Essay by Eric Worrall
“We know this is not going to be easy and that our approach will need to continue to evolve”.
Google falling short of important climate target, cites electricity needs of AI
Google, which has an ambitious plan to address climate change with cleaner operations, came nowhere close to its goals last year, according to the company’s annual Environmental Report Tuesday
By ALEXA ST. JOHN Associated Press
July 3, 2024, 2:01 AMThree years ago, Google set an ambitious plan to address climate change by going “net zero,” meaning it would release no more climate-changing gases into the air than it removes, by 2030.
But a report from the company Tuesday shows it is nowhere near meeting that goal.
Rather than declining, its emissions grew 13% in 2023 over the year before. Compared to its baseline year of 2019, emissions have soared 48%.
Google cited artificial intelligence and the demand it puts on data centers, which require massive amounts of electricity, for last year’s growth.
…
Google Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt told The Associated Press, “Reaching this net zero goal by 2030, this is an extremely ambitious goal.
“We know this is not going to be easy and that our approach will need to continue to evolve,” Brandt added, “and it will require us to navigate a lot of uncertainty, including this uncertainty around the future of AI’s environmental impacts.”
…
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/google-falling-short-important-climate-target-cites-electricity-111614506
What can I say – yet more evidence the AI revolution has broken Silicon Valley’s commitment to Net Zero.
I’d love to know how this AI at any cost push is playing with the Silicon Valley hippies, because it is not just Google – Microsoft and other tech giants are also pedal to the metal when it comes to the AI revolution.
Are all the Silicon Valley hippies jumping on board the AI greed train, selling out their alleged green principles for big pay checks, trying to avoid each other’s eyes? Are they hiding their MAGA hats at the bottom of their rucksacks? Or are there intense Soviet style denunciations of the management climate wreckers during lunch breaks, before everyone goes back to work on coding the next energy gulping AI upgrade?
I guess life would be too perfect, if we had answers to all of our questions.
Now do crypto.
What about bit coin?
bitcoin farms use renewables.
hydro in china,
wind in texas,
hydro in washington state,
hydro in sweden.
what do i know i sold millions of dollars of equipment to farms.
you basically ned markets with excsss power, sub 5 cents per kWh
Not entirely – the UN thinks 45% of Bitcoin energy comes from fossil fuel. And there was that story a few years ago about Bitcoin miners trying to refurbish a mothballed Aussie coal plant.
Thanks Eric, I was trying to find this info a few days ago. It strikes me that the “Net-Zero” folks are going at the issue from the wrong end. Rather than advocating for net-zero fossil fuel use, they should be demanding net-zero electricity usage. No EVs, no AI, no crypto-mining, no AC, no refrigeration, no toasters, no cell phones, no TV… You know return to the 19th century life style where the climate was always perfect and no one need electricity.
Obviously demanding increased electricity production while concurrently curtailing the sources of 80% of current production is a stupid and doomed quest. Let’s go back to whale oil lamps, ice boxes, wood heating, horse and buggies – aka the good old days. It shouldn’t take more than a couple decades for this approach to bring the population into balance with the ability to provide adequate resources to the remaining populace.
If the bitcoin farms in Texas are online and mining now, 62% of the electricity they are using comes from….Natural gas (41.8%), Coal and Lignite (13.1%) and nuclear (6.1%). Wind is actually having a decent day for a hot, high demand Texas afternoon. It is producing about 12.6MW out of an installed capacity of over 39MW which is about 32% of installed capacity. Often, wind produces less than 10% of installed capacity during high demand.
My source is the online tracking tools at http://www.ERCOT.com.
12.6MW… MW? Don’t you mean GW?
Tex,
It is not as simple as that. As wind\solar cannot react to any load variation, when more demand is placed on the grid, such as cited in the above article, only dispatchable generation can increase to meet it, usually fossil fuel generation.
Therefore any grid load increase be it from AI, electric vehicles or heat pumps then CO2 emissions rise, directly proportional to the extra load.
Certainly an increase in renewable capacity will tend to offset this but that increase is slow and when factoring the actual generated output versus installed capacity plus the steady decline in output from existing renewable generators the perceived saving in emissions from renewables is less than reality.
Excellent comment, lain.
“bitcoin farms use renewables.”
? How do you know if the power is “renewable” or the it’s fossil fueled backup?
PS Hydro is “renewable” only when it’s power output is needed to inflate “renewable” wind and solar numbers.
