2 recent stories: - Amazon promising carbon removal *inside* its data centres - Meta asking for nuclear power proposals for its data centres Different techs, but the same dynamic: the techs are in what I am going to call the 'greenwashing habitable zone'..... www.semafor.com/article/12/0... - ThreadSky

ketanjoshi.co • 89 days ago

2 recent stories:

- Amazon promising carbon removal *inside* its data centres
- Meta asking for nuclear power proposals for its data centres

Different techs, but the same dynamic: the techs are in what I am going to call the 'greenwashing habitable zone'.....

https://www.semafor.com/article/12/01/2024/amazon-ai-data-centers-to-double-as-carbon-capture-machines

1 / 3

Comments

drjanicekirsch.bsky.social•89 days ago

📌

undbtlydoubtful.bsky.social•86 days ago

With ~70% margins DCs are one of the few industries that can afford BYO nuclear. But of course they prefer cheaper power from Ma & Pa subsidised grid (where they will drive demand and set prices) if they can get it.

ketanjoshi.co•89 days ago

I think the perfect candidates for a company to greenwash some environmentally harmful, high-emitting activity have to be

- Persistently 'just around the corner' - but never too deployable, lest promises can be tested and companies held accountable

- Expensive enough to justify subsidies

ketanjoshi.co•89 days ago

I think point-source carbon capture and storage in particular has been shifting outside of the habitable zone - the actual deplyoment of a few real power station carbon capture facilities resulted in a situation where it became harder to use it for greenwashing promises

ketanjoshi.co•89 days ago

To "offset" Amazons emissions would be deeply absurd. Amazon's power consumption emissions in 2023 were 12,768,034 tonnes. You'd need:

9,192,984,480 Olympic swimming pools worth of air

15 TWh of power consumption, aka 40% increase in Amazon's TOTAL power consumption.

https://www.cdp.net/en/responses/658

ketanjoshi.co•89 days ago

Most coverage claims the direct air capture tech would **entirely** offset or neutralise the existing electrical consumption emissions of Amazon's data centres (noting some overlap I assume between the power draw of the fans - but with zero information to go on, ofc)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/03/amazon-teams-up-with-orbital-to-remove-co2-from-the-air-at-one-of-its-datacenters/

ketanjoshi.co•89 days ago

Aside from the extremely serious problems that obviously exist in uncritical media coverage of tech companies and carbon removal start-ups, this is a perfect illustration of why direct air capture sits so nicely in the greenwashing habitable zone.

ketanjoshi.co•89 days ago

It is *demonstrable* - you can point to working DACC.

But it is also *infeasible at the required scale* - you can just kinda shrug and say "WELL PEOPLE SAID THE SAME THING ABOUT SOLAR" and assume it'll Exponentially™ grow, because that's what techs do right? Chips! Smartphones! Etc!

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply