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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

#201

Post by dkarl »

bluGill wrote: post #183
dkarl wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies can help a lot by locating their offices in places that enable less carbon intensive commuting, lobbying local government, supporting initiatives that promote density, and supporting local transit initiatives (example: [0]). When businesses speak up and say, local business needs workers to be able to commute without a car, our competitiveness will suffer without it and we will fall behind, that speaks to a…

Most corporate campuses are located such that public transportation cannot serve it well. They tend to be isolated islands surrounded by parking lots and grass land, with no through street that transit could take that would get from on place to another. Thus the only transit ends at their building, this is okay for a zoo or shopping mall where people come and go all day, but offices tend to be everyone arriving at th…

Yep. Carbon initiatives like the Microsoft one will force them to rethink the wisdom of building corporate campuses.

> people with a choice will prefer to drive just for the one time that the kid gets sick and they have to leave early

This used to be a major (underestimated, in my opinion) issue, and I used to bring it up all the time as something that needed to be addressed before people who were accustomed to driving would voluntarily leave their cars at home, but I think Uber and Lyft solve it, full stop.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#202

Post by mywittyname »

Closi wrote: post #53
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…

Some of these sound like double counting too. Like you can fund an already-built wind turbine plant - the capital is already built, so even without your funding this is going to stay open... But even if we forget that, the people buying energy from these plants will be buying a 'green megawatt' - so surely that means each megawatt will have been both offset and sold as 'green energy'? And then to add to that - these…

Or how Canada can claim forest growth as carbon reduction, but then not count forest fires towards their carbon emissions...

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#203

Post by ashtonkem »

actuator wrote: post #116
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #109

There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1]. Eg do you count secondary services your employees use, like food services or emissions from their commute? Do you count partner services, like shipping providers for physical product? These, along with your direct emissions, are categorized into three "scopes" of emis…

> emissions from their commute Isn't stuff like this kind of out of their hand unless the state itself tries to fix this.

The FAANG companies are so rich and so big that they’re now providing some of the commuting infrastructure for their employees in the form of buses. They certainly have quite a lot more control over their employees commuting impact than most companies, even if it isn’t total control.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#204

Post by wazoox »

shadowgovt wrote: post #200
wazoox wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get brownouts > That's strictly cleaner than running the region on fossil plants only True, but from a CO2 and climate standpoint that's strictly dirtier than nuclear. And reducing emissions by enforcing good insulation norms, taxing the hell out of kerosene, etc.

Nuclear, of course, has its own dirty issue in sequestering byproducts (discounting the occasional meltdown, which---thankfully---is still generally a localized problem relative to CO2 emission's global threat, although it's not very localized... Chernobyl threatened much of west Asia and Europe in the worst-case scenario which, thankfully, didn't materialize). It's a little hard to weigh those costs vs. benefits, si…

This is a problem of means. We don't have infinite resources to spend. For instance Germany spent 300 billions euros on wind and solar power since 2000. They decided to stop using nuclear, and are still burning masses of coal, and are still quite far away from clean electricity.

Would they have invested 300 billions in nuclear, Germany would run on 100% CO2 neutral electricity today, with an hefty margin (arguably 200 billions would have been enough).

Then while everybody speaks about electricity, they conveniently forget that it represents only 20 to 25% of all of our energy needs. The remaining 75-80% for industry, agriculture and transports are almost 100% fossil-fueled...

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#205

Post by cglace »

i_miss_unix wrote: post #188
dheera wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems with the offset approach is it's not that repeatable. Only a certain number of companies can buy carbon offsets before there aren't really any more offsets to buy, and we have to start actually reducing the carbon to begin with. Separately, one of the things that gets to me with companies like Google claiming a zero carbon footprint is that if you look at its corporate headquarters, it's mostly pa…

Don't they basically have a massive fleet of buses that cart in all the kids to work who cannot afford to live within 10 miles of the place? Are those buses natural gas?

But are the buses more efficient than 30 people driving separately?

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#206

Post by bawolff »

dheera wrote: post #180
bawolff wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with all those caveats, its still an impressive milestone and a step in the right direction.

One of the problems with the offset approach is it's not that repeatable. Only a certain number of companies can buy carbon offsets before there aren't really any more offsets to buy, and we have to start actually reducing the carbon to begin with. Separately, one of the things that gets to me with companies like Google claiming a zero carbon footprint is that if you look at its corporate headquarters, it's mostly pa…

In which case the price of offsets spike, and actually reducing emissions become a more attractive option.

It aint perfect, but still seems to be in the right direction towards getting to where we need to go.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#207

Post by lhorie »

bawolff wrote: post #163
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #109

There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1]. Eg do you count secondary services your employees use, like food services or emissions from their commute? Do you count partner services, like shipping providers for physical product? These, along with your direct emissions, are categorized into three "scopes" of emis…

Even with all those caveats, its still an impressive milestone and a step in the right direction.

I'm partially curious and partially skeptical. Is this "a step in the right direction" in the same way as recycling? (i.e. people thinking 100% of recyclables actually get recycled vs the reality being a lot of it end up in landfills or worse, and the parallel overproduction of plastics turned into a worldwide ecological disaster)

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#208

Post by dmurray »

cglace wrote: post #205
i_miss_unix wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they basically have a massive fleet of buses that cart in all the kids to work who cannot afford to live within 10 miles of the place? Are those buses natural gas?

But are the buses more efficient than 30 people driving separately?

With any reasonable passenger load, yes. It's fair for people to take that for granted and the burden of proof should be on someone trying to argue the opposite, that cars would be greener in this case.

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#209

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #186
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?

The issue is that this price doesn't scale. Let's say that the current price of an offset is $5/ton-of-co2. Let's say that presently all offsets are being put toward replacing inefficient wood-burning stoves in third-world countries with much more efficient electric stoves, because it's the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions. Right now, only a very small amount of offsets are being purchased (relatively little c…

[deleted]

Re: Google says its carbon footprint is now zero

#210

Post by V6HBGNQHU »

shadowgovt wrote: post #129
djsumdog wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a ton of the "clean" power isn't clean. Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get brownouts. Those high end molten salt solar plans take natural gas to startup. Most "wood chip" plants burn the same fast growing trees used by paper mills. CO2 is a stupid thing to focus on. There are so many other forms of pollution that are so much worse. Factory cities in China that have lakes o…

> Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get brownouts That's strictly cleaner than running the region on fossil plants only > Natural gas to startup That's strictly cleaner than running the region on natural gas only >CO2 is a stupid thing to focus on. There are so many other forms of pollution that are so much worse. Factory cities in China that have lakes of toxic sludge waste. Lak…

Peaker plants are far dirties than base load plants.
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