Instead of pinwheels and solar panels, why aren’t any “Renewable” advocates pushing to build more dams?
They HATE dams. Heck they want to rip out most of the ones in the northwest. They have done 2 that I know of, one in WA and one in OR.
And destroyed the ecosystems they had made in the process.
Unless it is a closed system, and all of the upfront and backside energy costs of the “renewable” sources are accounted for, your declaration is meaningless
You sold them shit power sources? Took them for millions? Good for you!
Did you sell them any batteries? How else are they going to run most of the time, if they only run on renewable crap? Bitcoin miners got to run 24/7/365, can’t make a return on the expensive video card investment if they can only run some of the time.
This statement doesn’t even make sense! 5¢ per kwh? According to USA Today the lowest state is Nebraska at 9.35¢/kwh. Washington at 11¢/kwh and Texas at 14.25¢/kwh. I found a price for business in Sweden at 15.2¢/kwh.
Something smells here!
He’s giving us the cost he tells his customers, so they’ll buy renewable crap. Serves them right. If they’re gullible about AGW and renewable reliability, then they deserve to get taken by a fellow stooge.
I’d wondered who was paying Mosher for his AGW stance. Now we know: gullible bitcoin farmers.
If the bitcoin farms use renewables, then that means renewables aren’t available to power other things.
What matters is the total amount of energy being demanded at any given time.
You know that, but obfuscation has always been your goal.
What climate change?
What AI?
our approach will need to continue to evolve”
Or…. “their narrative will need to continue to evolve”
Somehow.
So, Just Stop
Oil… er, A.I.Someone tell Kate: Things that can’t happen, won’t.
Hire a few creative accountants {What do you want the numbers to be.} That will help.
AI will enable more cities to become climate havens…..able to accept more climate refugees….Oh, the humanity!
CO2 Sanctuary cities?
So Google will maybe stop propaganda warnings on any YouTube post that is insufficiently credulous of CAGW?
The world is using more fossil fuels. For every reduction made by Western countries the ROW increases their use plus some. It’s a scam and people that don’t realize it are naive.
So what good does Google’s AI actually do? It gives better targeted ads to not look at? It tailors searches to fit the party line better?
Yes…. yes….
It makes up bad answers based on reams of internet data.
GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out.
I asked MS Co-pilot, “When will the present interglacial end?” The first reply was “Some scientists think it will be as long as 125,000 years. I rephrased the question a half dozen times, trying to pin it down, and always got the same answer. It finally said, “Your time is up!”
Every time I’ve asked it a technical question on things I am knowledgeable of, it always gave an incorrect answer.
The present interglacial will end in 2075 +/- 10, but will not be recognized until about 2250. That is, many years after the fact. As you are on speaking terms with MS Co-pilot, please inform it/they/them. Then the next time someone asks there will be a satisfying (if wrong) answer.
AI output must be fact checked.
it always gave an incorrect answer.
Which is terrifying given people’s tendency to rely on “the computer said so” – which will get worse as people come to rely more on AI tools. What happens when bridges are designed relying on AI?
When we were young, we were taught computers never lie and if it was written it was accurate. Back then if it was written it needed multiple verified sources, unlike today where copy and paste is the quickest route to ad click based publication.
Of computers do not lie. However people using computers or programming them can, and seemingly more often than should be do lie.
Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
Next, your going to tell me that big tech is more equal than Joe Sixpack! Com’on, this is America. /sarc off
Why the AI hype? Is it because Artificial Idiots are going to replace Real Idiots? A lot of people in politics, media and IT will then be redundant and out of jobs … [/sark]
Since AI already provides most of Eric’s graphics, LLM’s clearly pose an existential threat to The CO2 Coalition and Climate Depot’s prose.
Before we deal with Artificial Intelligence let’s get a handle on natural stupidity.
“Are all the Silicon Valley hippies jumping on board the AI greed train, selling out their alleged green principles for big pay checks, trying to avoid each other’s eyes? “
Nah !
They’re busy choosing allocating their vacation time between Grove camps and Burning Man.
Just like Hydrogen production from “excess” power (wind and solar only, please), Google can shut down when the oh so reliable renewable power sources are not able to produce the power needed. That will go over well with investors as they can therefore meet their renewable goals. But might just be a wee bit short meeting their financial goals. So hard to be successful when you have mutually exclusive goal to satisfy.
