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"Renewable" Energy Hosting
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"Renewable" Energy Hosting

FractionFrankFractionFrank Member, Host Rep

Obviously this is a "LowEnd" discussion and price is going to be the main driver in decisions around hosting however to what level would you look at companies offering green/renewable energy?

For example if a solution was 1% more expensive but claimed to use renewable energy would you consider it?

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Comments

  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    The end is nigh.

  • @FractionFrank said:
    Obviously this is a "LowEnd" discussion and price is going to be the main driver in decisions around hosting however to what level would you look at companies offering green/renewable energy?

    For example if a solution was 1% more expensive but claimed to use renewable energy would you consider it?

    1%? Sure, for the few cents I'll contribute to the environment, but shouldn't it be cheaper in the long term meaning the service will also be cheaper?

  • Renewable energy is not cheap. Datacenters use ultra massive amounts of energy and price is everything. Cheapest possible energy is atomic. Wind, solar and others still to expensive for business.

  • NeoonNeoon Community Contributor, Veteran
    edited November 2021

    Put a coal plant next to the datacenter, buy some carbon credits, label it as green energy.

    Or just buy some forest space, turn that shit into carbon credits.
    Or just build your Datacenter close a hydro electric dam, like OVH did.

    And no, I would not pay any cent into that green washing bullshit.

  • FractionFrankFractionFrank Member, Host Rep

    @Neoon said:
    Put a coal plant next to the datacenter, buy some carbon credits, label it as green energy.

    Ultimately even those buying in "green energy" are using the same energy as the rest of us coming from the same cables so unless you are generating your own then this probably isn't as stupid as it sounds...?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited November 2021

    No. I perceive renewable energy as mostly marketing more expensive products to dumb consumers. Most of them won't really even care how you go about it, what the actual end results of it are, what finite resources are used in the process of the build and upkeep, etc. Slap a green sticker on it and make a Californian feel good.

    Save the environment, shut down a wind turbine. Bird lives matter.

  • @Neoon said:
    Put a coal plant next to the datacenter, buy some carbon credits, label it as green energy.

    Or just buy some forest space, turn that shit into carbon credits.
    Or just build your Datacenter close a hydro electric dam, like OVH did.

    And no, I would not pay any cent into that green washing bullshit.

    Carbon credits is mjjshit. Polution bought for money is not "green" solution.

  • NeoonNeoon Community Contributor, Veteran

    @LTniger said:

    @Neoon said:
    Put a coal plant next to the datacenter, buy some carbon credits, label it as green energy.

    Or just buy some forest space, turn that shit into carbon credits.
    Or just build your Datacenter close a hydro electric dam, like OVH did.

    And no, I would not pay any cent into that green washing bullshit.

    Carbon credits is mjjshit. Polution bought for money is not "green" solution.

    But its sold as such.

    I tried to run on solar right, all day, turns out at night, you end up loosing power.
    The train company here, advertises to run on Solar and Wind right.

    You know these days, where you have no wind and solar?
    You got hookers pushing your "green" train?

  • ArkasArkas Moderator

    @jar said: Save the environment, shut down a wind turbine.

    Save the planet, shut down everything, including humans. Especially the humans who think they have free will.

    Thanked by 3jar skorupion Pixels
  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider

    better shutdown all crypto, earth will be much greener without these

    Thanked by 2yoursunny brejski
  • NeoonNeoon Community Contributor, Veteran

    Speaking of such.

  • ArkasArkas Moderator

    @Neoon said: Speaking of such.

    Superb video! The truth unleashed!

  • @Neoon said:

    Why do it yourself. Let pros handle it for you.

    https://tree-nation.com/profile/digitalocean

    Just remove profile part from the url.

  • i dont really feel like public should pay a premium for where you get your power from. honestly who cares. if someone really cares about it this kinda problem gets solved at the governmental level not on a per business level.

  • lentrolentro Member, Host Rep

    @jar said:
    No. I perceive renewable energy as mostly marketing more expensive products to dumb consumers. Most of them won't really even care how you go about it, what the actual end results of it are, what finite resources are used in the process of the build and upkeep, etc. Slap a green sticker on it and make a Californian feel good.

    Save the environment, shut down a wind turbine. Bird lives matter.

    Really surprised at this opinion and many others in this thread.

    I personally pay extra to use renewable energy (in particular a solar company) for my servers in Boston. I don’t want to be a part of a problem.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited November 2021

    @lentro said: I don’t want to be a part of a problem

    People who will blindly throw any amount of money at billionaires for merely claiming to be protecting the environment ARE a problem. Whether or not that's you is for you to decide, but if you think that isn't who I'm talking about you didn't read the post you quoted.

