4 ms·

We need a fossil-free internet by 2030

25 points by ZacnyLos 4y ago

it_citizen 4y ago
The article seems to be focusing on energy consumption of already built machines. I would be curious to know how that figure relates to the CO2 emissions of manufacturing the servers.
- fdewrewrewf 4y ago
  It's a bit old, but should give you some ideas to start your own research: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factories-eat-way-more-energy-than-running-the-devices-they-build.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factor...
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
news.ycombinator.com fails their green web hosting test: https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/?url=news.ycombinator.com https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/?url=n... but www.ycombinator.com passes: https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/?url=www.ycombinator.com/ https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/?url=w...
- pca006132 4y ago
  So what does it mean by "the website is hosted green"? It seems to me that this is just a list of website hosts known to be green by some criteria, regardless of whether the website will eat your CPU with tons of scripts or communicate with N different services?
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I think it's carbon intensity of the hosting they're trying to document, but not totally sure. The site with the article does have an interesting quirk where it can serve different content based on current carbon intensity of the grid. https://branch.climateaction.tech/issues/issue-1/designing-branch-sustainable-interaction-design-principles/ https://branch.climateaction.tech/issues/issue-1/designing-b...
  - it_citizen 4y ago
    Both my websites pass the tests because they are hosted on SAP (through Heroku). It seems that they just have to be partners of the website and to provide "proofs" that I could not find listed on the website: https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/partner-up/ https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/partner-up/ https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/directory/#962 https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/directory/#962 Sounds very weak to me from the outside.
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
When I see a story that says 'We need XXXXXX by YYYY' I ask 'ok, why?' The article says it "outlines why we need a fossil-free internet by 2030 and how to get there" but I don't see that at all. No, I don't need replies explaining why we need it. My statement is that the article whose job it is to explain it doesn't. Why 2030? Why not 2029? Heck, if we don't have it by 2025 then XXX bad things will happen. Why not 2038? Its the equivalent of 1990s cable tv news shows at this point.
- bombcar 4y ago
  If we don’t have it by 2030 they’ll publish a sterner article with a later date!
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I think it does at least try to answer this question, their answer is that if we invest money now in renewables to power the web, then that investment will accelerate the reduction in price of renewables, and by 2030 renewables will just be cheaper for everyone everywhere and will be widely adopted.
zeroth32 4y ago
I bet such organization would be fine with no internet. Just good old trusted newspapers and TV broadcast!
BrainVirus 4y ago
How interesting. Here is a quote from Google: "We’re decarbonizing our energy consumption so that by 2030, we’ll operate on carbon-free energy, everywhere, 24/7." https://sustainability.google/commitments/ https://sustainability.google/commitments/ Do you think this is a coincidence? No, this is how companies that already made fuckton of money using cheap fossil fuel energy of the past plan to keep their future competition forever crippled.
- it_citizen 4y ago
  Can't we apply the same reasoning to any well-established company that would make similar commitments? Should we then be suspicious of all of them?
  - mwint 4y ago
    Being suspicious of anyone wanting to tell you what to do is wise, yes. Especially if they want to use government (men with guns) to enforce their ideas.
anonporridge 4y ago
The internet doesn't intrinsically consume fossil fuels and never has. It consumes electricity. We need to focus our attention on the electricity production sector. Tax fossil fuel burning to internalize the social cost it puts on all of us, and let the free market eradicate the burning because it can't compete against cleaner sources. Consumers like datacenters will always end up clustering around the cheapest electricity source that's close enough to population centers for latency requirements. As someone who believes climate change is a very real, existential threat to civilization, it's incredibly frustrating to see articles like this that misdirect our attention at consumers, when the only real solution will come by focusing on producers. It's a waste of time, attention, and political capital that we can't afford.
- lucasyvas 4y ago
  I completely agree that is where the real issue is. Although, the Software industry has had a free lunch with Moore's Law for decades and now the bill has come due - we write a lot of (almost irresponsibly) inefficient software that certainly doesn't help the situation. We should really fix it all, but I agree the major onus should not be on the consumer, since it merely follows the producer. The producer has to set the tone.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  Look, it is not hard to determine where major data centers get their electricity. Yes there are greater policy concerns, and really the economics of solar and wind make this a foregone conclusion in the long run. "The internet doesn't intrinsically consume fossil fuels and never has." - This is almost an offensive statement in whitewashing/passing the buck. Does the trucking industry say "we just transport trailers, the issue of whether the tractors burn diesel is a different issue". COME ON. Like trucking, where specific engineering needs to be applied to produce BEV or emission free transportation for their use cases, specific engineering and policy will be needed for the major industrial segment of power consumption: the internet. Major datacenters site location and design are explicitly built around hydroelectric and other sources since power is such a large cost component. There are bitcoin mining centers in outer mongolia and other places that can be directly pointed to why they are sited: ultracheap coal and no environmental controls. Related to this notion in the article is the big steaming (literally) issue of bitcoin network power. Anwyay, AWS could absolutely be branded on the basis of zero-carbon-emission power. So could GCE and a lot of other major websites. The fact that is can be a very widespread and branded movement like gay rights and other things that corporations rapidly adopt and fight at the state, federal, and local level for is a tantalizing opportunity. Especially since fundamentally it drives down costs in the long run. AWS and the like represent a centralization of major internet service, for better or worse, and therefore at a minimum they should be pressured / incented to build that basis on alternative or non-carbon-emitting power. The choice of IAAS or PAAS should have a marketing component of zero emission or not. We're talking a substantive slice of overall power generation being dedicated to this. So this conclusion is utterly wrong IMO: "It's a waste of time, attention, and political capital that we can't afford"
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
> We need a fossil-free internet by 2030 I agree! Get the boomers off the internet, now! Should have let coronavirus handle it.
vetelko 4y ago
:)

