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Google Says It Is About To Reach 100 Percent Renewable Energy (blog.google)
Google said today it will power 100 percent of its sprawling data centers and offices with renewable energy starting next year. The company said today it has bought enough wind and solar power to account for all the electricity it uses globally each year. In comparison, 44 percent of Google's power supplies came from renewables last year. From a blogpost: To reach this goal we'll be directly buying enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity our operations consume, globally. And we're focusing on creating new energy from renewable sources, so we only buy from projects that are funded by our purchases. Over the last six years, the cost of wind and solar came down 60 percent and 80 percent, respectively, proving that renewables are increasingly becoming the lowest cost option. Electricity costs are one of the largest components of our operating expenses at our data centers, and having a long-term stable cost of renewable power provides protection against price swings in energy.
"if I was starting a search company the potential for Evil would not even popup in my mind" and that's why you're not a billionaire, and Serge is.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
And we're focusing on creating new energy from renewable sources, so we only buy from projects that are funded by our purchases.
What exactly does that mean? Buying green power isn't really all that green: the renewable power you are consuming is power that is not going to be consumed by someone else. To be really green you need to work towards significantly increasing green energy [\production, not consumption. True, what they do does increase demand which may help drive investments in renewables. But I'd be more impressed if they would actually generate most of the power they need themselves. At the scale they use it, that should be economically feasible too.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Until the Washington Post and the New York Times says it's true, it's "fake".
Bow down to your media masters! They WILL control the "narrative"!
Which tells you that no government incentives or actions are needed: if this is a reasonable accounting of costs, companies will switch to renewables all by themselves.
Of course, since the US is all about fair competition-you know, free market and all-then we can safely remove government subsidies to other forms of power such as oil or coal as well. We wouldn't want one segment of an industry working with an unfair advantage now, would we?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It's OK, this is about a Democrat-friendly company virtue signaling by buying green-energy indulgences. By default, these sorts of stories are to be considered goodthink/rightthink.
Modded insightful? What are you calling a oil or coal subsidy? Generally when people talk about subsidies for fossil fuels, they are really pulling bullshit out of their asses. Are there tax breaks and funds that indirectly go to oil and coal companies? Yes. Are those direct fossil fuel subsidies? Not really. They are tax benefits for capital construction that apply to all industries. Depreciation benefits that apply to all mining and resource industries. When they tout the really big numbers for oil subsidies they usually throw in infrastructure spending that benefits cars regardless of fuel source (but happens to be primarily oil based). Maybe some home heating subsidies which usually means gas, electricity from coal, or heating oil. Maybe they include military and civilian fuel purchases by the government that happen to be based on fossil fuels.
Those aren't really subsidies for fossil fuels as much as they are the reality that to provide energy, you have to generally use fossil fuels for a lot of it at this point. So those huge "coal and oil subsidies" are really just energy subsidies.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Lick my balls, bro.
Buying "carbon credits" and the like don't mean that you're actually using sustainable energy. What happens when the wind plants and solar plants aren't producing? Covering average demand is ONLY covering average demand. Idiots.
Its an accounting trick. They are actually using energy produced by non-renewable generators much of the time. They are simply signing contracts and paying a bit more to say it comes from renewables. Meanwhile, every neighbor is using the exact same mix of power from the exact same generators. The only difference is the piece of paper..
I always get a kick out of people who think subsidies for the nascent renewable energy industry is unfair because I can then point out that global fossil fuel subsidies represent about 6.5% of global GDP. That's $5.3 trillion in subsidies in 2015 alone. And those subsidies have been ongoing for decades even though I think we can all agree that industry doesn't need it -- never did.
Except it doesn't. Does paying welfare to homeless people say that there is a demand for homeless people?
The most outrageous part of this is that it is 'fake news' & nobody will call Google or any news organization that runs this out on it. This is entirely a marketing spin.
So the world of 'news' gets more grey every day & the 'news media' and 'elites' wonder why.
Other than coal, oil, and gas companies being allowed to dump their waste into the atmosphere, causing health problems and climate change for which the rest of us are paying by means of health coverage and property insurance?
The real subsidies for fossil fuels are military (trillions spent in the Middle East to secure our oil supply) and medical (massive amounts of exhaust pumped in the atmosphere and no need to pay for the resulting medical harm).