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Google's greenhouse gas emissions jump 48% in five years
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40859993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40859993
- Simon_ORourke 2y agoThat's probably from all the hot air coming out of Mountain View about how virtuous and AI-oriented they are.
- tetris11 2y agoThis is why we need nuclear. Humanity will always find a new expensive toy to play with, AI being the latest, and expecting large corporate entities to scale down their operations for the sake of future sales is like trying to bargain with a bear.
- jurmous 2y agoThis is why we need to accelerate renewables and energy storage.
- tetris11 2y agoIf we ever make large enough batteries to satisfy our on-demand energy whims, then I'm 100% with you. I just have doubt that we will get there soon with battery tech, and nuclear seems like a rational dropin solution until then.
- Wowfunhappy 2y agoWe need all of the above. Including reducing overall energy use. We cannot afford to leave any option on the table.
- troupo 2y agoThere are no rich countries that are also energy poor. You cannot reduce energy use without reducing quality of life.
- NeoTar 2y agoThe United States, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom have all reduced their per-capita energy usage since the peak (earliest peak usage was UK in 1973, latest was Canada in 2007), and I think we can argue that quality-of-life (by at least some metrics) has increased since then. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab=chart&country=USA~CAN~FRA~GBR~DEU~JPN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...
- lazide 2y agoAnd where do they stand worldwide? Still higher than all the third world countries eh?
- NeoTar 2y agoNot really. Let's use the UNCTAD definition of developing countries - there are a number of countries which exceed Canada's per-capita energy usage (the highest of those I mention above) - Qatar, UAE, Trinidad and Tobago and Kuwait. But those are all small countries, the highest per-capita energy usage by a larger nation is Turkmenistan (exceeding all of the European countries mentioned in the parent - UK, France, Germany - and Japan). But that's not really the point. Doubtless there is a correlation between energy usage and standard of living. But it's not a 1:1, and there are some huge benefits to be gained - e.g. the US (77,028 kWh / person / year) has triple the usage per capital of the UK (28,501 kWh / person / year). Even in Europe, France and Germany could reduce their usage by a quarter to bring it to the UK level.
- lazide 2y agoWhere are you getting your data? For instance, I’m showing about 2.6 MWh/ye per capita for Turkmenistan [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?locations=TM https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?locat...], below the world median of 3.1MWh/yr. Also, those high usage small countries (including Trinidad and Turkmenistan) are huge oil producing countries where energy is subsidized to an absurd degree to ‘buy’ population compliance. That energy is coming straight from burning hydrocarbons. They still are way below the big developed countries, near as I can tell. Sorting by ‘most recent value’, the list is pretty much either ‘huge petrokingdom’, or ‘highly developed nation’ until Estonia/Slovenia/Netherlands at 6.something MWh/yr. The data does seem to be old though! I am impressed by Spain’s low usage, but they culturally also minimize things like HVAC - since they were ‘civilized’ long before AC was a thing. They still are about 2x the median.
- jahnu 2y agoIt already takes longer to build new nuclear starting now than build enough renewable + batteries + transmission starting now. So good news! We don't have to "get there soon", we are there already! We have everything we need except the political will to take resources away from fossil fuels and invest them towards a clean energy future. Nuclear will continue to be built and it should but it is not the thing we need to focus heavily on.
- robertlagrant 2y agoJapan's mean time to build nuclear is under 5 years, I believe.
- jahnu 2y agoAnd how long from proposal to breaking ground? And how many can we build at the same time? Can we find enough sites or extend existing ones enough? What problems will we have with water shortages for cooling? And so on. We are, thankfully, going to continue to build nuclear all over the world, perhaps most importantly in places like China where they may convert thermal coal plants to nuclear, but it's going to be a relatively small part of the energy mix overall and is not going to solve the doubt that the poster had and my original response was aimed at. Renewables + batteries + transmission, and I should add efficiency improvements, can do it now, at scale, and faster than we can imagine. https://archive.is/s9dQh https://archive.is/s9dQh
- g15jv2dp 2y agoWe have the battery tech, it's called a hydroelectric dam.
- tick_tock_tick 2y agoIsn't the point of using renewables so we don't destroy the environment?
- g15jv2dp 2y agoHave you made a comparative analysis of how much a dam vs lithium mines destroy the environment?
