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Disclaimer: former OVH employee > Although many cloud providers have pledged to decarbonize their data centers, none have ditched fossil fuels entirely Most d

Disclaimer: former OVH employee > Although many cloud providers have pledged to decarbonize their data centers, none have ditched fossil fuels entirely Most datacenters in France are located close to nuclear power plants and only run on fossil fuels in case of a prolonged power outage. To me this is as carbon neutral as it gets.

cookie_monsta 7y ago
I don't mean to nitpick, but wouldn't "as carbon neutral as it gets" be zero reliance on fossil fuels, even for backup?
- Cederfjard 7y ago
  Perhaps that’s not currently feasible, and thus you can’t ”get there” yet?
- ovi256 7y ago
  >as it gets It's "as it gets" that's doing the heavy lifting here.
  - cookie_monsta 7y ago
    Agreed. And "it" is the real workhorse - is "it" carbon neutrality or datacenter power supply?
- himinlomax 7y ago
  Trying to use a carbon neutral energy source for emergency power is very likely to have a higher carbon footprint overall due to the fixed cost of a rarely used infrastructure. For example, on a much smaller scale, before leds were so incredibly cheap, incandescent bulbs were more energy efficient overall than alternatives such as fluorescent lights for places that were rarely visited. Think cellars, attics, service closets ...
- Mikeb85 7y ago
  Zero reliance isn't currently feasible unless you're ok with constant outages. If you're connected to the grid you're using electricity from fossil fuel at some point.
viraptor 7y ago
Are they just located there, or have dedicated connections? If they're just close, but on the standard grid, does the location really matter?
- Kuinox 7y ago
  Electricty in France is low carbon.
  - viraptor 7y ago
    Yes... But that wasn't the question.
dangerface 7y ago
Hetzner uses hydropower. All Iceland hosts use geothermal. https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/ https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/
Aeolun 7y ago
Isn’t nuclear a fossil fuel as well? While not quite the same thing, I don’t think we can manufacture uranium (or whatever the reactor uses to run), more than once?
- ImminentFate 7y ago
  As of 2009, estimates were that we have between 200-400 years of nuclear fuel remaining at current consumption rates. If we can efficiently extract uranium from saltwater, that value jumps to 60,000 years. If instead we switch all reactors over to breeder types instead of the current light-water reactors, our 200-400 year estimate then becomes more like 30,000 years
  - Beltiras 7y ago
    Replace Uranium with Thorium and you get another increase in high-energy lifespan for humans by tens of thousands.
- aratauto 7y ago
  "Fossil" means "remains of plants or animals", but in the context of environmental aspect of fuels the key aspect is emission of CO2. Nuclear is neither of that. On the other hand it is non-renewable like fossil fuels. In the longer term (hundreds of years), humanity should be worried exhausting non-renewable resources, but in a shorter perspective the climate change is a bigger concern.
- jerf 7y ago
  In the limit, energy is not a renewable resource, thanks to entropy. In that sense all energy is a "fossil fuel" left over from the Big Bang. However any Kardeshev type I civilization (located on one planet) will be satisfied with nuclear fission's power output for a time frame beyond our ability to predict into the future; that is, if we here in 2019 try to arrogantly predict that "there's a power crisis coming in 500 years!", it is very unlikely that 2519 is going to hail us as forward-thinking smart people, because the odds of something critical changing between now and then approach 100% [1]. Let alone several thousand years from now. These predictions also generally include a healthy amount of assuming growth of energy in the future, too, not just projecting today's use indefinitely (although not necessarily predicting exponential growth either). This also ignores what I would consider fairly good odds of non-terrestrial sources we may find on that time frame. Plus I'm still holding out hope that one of our fusion approaches will eventually pay off. (Dyson spheres are nice & all but there's still something to be said for being able to generate power in concentrated manners where you want it, rather than having to collect it at scale from an uncontrolled reactor.) [1] For the fashionably misanthropic among us who may feel that statement may contain too much optimism, "total civilization collapse" would be such a "critical change".
alex_young 7y ago
If you run your workloads in AWS us-west-2 or GCP us-west1 you're running on hydroelectric energy produced at the Columbia River. These regions are also really inexpensive due to this fact.
- jeanregisser 7y ago
  Interesting thanks! Do you know about other locations like us-central1 for instance?

cookie_monsta 7y ago

I don't mean to nitpick, but wouldn't "as carbon neutral as it gets" be zero reliance on fossil fuels, even for backup?

