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The point is to use it for existing energy consumption, and only then start increasing energy consumption. If you add X GW of green energy to your Y GW of non-g

The point is to use it for existing energy consumption, and only then start increasing energy consumption. If you add X GW of green energy to your Y GW of non-green energy, and then increase your usage by X, then the impact on the planet is the same as the status quo, i.e. not good.

kragen 5y ago
Historically, economic and technological development has relied on increasing energy consumption. Green energy now offers us the possibility to increase the marketed energy supply far beyond anything imaginable with fossil fuels — 2Y, 10Y, 100Y, 1000Y — enabling currently unimaginable technological benefits. (More centralization of computation and speech under Facebook's control would not be beneficial, of course.) However, it will only become abundant and cheap if those sales are permitted and investors expect that such opportunities will continue in the future, providing them a positive ROI on building 10Y or 100Y of generation capacity. If they expect their energy sales to be capped at X+Y due to hostility from the ignorant public, they will not build. Let's opt for a solarpunk future where we pass Kardashev Type I and rapidly accelerate toward Kardashev Type II, not a post-apocalyptic dystopia.
lucb1e 5y ago
> The point is to use it for existing energy consumption, and only then start increasing energy consumption. Sounds like a good idea, but why start here specifically? There does not seem to be a general ban on expanding other things, e.g. installing a new AC when you don't even have solar panels yet is not discouraged let alone prohibited. Now facebook wants to build something and we trip over each other to complain about it. I mean, yeah, it's facebook, nobody cares if they have to find a suboptimal location and we're a good country to find dwarsliggers in general, but are we doing it for the climate or are we doing it because we don't like facebook?
- rtpg 5y ago
  > The Dutch government also in February enacted a nine-month moratorium on permits for data centers larger than 10 hectares. Last June, the Dutch province of Flevoland, where Zeewolde is located, announced it would halt data center developments for an unknown period of time. FB was proposing a huge DC, and got attention for it. There is now a blanket moratorium and the country is investigating the effects. Sure, the fact that it's FB probably increased scrutiny. But there's now some blanket ideas here. And honestly, FB could have tried more if they wanted to ("We will finance building out of green energy capacity to triple of our consumption" could have been a real smart move). Yeah, we don't ask other people to do it, but other people don't have billions of dollars at their disposal to make large scale changes! And it's 200MW! A big number, and a huge project. Yeah, you'll get more scrutiny. (And yeah, making some law that new housing has to have solar panels in general would not be a bad idea!) EDIT: https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2020/12/04/200-mw-solar-farm-and-big-battery-project-gets-green-light/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2020/12/04/200-mw-sola... this 200MW australian solar farm looks to cost $300M. Now it's not apples-to-apples cuz of loads of reasons (in particular large swaths of land would be needed). But let's imagine being able to build 400MW out for 1 billion euros. That is a decision that somebody at FB could make.

kragen 5y ago

Historically, economic and technological development has relied on increasing energy consumption. Green energy now offers us the possibility to increase the marketed energy supply far beyond anything imaginable with fossil fuels — 2Y, 10Y, 100Y, 1000Y — enabling currently unimaginable technological benefits. (More centralization of computation and speech under Facebook's control would not be beneficial, of course.) However, it will only become abundant and cheap if those sales are permitted and investors expect that such opportunities will continue in the future, providing them a positive ROI on building 10Y or 100Y of generation capacity. If they expect their energy sales to be capped at X+Y due to hostility from the ignorant public, they will not build. Let's opt for a solarpunk future where we pass Kardashev Type I and rapidly accelerate toward Kardashev Type II, not a post-apocalyptic dystopia.

lucb1e 5y ago

> The point is to use it for existing energy consumption, and only then start increasing energy consumption. Sounds like a good idea, but why start here specifically? There does not seem to be a general ban on expanding other things, e.g. installing a new AC when you don't even have solar panels yet is not discouraged let alone prohibited. Now facebook wants to build something and we trip over each other to complain about it. I mean, yeah, it's facebook, nobody cares if they have to find a suboptimal location and we're a good country to find dwarsliggers in general, but are we doing it for the climate or are we doing it because we don't like facebook?

rtpg 5y ago
> The Dutch government also in February enacted a nine-month moratorium on permits for data centers larger than 10 hectares. Last June, the Dutch province of Flevoland, where Zeewolde is located, announced it would halt data center developments for an unknown period of time. FB was proposing a huge DC, and got attention for it. There is now a blanket moratorium and the country is investigating the effects. Sure, the fact that it's FB probably increased scrutiny. But there's now some blanket ideas here. And honestly, FB could have tried more if they wanted to ("We will finance building out of green energy capacity to triple of our consumption" could have been a real smart move). Yeah, we don't ask other people to do it, but other people don't have billions of dollars at their disposal to make large scale changes! And it's 200MW! A big number, and a huge project. Yeah, you'll get more scrutiny. (And yeah, making some law that new housing has to have solar panels in general would not be a bad idea!) EDIT: https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2020/12/04/200-mw-solar-farm-and-big-battery-project-gets-green-light/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2020/12/04/200-mw-sola... this 200MW australian solar farm looks to cost $300M. Now it's not apples-to-apples cuz of loads of reasons (in particular large swaths of land would be needed). But let's imagine being able to build 400MW out for 1 billion euros. That is a decision that somebody at FB could make.