    I'm not taking part in another get rich quick scheme in which political donors claim to set up environmentally friendly companies just to get billions in subsidies to accomplish nothing but making another billionaire out of my money (How's Solyndra doing?). I'm also not throwing finite resources at the continued upkeep of wind turbines, paying to clean up the dead birds, and calling it "renewable." But hey, it's something for Californians to high five each other over at Starbucks while texting on their iPhones. That and the fake concern that I wouldn't fall for their schemes.

    I've never known anyone who made frequent claims (without being asked) to be interested in the environment for any reason other than to be an upper middle class pretentious snob, so maybe that helps to inform the way I feel.

    Maybe there's progress to be had, but following green labels on a hosting website right next to the stock image of a woman in a headset isn't gonna get us there. But the average consumer doesn't know any better, so the brainless advertising bullet points are more than enough for them. Progress will be made by people actually intelligent, informed, and willing to adequately scrutinize claims. I highly doubt that's going to be the average hosting provider, you can't be a jack of all trades and a master of all.

    I know barely anything about renewable energy, but I know just enough to know that plenty of people will gladly sell me snake oil and call it that.

  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    I fear a broken Jar more than anything else.

    Thanked by 1bulbasaur
  • bikegremlinbikegremlin Member
    edited November 2021

    Solar, wind and water destroy the places where trees and animals can live. Huge areas need to be filled with those machines to make enough electricity for our current needs. Many mountain creeks and rivers in my country have been devastated to make the "eco-friendly, renewable" hydropower plants. People have protested, but those power plants are protected and even subsidized because "we need more renewable energy sources."

    Similar goes for wind turbines and solar panels. To make enough electricity, whole forests, plains etc. need to be covered by those.

    One of the big problems, on top of that, is storing the energy. Solar can't make electricity during the night, for example. Hydro and wind have similar problems - of highly fluctuating production.

    And we mustn't forget how battery production and destruction ("recycling") harms the environment (some highly toxic stuff there).

    The least dirty energy humans are capable of making today is nuclear. That's very, very counter-intuitive, but it's still true.

    When I hear how electric cars are a good idea, or stuff like this - I think it's nonsense. Maybe it isn't marketing bullshit, maybe those people do believe they are doing a very noble, very positive thing, but they aren't.

    Thanked by 2jar licher70
  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    The best "renewable" energy is setting up a solar energy farm in space, away from Earth's orbit. But even the Sun is a finite resource.

    The concept of "renewable" energy is high debatable in my book.

    Catching two birds with a stone is by surrounding Venus with solar panels, effectively cooling the planet down.

    The main issue is transportation of the energy to Earth and beyond. Well, Elon, I will leave that up to you.

  • verovero Member, Host Rep
    edited November 2021

    There's hardly one type of answer, but paying 0.25€/kWh (vs 0.11€/kWh year before), makes reconsider some things. Living "cleaner" shouldn't be unaffordable, as it will drive us back to stone age. And it's not about 1% in difference.

    It's rather lack of planning and policies (EU case). Nuclear power plant we had (which was shut down in 2004) was one of the best things we had. Such was the condition for us to enter EU, but there are shitloads of nuclear plants across EU still. Funny fact: our beloved neighbours just built nuclear plant right next to country border - I can literally see the chimneys, but I'm still paying x3 more. And the prices of electric cars.. Cool if governments subsidize those, but not many do.

  • NeoonNeoon Community Contributor, Veteran

    However, my favorite is actually this one.

    Thanked by 2vpsGOD g4m3r
  • risharderisharde Patron Provider, Veteran

    I think I could see myself paying a few cents more for a legit green hosting service assuming of course that the cost to create it would be overall less than the destruction of what would need to be destroyed. In fact, I have been one of those against mining bitcoin because I just don't think fossil fuels should be burnt up to create bitcoin especially if it eventually falls. Of course most of these things are assumptions. I do like the idea of my servers being able to run on renewable energy.

    Thanked by 1OhJohn
  • HalfEatenPieHalfEatenPie Veteran
    edited November 2021

    Oh hey my actual PhD-related topic. Skip to the bolded What does this have to do with renewable energy hosting... down below if you don't want to read the actual science behind these reasons.

    Over the last 10 years, renewable sources of power has gotten significantly cheaper. The expectation is that as we continue to develop better renewable technology the cost of producing power will get cheaper and cheaper. This is expected in all of our economic models and systems we've been using to inform our policies and decision making (IPCC AR5, 2014). We use RCPs to build scenarios on what could happen in the future based on different levels of climate change mitigation. RCP 2.6 (2.6 Watts (solar energy)/m^2) being the "best case scenario", and RCP 8.5 (8.5 W/m^2) as "business as usual (expected worst case scenario)". RCP 4.5 (modeled using GCAM, which is famous for it's energy and technology cost models) predicts renewable energy technology will grow significantly by 2100 compared to 2000s energy market in (plot). The figure shows increases in coal, oil, and natural gas but with carbon capture and storage technologies helping these resources become less-environmentally damaging. Notice how we're expected to double our energy production by 2100.

