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Google and Microsoft now each consume more power than some fairly big countries
- grecy 2y agoGiven how wildly profitable they are, we should be passing laws that they must produce X % of their power needs from renewable sources, where X approaches 100%. This would be a jobs program that would also help the planet. Win win. Investors would make slightly less money in the short term, but our grandchildren will be able to live. I think that is a good trade off.
- chbint 2y agoIndeed. The concentration of such a huge power consumption might make it easier (policy-wise) to take compensatory measures.
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- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> we should be passing laws that they must produce X % of their power needs from renewable sources Much more efficient to do this through the tax code. (Use corporate taxes to do what you want instead of delegating our energy mix to an ad company.)
- wepple 2y agoThey mostly are. You don’t need laws… when you want good data center distribution you’re going to be putting DCs where the grid can’t support such a step change in consumption. So they need new energy production, and it’s typically going to be renewable
- edhelas 2y agoGoogle, Microsoft and others are directly buying electricity from nuclear and renewable sources, doing some major greenwashing this way. https://www.ans.org/news/article-5842/amazon-buys-nuclearpowered-data-center-from-talen/ https://www.ans.org/news/article-5842/amazon-buys-nuclearpow... By doing that they force all the others to rely on the "other" sources (gas, coal...) and not replace fast enough those ones with clean sources. The production is physically limited, if you have the money and power to be green, the others are not and you can seriously slow down the transition. I'd prefer that those nuclear plans and renewable farms are used for better purposes as hospitals, industries, homes...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> production is physically limited By what? We could easily sustain higher production rates for solar, wind and nuclear. The constraints are mainly bureaucratic. > prefer that those nuclear plans and renewable farms are used for better purposes as hospitals, industries, homes How do you aim to pay for them?
- Brechreiz 2y ago>How do you aim to pay for them? They should raise taxes, especially for large coorparations and in higher income brackets.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> should raise taxes, especially for large coorparations and in higher income brackets Google and Microsoft are large corporations. Their employees and investors are high income. OP proposes curtailing their growth. That reduces those taxes. That’s why OP’s suggestion is a false economy. Energy, in this context, isn’t a zero sum game. Tax Google and Microsoft more and use that to pay for more power.
- jsnell 2y agoWhy does it matter whether e.g. a hospital runs on renewable energy or not? Why is "industry" good but "data centers" are bad? If some companies care enough about their image to pay extra to buy green energy, that's good! It makes that production more profitable, and encourages more such production to be built faster. Why are you trying to disincentivize that with "greenwashing" slurs?
- edhelas 2y agoBecause the global goal of all that is the CO2 emissions that we emit __today__. I'm perfectly fine that we start big plans to build many new nuclear and renewable plants, but __today__ we need to emit less CO2, now. CO2 just add up in the atmosphere and don't degrade in the time we have. SO, in the quota we need to respect, I prefer to ensure that the today capacity we have of "clean energy" are used for a proper usage better than allocating the current clean, and upcoming clean ones to some Google servers that are used to generate AI images for fun. If your house is on fire you don't use the water you have to fill up your pool, you actually need to turn off the fire, even if you will have more water soon.
- sakex 2y agoI think I heard Google was aiming to do that by 2030. Not sure though
- Sayrus 2y agoNot sure about Google but AWS was planning to do that by 2030 and is seemingly on track to do that by 2025. > Amazon is the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy and is on a path to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025—five years ahead of our original target of 2030. https://aws.amazon.com/energy-utilities/sustainability/ https://aws.amazon.com/energy-utilities/sustainability/
- mrweasel 2y agoRemember when every company and government all had 2020 plans? Someone should collect all those plans and follow up and see how many was actually implemented, split on "by chance" or "deliberate action".
- sva_ 2y agoThere seems to be some traction with big tech investing in fission reactors and fusion research.
- energy123 2y agoPrimarily renewables: https://bep.brookfield.com/press-releases/bep/brookfield-and-microsoft-collaborating-deliver-over-105-gw-new-renewable-power https://bep.brookfield.com/press-releases/bep/brookfield-and...
- bboygravity 2y agoJust train your AI on sunny windy days pls Microsoft and Google, k thnx.
- em500 2y ago> Investors would make slightly less money in the short term Why do you assume that the tax incidence falls on investors, rather than on customers and/or employees? With sales tax or VAT people tend to automatically assume 100% passthrough (so that the incidence falls completely on customers/consumers) even though they're also collected by companies. In reality taxes are borne by a combination of customers/employees/owners, with proportions determined by their relative price elasticities, rather than by who lawmakers appointed to collect the tax.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> taxes are borne by a combination of customers/employees/owners And any green tax would be trivial for Google to add as a line item on invoices: it’s so defensible.
