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What are we to make of, e.g. Google’s claims that their data centers run on 100% renewable energy? How can temporal workload shifting help reduce carbon emissio
by jl6 5y ago
What are we to make of, e.g. Google’s claims that their data centers run on 100% renewable energy? How can temporal workload shifting help reduce carbon emissions in the cloud if the energy source is already renewable?
- redis_mlc 5y agoSorry to break it to you, but no data center runs on renewable energy.
- birnbaum 5y agoCo-author of the paper here. Google currently only buys enough renewable energy to match their annual electricity use - their data centers do not run on 100% renewables all the time. You can read up on this here: https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/24-7-explainer.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/24-7-explaine... However, they are pushing towards operating on carbon-free energy 27/7 by 2030. For this to work, they will need to (and apparently already do) implement approaches exactly like the one mentioned in the paper.