3 ms·
If you buy so much solar that it leads to expansion of facilities, this "hack" will have you buying so much fossil power you are in effect subsidising the other
by SiempreViernes 2y ago
If you buy so much solar that it leads to expansion of facilities, this "hack" will have you buying so much fossil power you are in effect subsidising the other fossil customers and thus prolonging their use of fossils. You definitely shouldn't count that power as 100% renewable.
It only works as a clean bypass of you buy so little you don't impact the local fossil market, but this is a discussion about large data centres so that's basically never satisfied.
- Arnt 2y agoThat argument applies to my personal electricity bill too. I buy my power from a company that supplies 100% regenerative power and gets most of its power from new generation facilities, 350 of them so far. Those 350 deliver power to about a half-million people, which obviously took market share away from existing fossil plants and pushed the market prices down. So by that test, what action does not prolong the use of fossil fuel? You're making the test much too strict.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoYou've got that backwards. If you're using a solar credit from KC in Seattle, you're subsidizing the cost of power in KC. Solar generation is built in KC, but demand is unaffected. Therefore the price of power drops in KC, crowding out fossil there and lowering the price of green power. In Seattle you've increased demand without increasing generation, raising the price there. Yes, fossil generators may be built to satisfy this new demand, but that's unlikely in 2024. In Seattle in particular, excess demand is generally met by buying hydro from BC.