- vlovich123 2y ago> However, the company warned in Tuesday’s report that the “termination” of some clean energy projects during 2023 had pushed down the amount of renewables it had access to.
- himinlomax 2y agoThe orders of magnitude needed for storage are not competitive with nuclear in any reasonable scenario. Nuclear exists and is proven technology. Battery storage at the capacity and price scale required are not. That remains true even if you want absolutely to believe we can't build nuclear reactors faster than in 10 years, and we almost certainly can by starting mass producing them again.
- KeplerBoy 2y agoWe already have fusion and it's super safe and cheap. We just need to install more panels to harvest the incoming radiation.
- troupo 2y agoSolar and wind are by their very inherent nature intermittent sources of power
- lomase 2y agoYou can not stop a nuclear reactor to fit the grid needs.
- troupo 2y agoYou cannot power up solar panels at night, or wind turbines when there's no wind. As for nuclear, you don't need to stop them. Instead they provide a base load so you don't need to ridiculously overprovision other power sources. And they are flexible enough to go 50%-100% quickly: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...
- lomase 2y ago"You cannot power up solar panels at night, or wind turbines when there's no wind." Amazing insight.
- ben_w 2y agoNot inherent nature, just economics and politics. Wind always blows somewhere, the sun always shines somewhere. Making a global power grid is something which I don't expect anyone will do in the next 15 years, but if anyone does I'd be least surprised if it's China on a belt-and-road type project. Batteries are necessary for electric vehicles, and I do expect >50% of land motor vehicles in use worldwide to be electric within 15 years of today; that scale is sufficient to invalidate concerns about intermittent renewable generation in most (but not all) places even without a global grid.
- superb_dev 2y agoGuys we HAVE to support the businesses! Even if they’re destroying everything! Think of the money
- makeitdouble 2y agoThis proposition still fits inside a "line goes up" vision, and it can't go up forever. More nuclear doesn't come without additional risk nor cost, nor waste. I don't claim to have a solution, but it feels like jumping into a volcano to escape from the bear. There sure must be some way to deal with the bear instead.
- locallost 2y agoFor Google's use case the sun is always shining somewhere. It might not be practical or realistic yet, but if they really wanted to they could.
- robertlagrant 2y agoYou can't transport electricity that far, though.
- blitzar 2y agoBut you can transport search queries.
- robertlagrant 2y agoIt's true. If you build all your infrastructure n times over you could have solar panels powering (some of?) each infrastructure full infrastructure location. But would that work out better?
- troupo 2y agoThis assumes that all datacenters are created equal and it doesn't matter if you run stuff in the US or in Asia, or...
- g15jv2dp 2y agoNuclear isn't infinite and uranium mines are often in politically unstable countries. Niger's military junta just forbad Orano from exploiting a mine, for example. What is the French government supposed to do now? Declare war for uranium? Import more uranium from Russia? As a reminder, here is where the US's uranium came from in 2022: Canada (27%), Kazakhstan (25%), Russia (12%), Uzbekistan (11%), Australia (9%), six other countries (16%) (Germany, Malawi, Namibia, Niger, South Africa, and the United States). https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/where-our-uranium-comes-from.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/where-our-uraniu...
- pydry 2y agoThe main problem with it isnt with the fuel. It's not even the small chance of a $1 trillion-to-cleanup Fukushima style cleanup event. It's just horrendously expensive and takes forever to build. Nonetheless it'll keep getting built where solar/wind/storage would be cheaper and quicker because they've got very slick PR and because the military industrial complex demands a ready supply of nuclear skills and a supply chain.
- WalterBright 2y ago> horrendously expensive How did France manage to power their country with it, then?
- pydry 2y agoLavish subsidies. Even then they had to nationalize EDF because it was going bankrupt after posting historically unprecedented losses. The problem is that stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASTRID_(reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASTRID_(reactor) and this: https://reneweconomy.com.au/french-nuclear-giant-scraps-smr-plans-due-to-soaring-costs-will-start-over/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/french-nuclear-giant-scraps-smr-... keeps happening. The last paragraph explains how, in spite of these losses, how to keep the power cheap: >The federal Coalition has argued that nuclear might be expensive to build, but will deliver cheaper power to consumers. It has not explained how, but it has said that its reactors would be government owned, suggesting that – like France and Ontario – the costs would be borne by taxpayers and the supply of power to customers would be heavily subsidised.
