this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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And they will probably use the energy equivalent to a small nation to do the training. LLMs are great.
Their data centers are 100% powered by renewable energy. Google is 100% carbon free. It's not as bad as you think it is.
Google promised to be carbon free by 2030.... Just as other have done and never even moved an inch towards that goal
The point is exactly to get gullible people like you to think it's all good until 2030 when some responsible people will battle to out that Google did nothing in reality to get there... Then they'll promise it again for 2050
Sorry I was a little wrong. Apparently 100% of Googles annual electricity consumption is matched with renewable energy that is supplied back to the grid. So basically, at night when there is no sun they use power from the grid and during the day they compensate it with excess renewable energy production.
It's not 100% carbon neutral. But it doesn't sound that bad either. There is worse things than that.
Not even... what they do is "pay" someone for renewable energy (not the energy they consume, nor do they produce energy on solar panels or anything renewable to go back into the grid)
This is their own statement: "In 2022 – for the sixth consecutive year – Google matched 100 percent of its global annual electricity consumption with purchases of renewable energy" (source)[https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/cleanenergy/]
And even that is not true since their actual report says that in 2021 they barely made it to 66%
So, in a nutshell... they are throwing some money at it and pretending they are not polluting anymore.
Google declared itself carbon neutral (whatever they think that means) back in 2007
this is literally the lowest bar to clear
Purchasing and producing renewable energy is the same thing. If you purchase it, somebody else is producing it for you.
But they are not even using said energy themselves.... that is like throwing my garbage right on the street but paying someone in India to pick some garbage over there (for at lot less)... if you are my neighbour, would you think it's fine?
I don't need google "producing" clean energy... I want them CONSUMING clean energy... as it is, they are pollution just as much as ever (more every year) but they pretend to be clean by throwing money at it... at the end of the day, the planet keeps getting polluted and the climate nicely on its way to cooking us alive
90% of the time they are "carbon free" through carbon offsets, which are generally a huge amount of bs.
the post is talking about Meta though