    We're seeing some trends in RCP 4.5 in real life: increase in power efficient devices (especially in fuel efficient cars and servers) and decrease in cost for renewable energy (solar panels are significantly cheaper now). However, our actual carbon release (and therefore atmospheric forcing) has increased significantly as enough hasn't been done yet. A common plot is this, where an increase in "CO2-equivalent" means more "potential energy capacity" the atmosphere has (most people attribute this to the increasing temperature due to climate change). Like I mentioned before, RCP 8.5 was our expected worst case scenario, but we're now projected at hitting 9 W/m^2 EARLIER than we expected. We're on track to be worse than our worst expected scenario. This means we're going to have more frequent and stronger natural disasters which is expected to cause significantly more economic damage over time. IPCC AR6 got rid of the RCPs and are using a different method to communicate these risks as we're just not hitting the targets we need to.

    What does this have to do with renewable energy hosting... I'd buy into it but I don't think it's that big of a marketing benefit for enough people to use it and offset the costs. Remember most people don't have to look at the server running in their house 24/7 reminding of their power consumption. If people are going to get the same level of service for a higher price tag... then it's not worth it for most people. What needs to be done is continued investment in renewable energy to bring the cost of energy production down where the renewables actually have a fighting chance.

    OVH's BHS location was at one point advertised as "green power". Well, turns out hydropower is not actually a renewable energy due to the amount of carbon released in the entire manufacturing and maintenance process taking care of those reservoirs. I'm hopeful for solar + batteries to provide a buffer for the night, but I'm sure we all know batteries definitely have an expiration date (and manufacturing them is not very renewable). Wind has the same limitation as solar, except less reliable. Nuclear's the only real guaranteed option imho.

    COP26 is excellent in collaboration and figuring out better solutions to these problems. However, it's still a ways away from actually finding a sustainable resolution. Everyone has their own incentives, but we all need to be smart and bring everyone to the table to work this out. There's even a comment from someone here saying "handle this at the government level, not on a per-business level". Like mate... energy sector and agriculture accounts for about 50% of our carbon emissions. This has to be a joint partnership with government and industries.

    TLDR: If you don't want to read then screw you.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    Now @HalfEatenPie is someone who knows their shit in this stuff.

    Thanked by 1HalfEatenPie
  • @jar said: Now @HalfEatenPie is someone who knows their shit in this stuff.

    Do they related to mod? Other account?

  • HalfEatenPieHalfEatenPie Veteran
    edited November 2021

    @jenkki said:

    @jar said: Now @HalfEatenPie is someone who knows their shit in this stuff.

    Do they related to mod? Other account?

    The mod guy is some guy who changed his LET username after I left the forums back in 2016 or so.

    He ended up joining the staff shortly after.

    Edit: I am not related to that individual, but people seem to be mistaking him for me. I am the former admin of another forum with @MannDude

    Edit2: It was December 2016.

  • @HalfEatenPie said:
    OVH's BHS location was at one point advertised as "green power". Well, turns out hydropower is not actually a renewable energy due to the amount of carbon released in the entire manufacturing and maintenance process taking care of those reservoirs.

    That doesn't sound like it has anything to do with renewable energy. The definition I grew up with is akin to:

    Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources like sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.[3] This type of energy source stands in contrast to fossil fuels, which are being used far more quickly than they are being replenished. Although most renewable energy is sustainable energy, some is not...

    You're probably referring to something else more specific to carbon emissions and not generation.

  • @jar said:
    Now @HalfEatenPie is someone who knows their shit in this stuff.

    It doesn't take much to make users of this site to think people know their shit. The clue is when they include too much useless details and don't stick to simple point. It's a sign they're repeating shit they heard, not understand.

    The tl;dr should have been along the lines of renewable energy hosting is to imply costs won't skyrocket from energy fluctuations and you won't be needlessly contributing to global warming. Win-win. For 1% difference? Go for it.

    Should you pick organic food over gmo for 1% difference? Fuck yes. For 10%, 25%, 50%, 100% difference, depends on more factors.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @TimboJones said:

    @jar said:
    Now @HalfEatenPie is someone who knows their shit in this stuff.

    It doesn't take much to make users of this site to think people know their shit.

    I know him, he knows his shit 😉

    Thanked by 1HalfEatenPie
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