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Data clouds called out for dirty energy
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TEXT OF INTERVIEW
Bob Moon: Have you heard of "the cloud?" It's the mass of data and software and media that's stored and shared from massive server farms all over the country, and those data centers are being built at breakneck speed. But there's a problem, according to some in the environmental movement: increased energy use. Dirty energy use, to be specific. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman joins us live this morning. Good morning, Mitchell.
Mitchell Hartman: Good morning, Bob.
Moon: So tell me about the report. I gather it's very critical of companies like Google, Apple, Facebook?
Hartman: Well Greenpeace crunched numbers from several sources, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and concluded that many of those companies' server farms in the U.S. will depend primarily on electricity produced from coal. So Greenpeace has a list of facilities on, as it were, its list of shame. It includes a new Apple data warehouse in North Carolina, and Facebook's first data center, that'll be built about 150 miles east of where I am in Portland, in a depressed mill town in Eastern Oregon. Now these are all in regions where coal is a primary fuel for power plants.
Moon: OK, so what do the companies say?
Hartman: Well, no one disputes that the Internet cloud uses massive amounts of power. But the companies all say they are doing lots to operate green -- they're purchasing carbon offsets, they're releasing their carbon footprints, generally saving energy. And that Facebook data center here in Oregon, for instance, it's going to be an incredibly energy-efficient building, cooled at night by high-desert air.
Moon: But still run mostly by coal-powered electricity 24/7, I take it.
Hartman: Right, and by the way, delivering a few dozen new jobs in a place that's seen timber mills close. Those mills, of course, spewed out plenty of carbon and pollution, and the area now has 17 percent unemployment. Bob I have to say, you gotta love the irony here, though. Greenpeace is organizing local environmental activists to pressure Facebook about this issue -- they're doing it on Facebook.
Moon: Hahah. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman. Thank you.
Hartman: You're welcome.
A cool climate location matters only if the AIR TEMPERATURES are the source of energy. Don’t forget geo-exchange technologies - the earth, from a few feet below its surface to deep rock or underground water, is a constant temperature. It is in the range of 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than normal human habitation. As far as thermodynamics of geology can estimate it, there is no limit (i.e. no limit similar to measures such as the number of hours of insolation in a year or the tonnage of consumable coal).
:: and REMEMBER the Four Rs?
1) REDUCE
2) REUSE
3) RECYCLE
4) ... your choice: REFUSE, RESPECT, RE-THINK, ROT, etc.
It's still a carbon-based energy source, but a few years back, some creative Alaska legislators were trying to convince anyone who would listen to build server farms on Alaska's North Slope.
Once you stop laughing, it makes sense.
It's rarely over 45 degrees there so cooling would never be a problem and the place is awash in natural gas (far less polluting than oil or dirty coal).
Having failed to find that market for its gas reserves, Alaska is now thinking about building a massive pipeline to take that gas to connector lines in the midwest where it'll feed existing lines to, you guessed it, fuel server farms in the Lower 48.
Me, I'd rather forgo the pipeline and just lay a fibreoptic line instead.
One should not overlook what is being done to use greener energy, like Google's solar power project in the Bay Area and the giant data center on the Columbia River using hydroelectric power.
Most data centers are moving to designs that reduce power consumption, using fiber optics instead of copper for connections, for example, and changing the architecture of servers to reduce power consumption. Remember that about half the power they consume is air conditioning, so putting them in cooler climates is even an advantage.