- endymi0n 2y agoThese are the only two graphs you need to understand that your assumption is based on >10y old data: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/BNEF.jpg https://www.powerengineeringint.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/3-Learning-curves-for-electricity-prices.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/3-Learni... By the decade is gone that any new nuclear project has been commissioned and built, the rest of the world is running on solar + battery storage at a tenth of the price.
- chimprich 2y agoYour first graph shows diminishing returns for both battery storage and solar. It's also not clear whether that's the marginal cost or includes the capital cost to build the structures and all the infrastructure. To compare nuclear against solar you have to compare it against the sum of the cost of solar plus battery storage. Investing in solar/wind/nuclear energy sources, storage, and research for improving all of the above seems like the best strategic option for at least the next decade.
- timeon 2y agoYes we need nuclear but these statements often feels like attempt to sweeping the problem under the rug. Because nuclear takes time to build. And this is not just about nuclear. Exxon report from early 80s stated that to cover energy demand nuclear or renewables would need 50 years to catch up. I guess demand is even bigger now.
- vbarrielle 2y agoIt's not the first time I've seen it claimed that AI will magically help "propel climate solutions". But I've never seen a hint at how that would work.
- sim7c00 2y agoif there's no climate, there's no climate problems. Maybe AI is already sentient, and instead of nuking the world they just trick people to think they are not sentient, so people train more neural networks and destroy the planet themselves ;D. On a more serious note: "propel climate solutions" is a weird take for me regarding AI considering the resources used. I'm not sure though: Do you think google search and all the infrastructure/servers required for it, will use more power etc. than an AI, including its training/retraining periodically and infra needed to host it as a service for people? I'd be interested to see for example if there is any improvement at all, if you would 'swap google search for chatgpt' - i know this is not realistic or even its purpose, but it's what a lot of laymen will interpret the GPT stuf as i guess. Would we use less energy etc. if we'd switch the legacy stuff like google search to more modern AI based apporaches? Now in the time of transition, we're screwed and power consumption would in my mind logically double or more, as we need to run these things side-by-side to develop AI to make it useful.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y agoIt's just magical thinking, imagining some kind of heretofore unknown technology that will solve everything quickly and cheaply in the future. The sad truth is we already have most of the technology needed to fight climate change. The technology could always use incremental improvement, sure, but the main challenge to be solved is not technological, it's political and economical. It's a question of actually adopting the solutions we already have.
- portaouflop 2y agoThe sad truth is that it’s already too late to keep the status quo. In the next 20 years the living conditions will worsen considerably for the majority of humans. What we can do now is make sure humanity as a whole has some chance of survival.
- skilled 2y agoGoogle's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40859993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40859993 - (103 comments)
- a_c 2y agoI'm curious to know how are the gas emissions measured
- bananapub 2y agodoes anyone know if this is due to fleet growth (ie the existing commitment to going to zero emissions is still happening, quickly, but growth is so high it's swamping that in absolute terms) or has Urs gone back on his promise and is using emission-y energy?
- froh 2y agoI wonder to which extent data centers are built already or will be built close to where renewables are readily available, to relieve the burden of transporting energy over long distances. Is it cheaper to build fibre optics to a remote location than it is to build power lines?
- itkovian_ 2y agoI just don't understand the implied argument here at all. We can do something that results in productivity gains, which people want or they wouldn't pay for it, but we don't want private companies to do this because we have decided an increase energy use is a bad thing. Isn't the obvious path to continue to grow towards more efficient energy sources rather than trying to suppress progress?
- scanr 2y agoIt’s about externalities. The private companies aren’t paying for the damage they are causing. It’s ultimately borne by the public. Very similar to a factory that poisons a river if there’s no disincentive not to. Better would be if we could factor in the cost to the environment into their revenue. This would better align incentives.
- timeon 2y agoYou either have growth or limited emissions. Progress to more sustainable or more efficient energy sources til now just led to covering part of ever increasing demand. Coal is still rising as well.
- poopcat 2y agoInteresting considering that Google said it had a strategy that would ensure AI consumed less power. It was based on the 4Ms: model, machine, mechanization, and mapping. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9810097 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9810097
- xnx 2y ago15 hours ago. 107 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40859993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40859993 Better to be the summary or report directly: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/2024-environmental-report/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/2024...