25 points by ZacnyLos 4y ago

The article seems to be focusing on energy consumption of already built machines. I would be curious to know how that figure relates to the CO2 emissions of manufacturing the servers.

fdewrewrewf 4y ago
It's a bit old, but should give you some ideas to start your own research: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factories-eat-way-more-energy-than-running-the-devices-they-build.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factor...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

news.ycombinator.com fails their green web hosting test: https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/?url=news.ycombinator.com https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/?url=n... but www.ycombinator.com passes: https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/?url=www.ycombinator.com/ https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/?url=w...

pca006132 4y ago
So what does it mean by "the website is hosted green"? It seems to me that this is just a list of website hosts known to be green by some criteria, regardless of whether the website will eat your CPU with tons of scripts or communicate with N different services?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I think it's carbon intensity of the hosting they're trying to document, but not totally sure. The site with the article does have an interesting quirk where it can serve different content based on current carbon intensity of the grid. https://branch.climateaction.tech/issues/issue-1/designing-branch-sustainable-interaction-design-principles/ https://branch.climateaction.tech/issues/issue-1/designing-b...
- it_citizen 4y ago
  Both my websites pass the tests because they are hosted on SAP (through Heroku). It seems that they just have to be partners of the website and to provide "proofs" that I could not find listed on the website: https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/partner-up/ https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/partner-up/ https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/directory/#962 https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/directory/#962 Sounds very weak to me from the outside.

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

When I see a story that says 'We need XXXXXX by YYYY' I ask 'ok, why?' The article says it "outlines why we need a fossil-free internet by 2030 and how to get there" but I don't see that at all. No, I don't need replies explaining why we need it. My statement is that the article whose job it is to explain it doesn't. Why 2030? Why not 2029? Heck, if we don't have it by 2025 then XXX bad things will happen. Why not 2038? Its the equivalent of 1990s cable tv news shows at this point.

bombcar 4y ago
If we don’t have it by 2030 they’ll publish a sterner article with a later date!
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I think it does at least try to answer this question, their answer is that if we invest money now in renewables to power the web, then that investment will accelerate the reduction in price of renewables, and by 2030 renewables will just be cheaper for everyone everywhere and will be widely adopted.

zeroth32 4y ago

I bet such organization would be fine with no internet. Just good old trusted newspapers and TV broadcast!

BrainVirus 4y ago

How interesting. Here is a quote from Google: "We’re decarbonizing our energy consumption so that by 2030, we’ll operate on carbon-free energy, everywhere, 24/7." https://sustainability.google/commitments/ https://sustainability.google/commitments/ Do you think this is a coincidence? No, this is how companies that already made fuckton of money using cheap fossil fuel energy of the past plan to keep their future competition forever crippled.

it_citizen 4y ago
Can't we apply the same reasoning to any well-established company that would make similar commitments? Should we then be suspicious of all of them?
- mwint 4y ago
  Being suspicious of anyone wanting to tell you what to do is wise, yes. Especially if they want to use government (men with guns) to enforce their ideas.

anonporridge 4y ago

The internet doesn't intrinsically consume fossil fuels and never has. It consumes electricity. We need to focus our attention on the electricity production sector. Tax fossil fuel burning to internalize the social cost it puts on all of us, and let the free market eradicate the burning because it can't compete against cleaner sources. Consumers like datacenters will always end up clustering around the cheapest electricity source that's close enough to population centers for latency requirements. As someone who believes climate change is a very real, existential threat to civilization, it's incredibly frustrating to see articles like this that misdirect our attention at consumers, when the only real solution will come by focusing on producers. It's a waste of time, attention, and political capital that we can't afford.

lucasyvas 4y ago
I completely agree that is where the real issue is. Although, the Software industry has had a free lunch with Moore's Law for decades and now the bill has come due - we write a lot of (almost irresponsibly) inefficient software that certainly doesn't help the situation. We should really fix it all, but I agree the major onus should not be on the consumer, since it merely follows the producer. The producer has to set the tone.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Look, it is not hard to determine where major data centers get their electricity. Yes there are greater policy concerns, and really the economics of solar and wind make this a foregone conclusion in the long run. "The internet doesn't intrinsically consume fossil fuels and never has." - This is almost an offensive statement in whitewashing/passing the buck. Does the trucking industry say "we just transport trailers, the issue of whether the tractors burn diesel is a different issue". COME ON. Like trucking, where specific engineering needs to be applied to produce BEV or emission free transportation for their use cases, specific engineering and policy will be needed for the major industrial segment of power consumption: the internet. Major datacenters site location and design are explicitly built around hydroelectric and other sources since power is such a large cost component. There are bitcoin mining centers in outer mongolia and other places that can be directly pointed to why they are sited: ultracheap coal and no environmental controls. Related to this notion in the article is the big steaming (literally) issue of bitcoin network power. Anwyay, AWS could absolutely be branded on the basis of zero-carbon-emission power. So could GCE and a lot of other major websites. The fact that is can be a very widespread and branded movement like gay rights and other things that corporations rapidly adopt and fight at the state, federal, and local level for is a tantalizing opportunity. Especially since fundamentally it drives down costs in the long run. AWS and the like represent a centralization of major internet service, for better or worse, and therefore at a minimum they should be pressured / incented to build that basis on alternative or non-carbon-emitting power. The choice of IAAS or PAAS should have a marketing component of zero emission or not. We're talking a substantive slice of overall power generation being dedicated to this. So this conclusion is utterly wrong IMO: "It's a waste of time, attention, and political capital that we can't afford"

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

> We need a fossil-free internet by 2030 I agree! Get the boomers off the internet, now! Should have let coronavirus handle it.

vetelko 4y ago