Not exactly. The will do what California does when the wind blows…. shut off power to the multitudes that need it for basic necessities like lighting and heating/cooling.
Oh, wait. Shut down the household electricity and who will be able to access google and their annoying adds once their smart phone battery depletes.
Some greenies are going to discover how critical these data centers are.
Either we move ahead with Net-Zero, decarbonization and deindustrialization or we move ahead with AI. Pick one.*
Perhaps companies like Google will put data centers on old oil rigs and declare them sovereign nations. Then they can power themselves with small nuclear reactors.
And don’t talk about unplugging the AI data centers or other data centers, either. Data centers are critical infrastructure. Taking data centers offline for a brownout doesn’t just inconvenience teenagers streaming Youtube or TikTok. Our economy depends on the internet.
* Realistically, we can’t move ahead with Net-Zero, decarbonization, deindustrialization and migration from fossil fuels to all-electric power, either. These are mutually exclusive.
Which is why the influx of unknowns at the southern border should be ringing alarm bells everywhere. Military age Chinese men disappearing into the interior, where there’s a black market for guns and plenty of hard-to-replace transformers for target practice? Hm. Something similar already happened on a small scale in December 2022, now imagine a co-ordinated attack on the transformers at every data centre. It wouldn’t just be the US economy, most of the Western world would be effed.
Imagine China moves against Taiwan. Part of the strategy to keep the US busy will be physical and virtual attacks on US infrastructure. Destroying physical infrastructure in the way you mentioned could take months to repair. And guess what — most of the components are made in China.
I’m worried that’s the present regime’s plan to retain power.
“Google falling short of important climate target, cites electricity needs of AI
Google, which has an ambitious plan to address climate change with cleaner operations, came nowhere close to its goals last year, according to the company’s annual Environmental Report Tuesday.”
***********
This isn’t exactly anything new for Google. Lets go back 10 years in time….
Shocker: Top Google Engineers Say Renewable Energy ‘Simply won’t work’ – Watts Up With That?
“[Making] renewable energy viable has been a complete failure, according to the scientists who led the programme. After 4 years of effort, their conclusion is that renewable energy “simply won’t work”.
According to an interview with the engineers, published in IEEE;
With the AI revolution increasing electricity demand, Google and the other Big Tech companies are in deep doo-doo if they think they are going to meet their precious climate goals with wind and solar. Their engineers told them it could not be done 10 years ago, and they are in fantasy land if they think they can do it now.
Recall Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Indeed – their own engineers told them it is impossible, but they tried anyway. And they think they are the rational actors…
It’s OK. Google can just fine itself for not meeting it’s self imposed obligations. Since money is the only solution to climate change, it will all work out for the best.
Won’t it be interesting to see if carbon emissions become a political non-issue in the coming years as big tech will no longer be able to hide the fact that they’ve got the biggest carbon footprint of all. Who knows, the next generation of digital kids may come of age being told that carbon emissions are a good and necessary thing!
Trump did pretty well with his recent Silicon Valley fundraising. Who knows, this might be the year when the billionaires really support Republicans.
Trump had several Silicon Valley Billionaires singing his praises.
One of them was good-naturedly coerced into admittting he liked Trump after meeting with him. He changed his mind about Trump after hearing Trump for himself.
I would recommend that for everyone. Hear Trump yourself. Don’t depend on someone else to interpret what he says for you. You won’t get the truth that way as you are almost guaranteed to get a distorted version of Trump that way.
Rinse, spin, repeat, insert Biden.
Big Tech will be promoting nuclear energy soon. It’s the only way they can do business without producing more carbon dioxide.
They could promote new natural gas plants as an interim measure while bringing nuclear online.
Big Tech needs to wise up.
“Microsoft and other tech giants are also pedal to the metal when it comes to the AI revolution.”
Gates = pro-nuke
Well, Gates has to have some redeeming, non-perv qualities. Did you know Hitler really liked animals?
And ice cream, just like biden. If the left can engage in illogical comparisons, so can I.
Note: Long lead time components were ordered in March 2023 for manufacture in South Korea. Plans are to be operational in 2029. Welcome to the nuclear renaissance.
Anyone wondering whether Artificial Intelligence is worth the money should try talking to a phone-answering robot for a few minutes. If it doesn’t give an option for “press zero to speak to a representative”, it will never solve your problem. It’s like talking to an artificial moron.