- grecy 2y ago> In reality taxes are borne by a combination of customers/employees/owners That depends entirely on where the money comes from. If the company does not reduce profit, then yes, they must raise prices and/or reduce employee salaries. But if we are willing to put the taboo topic of reducing profits on the table, profit can just be reduced without any impact to customers or employees. I realize this kind of talk is blasphemy, but it clearly needs to be done.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> if we are willing to put the taboo topic of reducing profits on the table, profit can just be reduced without any impact to customers or employees We’ve capped profits in various industries before. The benefits didn’t flow to customers and employees equally, they flowed to specific employees and specific customers. (You also see R&D grind to a halt.) There isn’t a clean technical solution to this social problem, that of redistributing wealth indirectly. At the end of the day, if you want investors’ profits, you have to take them directly.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
- mrweasel 2y agoThis could/should(?) be fixed by taxing CO2 emissions. I'm not sure what it works in e.g. the US, but some countries have this stupid idea that electricity prices have a build in CO2 tax, but applied to all consumptions, not just that produced by CO2 emitting sources. Let's say Microsoft could save 25% on their electricity bill by consuming power from wind farms, I think they'd work out a way to do more AI training when the wind is blowing and scale down when more power is delivered from coal.
- energy123 2y agoThe ship has sailed on carbon taxes. It's good policy but voters don't like it, so politicians will never do it. Voters have shown to be okay with direct subsidies and permitting reform, so that's what we must do out of sheer pragmatism.
- s1artibartfast 2y agofind something related to do with the carbon tax, and more people would vote for it.
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y agoAll other measures than procing in the externalities will create perverse incentives to suck up subsidies and grants. It just uses the power of the market to figure out the best
- HumblyTossed 2y ago> I think they'd work out a way to do more AI training when the wind is blowing and scale down when more power is delivered from coal. Maybe they could even use AI to help them figure out when to do that.
- Y_Y 2y agoI'd prefer that we priced in the externalities of emissions from pollution. If we should burn less coal then that can be acheived by taxing coal until it's again a net positive to society.
- gottorf 2y ago> our grandchildren will be able to live Our grandchildren will be able to live regardless of where these companies source their power from.
- szundi 2y agoHe meant a nice life
- gottorf 2y agoIn fact, they will likely be able to live a better life if everyone was free to choose an energy source that makes economical sense to them.
- Brechreiz 2y agoWhy??
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- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> if everyone was free to choose an energy source that makes economical sense to them This ignores externalities.
- Ekaros 2y agoIs that X% in moment or in total? Which is critical distinction. Overall might not be too helpful is renewables at time massively over produce. Electricity is fungible only in moment. And storage is nowhere close... You could have someone getting paid to waste electricity during over-production while this wasted amount will somehow still count when coal is being burned...
- constantcrying 2y agoIt is ridiculous to place these demands on energy consumers. Microsoft and Google aren't operating heir own powerplants to generate energy in the quantities they need (some other companies, e.g. VW partially do), for that they are relying on other companies, which sell them their energy. If and only if those other companies are able and willing to produce the required energy mix, then the desired mix used downstream can be achieved. Obviously the only organizations which can make such a change are energy providers.
- jraph 2y agoThere's nothing obvious here. The energy provider could say "why should I be the one eating the cost of providing sustainable energy?". The ones consuming energy also need to take their responsibilities. "When we think that it would suffice people didn't buy it for it not to sell!" (Coluche). In fact, this is a collective issue we are all part of (including as individuals: we use the services consuming energy).
- constantcrying 2y ago>The energy provider could say "why should I be the one eating the cost of providing sustainable energy?". Where did you get that from? He could also force the additional cost to the companies. >The ones consuming energy also need to take their responsibilities. "When we think that it would suffice people didn't buy it for it not to sell!" (Coluche). You can not buy energy which doesn't exist. If less renewable energy is produced than the consumer needs, the legally required energy mix is impossible. Obviously the alonly person which can change which energy is produced is the provider. >In fact, this is a collective issue we are all part of (including as individuals: we use the services consuming energy). There is exactly one group of people responsible for the energy mix. The energy providers. Obviously any change can only come from them and demanding change from anyone, without first demanding change from the providers is obviously ridiculous.
- tehmillhouse 2y agoI'm not sure if investors will agree. The general way the stock market works heavily favors shortsighted thinking. They'll say après moi, le déluge and then package the déluge up into sellable financial instruments.
- atiedebee 2y agoThis won't solve anything, you're just moving the non-renewable energy usage to all the consumers
- blastonico 2y agohmm, but those fairly big countries are also heavy users of Google/Microsoft products, aren't they? If every country had to create their own version of those products we would end up having still more power consumption - considering that not every one would be able to have the kind of professionals that Google and Microsoft have.
- password4321 2y ago"Google'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 A click bait headline vs. content but a concern documented by the company.
- amelius 2y agoHuh, the "clickbaitiness" was debunked in the first reply to the first comment.
- thinkindie 2y agoPersonally, I'm not much concerned about their energy consumption per se but rather by their energy mix. I would be more than fine if they had all their energy sourced from solar panels and wind turbines.
- nicolaslem 2y agoSince electricity is fungible at the continent scale, it only makes sense to look at the energy mix of society at large. Google could pay a premium to buy only renewable energy from the grid and have an impressive 100% green energy mix, simply displacing emission to the rest of us.
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- s1artibartfast 2y agoproduction isnt zero sum. If google buys up all the renewable power, more will be installed to supply green homeowners in Berkeley.
- prepend 2y agoThis makes sense as their market cap and revenues are also larger than many countries. Max Barry wrote a book in 2003 called Jennifer Government [0] about a near future where companies were so big they had their own armies and intelligence agencies. It seems like we’re getting close to that point. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Government
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoThat ain't new. East India company had essentially private armies.
- tantalor 2y agoCarnegie Steel had the Pinkertons
- bbqbbqbbq 2y ago[dead]
- ClumsyPilot 2y agoAnd what a glorious time period that was, lawless and brutal.
- infecto 2y agoWe are getting close to companies with armies and intelligence agencies at the scale of governments?
- spyspy 2y agoThe article doesn’t break out Google/MS proper from their cloud offerings, so it’s not really fair to say they’re using more power like the folks at these companies are choosing to do this. They rent compute and their customers are using a lot more of it. If google just said “we’re not renting out GPUs to save the environment” people would just shift to a competitor.
- eesmith 2y agoThe calculation is a bit more complex than that. Google and Microsoft gain from the economy of scale. With many more companies, the overall costs would be higher, and no doubt some people would decide to not use this service. That's the heart of the Jevon's Paradox.
- Devasta 2y agoDepends on what they are doing. Consuming a large amount of energy for cloud platforms isn't the worst, as that'd be done by the customers directly if the cloud didbt exist after all. Using it on generative AI on the other hand is burning huge amounts of energy, manpower and effort on a robot that advises how to cook spaghetti in gasoline for flavor. A complete waste.
- taftster 2y agoI wonder though, if compute was solely on-premise, would we be using so much of it? My instincts tell me that because the cloud is so easy to spin up new computation resources, that we're just using that much more of it. If a company had to buy the hardware, buy the licensing, buy the time of the system administrator, would they scale up as large? The cloud has driven efficiency gains. But those gains have been consumed and, under the premise above, even exceeded. The cloud might very well be contributing to more energy use than it would have otherwise. Unsure on this, of course. Just a gut feeling. It would be interesting if someone did an actual study on this.
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- icegreentea2 2y ago"Fairly big countries" is such a cop out. What do you mean by big? Population? Economy? Energy consumption? The original twitter post just says "More electricity than many countries". The fact that Google and Microsoft consume the same order magnitude of electricity as Nigeria (population 220 million), Ireland (population 5 million), Ecuador (18 million), Slovakia (5 million), Iceland (population 0.4 million), really just speaks the vast inequality in the world, even amongst countries. It's interesting and relevant that Microsoft and Google are now "country scale", in terms of energy production. But when you realize that US energy consumption in 2023 was 4000TWh (MS and Google apparently each used 24), you realize just how non-serious this comparison is. The comparison can be thought provoking, but the actual results aren't particularly meaningful.
- bufferoverflow 2y agoA country with the population 220 million is big, no matter how you slice it.
- ClumsyPilot 2y agoIreland is sizeable first world country, the rest is polemics
- tgtweak 2y agoI think the reality is that they are running the workloads of all of the customers of GCP and Azure collectively - and provided they're offsetting those emissions and hosting them with green energy where possible - it should be a net win for the environment that they're hosting this much infra. It also encourages prioritization on systematic efficiency improvements where possible. I think google was one of the first providers to publish and push for PUAs of their datacenters close to 1.0. They also have programs in place for e-waste recycling and safe refrigerant destruction where it is available - things that you will not see in colocation-type facilities.
- dr_kiszonka 2y agoSomething bugs me about this framing. I see that it can be useful, but Google's power consumption is not independent of, e.g., Spain's consumption. Big tech's power consumption is, largely, our power consumption minus development (which, like AI, can be high).