At least these sites (its more than Amazon) are being built near the energy source they will consume. Straight out of the ground into a turbine and then into the electron spinners.
Also there's not a lot of anything where these sites are located (Near El Paso). The 4-5 Road Runners who live around there will probably appreciate the change.
A better question is why a company is allowed to effectively lie using fraudulent false advertising in its marketing and brand image about being environmentally conscious and become the largest polluter in the country?
Is Amazon too broke to buy the necessary land to build out wind/solar/battery? I thought a company that name sponsored “Climate Pledge Arena” could afford to pay a little bit extra to care about the climate.
A wind/solar/battery solution is not even really much more expensive than gas power and it’s far less dependent on fluctuating fuel prices.
Which is nonsense. There's plenty of pollution that's been diluted as much as it possibly can be and is still problematic. CO2 is an obvious example. Or consider leaded gasoline or mercury. You have to be careful not to eat too much fish or you'll have trouble with the mercury in it. That's been diluted by the entire ocean and that didn't solve it.
A bigger unit is generally more efficient, but this is a single plant with a bunch of units, and I don't know that the individual units are any bigger than they would be elsewhere.
Yes, by burning fuels we release carbon from the thing being burned, it gets mixed with oxygen, and released into the atmosphere as co2.
As the suns energy warms the earth, the earth radiates heat back out and away from the surface and normally back out into space. co2 also acts like a blanket for that radiant heat, and traps it inside.
More co2 in the atmosphere traps more energy around the planet like an insulated wrap.
To reduce this, we have to extract the carbon out of the atmosphere and store it.
Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220350
256 comments, 8 hours ago
At least these sites (its more than Amazon) are being built near the energy source they will consume. Straight out of the ground into a turbine and then into the electron spinners.
Also there's not a lot of anything where these sites are located (Near El Paso). The 4-5 Road Runners who live around there will probably appreciate the change.
West Texas is basically Mad Max 2.
Don't these things get more efficient as they scale up? One big plant is probably better than 30 small ones.
A better question is why a company is allowed to effectively lie using fraudulent false advertising in its marketing and brand image about being environmentally conscious and become the largest polluter in the country?
Is Amazon too broke to buy the necessary land to build out wind/solar/battery? I thought a company that name sponsored “Climate Pledge Arena” could afford to pay a little bit extra to care about the climate.
A wind/solar/battery solution is not even really much more expensive than gas power and it’s far less dependent on fluctuating fuel prices.
> Is Amazon too broke to buy the necessary land to build out wind/solar/battery?
It's more capital intensive, and interest rates are 8%, because our elected officials are completely incompetent.
8% interest rates don’t seem to be a problem for financing all the data centers and AI hardware.
Amazon can afford to power their data centers with clean energy.
It’s not called “Climate Pledge But Only If It’s Less Capital Intensive Arena”
efficient in money, nothing is said about other metrics
it's quite possible to have more product made, thus more pollution (or less materials consumed, thus less)
but concentration definitely will rise
sometime in the energy sector once told me "the solution to pollution is dilution"
Which is nonsense. There's plenty of pollution that's been diluted as much as it possibly can be and is still problematic. CO2 is an obvious example. Or consider leaded gasoline or mercury. You have to be careful not to eat too much fish or you'll have trouble with the mercury in it. That's been diluted by the entire ocean and that didn't solve it.
A bigger unit is generally more efficient, but this is a single plant with a bunch of units, and I don't know that the individual units are any bigger than they would be elsewhere.
Finally, a structure worthy of its namesake.
These jet engine gas turbines create air pollution in the forms of formaldehyde and NOx and noise pollution.
This completely ignores carbon capture and offsets. Amazon remains committed to net zero.
Amazon is not capturing carbon in any meaningful scale and planting trees is great, until they capture fire.
Co2 is pollution now?
On an industrial scale, yes, of course.
It's the main greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Where have you been?
Yes, by burning fuels we release carbon from the thing being burned, it gets mixed with oxygen, and released into the atmosphere as co2.
As the suns energy warms the earth, the earth radiates heat back out and away from the surface and normally back out into space. co2 also acts like a blanket for that radiant heat, and traps it inside.
More co2 in the atmosphere traps more energy around the planet like an insulated wrap.
To reduce this, we have to extract the carbon out of the atmosphere and store it.
Yes
Sure, but it's only damaging globally. It's no more damaging to the local environment than to anywhere else on the planet.