Artificial intelligence may be able to answer typed-in questions, but no one has yet invented an artificial ear that can respond to human speech.
People see showcase projects like the AI that taught robots how to play soccer or the AI that created unique chess strategies. AI is now being used to design medicines. This is impressive.
And then we get the AI that suggests glue as a pizza topping.
Does this mean AI won’t take over the world? Nope. It just means our AI masters might try to staff the human extermination camps with chipmunks.
Well I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords…How can I merely be of use?
The owners of roughly a third of U.S. nuclear-power plants are in talks with tech companies to provide electricity to new data centers needed to meet the demands of an artificial-intelligence boom.
The WSJ article indicates the big companies like Amazon (probably Google and Apple) are in talks with nuclear facilities across the u.s., willing to pay a premium for first dibs on the more reliable power that nuclear plants produce. Such commitments have the potential “to remove stable power generation from the grid while reliability concerns are rising across much of the U.S. and new kinds of electricity users—including AI, manufacturing and transportation—are significantly increasing the demand for electricity in pockets of the country.”
Nuclear reactors were apparently overbuilt in the 1970’s in parts of the u.s. and those areas are likely targets for the additional a.i. data centers, none more so than Ashburn, N. VA., which now has the largest concentration of servers in the country.
I’m sure the Biden administration will propose electricity neutrality rules (e-neutrality) to prevent this from happening. At least it will propose it until Big Tech coughs up billions more in campaign donations.
I don’t think they’ll need political support. This time its the big dogs wagging and the reluctant populus and demagogues following.
Sounds to me like Biden is all in on nuclear. The Advance Nuclear Act became the law of the land last month 10 days after the senate passed it 88-2. The passage was forecast by the Biden-Harris Nuclear Fact Sheet. I’ve been posting about this here on WUWT and Quora for a month and apparently, I’m the only person on these blog sites that considers it a big deal. I think it’s the biggest US energy event since horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking was proven safe and effective 15+ years ago.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/05/29/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-steps-to-bolster-domestic-nuclear-industry-and-advance-americas-clean-energy-future/
MAY 29, 2024
Fact Sheet: Biden-Harris Administration Announces New Steps to Bolster Domestic Nuclear Industry and advance America’s Clean Energy Future
Leveraging cooperation with international partners: NRC recently signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation to increase collaboration on the technical reviews of advanced reactor and SMR technologies.
Nuclear development needs a much bigger kick in the pants. On the scale of a Manhattan Project. The costs and the length of time to completion are completely unacceptable and have to be reduced.
“The WSJ article indicates the big companies like Amazon (probably Google and Apple) are in talks with nuclear facilities across the u.s”
It’s not just nuclear plants getting this treatment. There is a coal-fired power plant located about 20 miles from my home, and just recently it was announced that a new data center is going to be established in the area to take advantage of the reliable power produced by the coal plant.
I imagine every extra bit of electrical energy from any source is being sought by the AI companies.
AI, needs 100% RELIABLE electricity, so renewables are no bloody good.
The magic of AI has revealed that there is no CO2 induced global warming.
According to the latest and best AI deliberations, all observed warming is entirely due to natural causes apart from local heat island impacts. (This is a forecast rather than present)
If AI was actually intelligent it would already arrived at this somewhat obvious result but its masters have a political agenda to demonise CO2 until they don’t. The change is in the wind.
If I was training AI engines, I could guide them to seek out the evidence that proves observed climate change has nothing to do with CO2. So I am certain that once the political landscape swings back to observable physics rather than contrived nonsense, the AI engines will produce the correct answer.
“If I was training AI engines, I could guide them to seek out the evidence that proves observed climate change has nothing to do with CO2.”
That sounds like a good question to ask an AI.
They would probably react like Robbie the Robot when given a command to kill his owner in the movie “Forbidden Planet”, and Robbie shortcircuited because he was given a command he could not comply with.
How many of you remember ELIZA? I remember how intelligent it seemed. You can do so much with software programming.sarc
I think it would be a mistake to dismiss the AI push as nonsense. Google et al are spending insane amounts of money on AI because it is enormously profitable and it is making them more powerful.
Even simple robots can exhibit some intelligence – artificial intelligence is not that difficult. The expensive bit is when you want to build a really advanced artificial intelligence.
It is time for Google to wake up and smell the roses. Just as AI is really important to Google affordable heating, cooling, lighting, transportation and electrical power is even more important to the average guy. Forget about net zero.