Cederfjard 7y ago
Perhaps that’s not currently feasible, and thus you can’t ”get there” yet?
ovi256 7y ago
>as it gets It's "as it gets" that's doing the heavy lifting here.
- cookie_monsta 7y ago
  Agreed. And "it" is the real workhorse - is "it" carbon neutrality or datacenter power supply?
himinlomax 7y ago
Trying to use a carbon neutral energy source for emergency power is very likely to have a higher carbon footprint overall due to the fixed cost of a rarely used infrastructure. For example, on a much smaller scale, before leds were so incredibly cheap, incandescent bulbs were more energy efficient overall than alternatives such as fluorescent lights for places that were rarely visited. Think cellars, attics, service closets ...
Mikeb85 7y ago
Zero reliance isn't currently feasible unless you're ok with constant outages. If you're connected to the grid you're using electricity from fossil fuel at some point.

viraptor 7y ago

Are they just located there, or have dedicated connections? If they're just close, but on the standard grid, does the location really matter?

Kuinox 7y ago
Electricty in France is low carbon.
- viraptor 7y ago
  Yes... But that wasn't the question.

dangerface 7y ago

Hetzner uses hydropower. All Iceland hosts use geothermal. https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/ https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/

Aeolun 7y ago

Isn’t nuclear a fossil fuel as well? While not quite the same thing, I don’t think we can manufacture uranium (or whatever the reactor uses to run), more than once?

ImminentFate 7y ago
As of 2009, estimates were that we have between 200-400 years of nuclear fuel remaining at current consumption rates. If we can efficiently extract uranium from saltwater, that value jumps to 60,000 years. If instead we switch all reactors over to breeder types instead of the current light-water reactors, our 200-400 year estimate then becomes more like 30,000 years
- Beltiras 7y ago
  Replace Uranium with Thorium and you get another increase in high-energy lifespan for humans by tens of thousands.
aratauto 7y ago
"Fossil" means "remains of plants or animals", but in the context of environmental aspect of fuels the key aspect is emission of CO2. Nuclear is neither of that. On the other hand it is non-renewable like fossil fuels. In the longer term (hundreds of years), humanity should be worried exhausting non-renewable resources, but in a shorter perspective the climate change is a bigger concern.
jerf 7y ago
In the limit, energy is not a renewable resource, thanks to entropy. In that sense all energy is a "fossil fuel" left over from the Big Bang. However any Kardeshev type I civilization (located on one planet) will be satisfied with nuclear fission's power output for a time frame beyond our ability to predict into the future; that is, if we here in 2019 try to arrogantly predict that "there's a power crisis coming in 500 years!", it is very unlikely that 2519 is going to hail us as forward-thinking smart people, because the odds of something critical changing between now and then approach 100% [1]. Let alone several thousand years from now. These predictions also generally include a healthy amount of assuming growth of energy in the future, too, not just projecting today's use indefinitely (although not necessarily predicting exponential growth either). This also ignores what I would consider fairly good odds of non-terrestrial sources we may find on that time frame. Plus I'm still holding out hope that one of our fusion approaches will eventually pay off. (Dyson spheres are nice & all but there's still something to be said for being able to generate power in concentrated manners where you want it, rather than having to collect it at scale from an uncontrolled reactor.) [1] For the fashionably misanthropic among us who may feel that statement may contain too much optimism, "total civilization collapse" would be such a "critical change".

alex_young 7y ago

If you run your workloads in AWS us-west-2 or GCP us-west1 you're running on hydroelectric energy produced at the Columbia River. These regions are also really inexpensive due to this fact.

jeanregisser 7y ago
Interesting thanks! Do you know about other locations like us-central1 for instance?