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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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It's totally useless as long as you don't shut down plants that are running on coal. Otherwise it's just adding up with other sources of CO2.
This plant is used to power up an expansion of google, which means it's just adding up CO2 to what we already emit. It's creating a fake impression that we are reducing our carbon footprint.
There is a simple solution: shut down the datacenter. No more power needed, no more water needed. The problem is not about CO2, it's about us refusing to let go our previous way of life.
And if you refuse this solution ask yourself why.
But this is only an early phase, base on the article.
If they successfully scale it up to power a quarter of the homes in Utah then it could dramatically reduce the need for power generated by other methods in the region. My concern is the part of the article where they talk about fracking other areas to make those areas more suitable for geothermal power generation. Assuming that their process uses the same chemical cocktail as petroleum fracking, I would not support it.
As for Google data centers, this article is not suggesting a reduced carbon footprint for Google. It about minimizing the increase in their carbon footprint. They are expanding and are going to continue expanding regardless of how their power needs are met. It is a good thing if their expansion can be powered by minimally polluting means.
I suspect a large part of the internet and the Fediverse is hosted on Google cloud services. Do you really want to shut down the data centers and hobble the internet? I would much rather we switch 100% to wind, solar, geothermal rather than ditching the internet.
And this is exactly the problem we should focus on. They should not be allowed to expand like that. Either we are in a situation of emergence or we are not. Just stop them, make the political decision to stop them.
Run the numbers, everything we don't do now to reduce the CO2 emissions will be paid a hundred times more later. Megafires, megadraught, etc.