased our 24/7 CFE percentage from 64% to 66%, and nine out of 20 grid regions with Google-owned and -operated data centers achieved at least 80% CFE." Look at those numbers. 100% still is a very ambitious goal. Currently 0 global customers are buying 24/7 carbon free power from the grid, and even getting from 0 to 1 will require a lot of boots on the ground building real infrastructure. Afterwards,…

Buying carbon-free power from the grid was a big thing in Finland (and maybe in wider Europe) around 2010. But companies eventually stopped talking about it, as it's mostly greenwashing with limited real-world impact.

Were they buying time-independent blocks of carbon-free power, or 24/7 carbon-free power? The latter is significantly more difficult.
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