Memo to Google: Coal is not green

Find a new source of power, dudes

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 12:53 PM on 26 Jun 2007

Google got a lot of great press for its new plan to "voluntarily cut or offset all its greenhouse emissions by the end of the year." But was it all deserved?

The Boston Globe reported the story as "Google aims to go carbon-neutral by end 2007. " The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) reprinted the story, as did Greenwire and others. Buried in the story was this gem:

Separately, Google is planning to spend $600 million to build a data center in western Iowa that will receive power from a MidAmerican Energy Co. plant fired by coal, the fuel that emits the most carbon dioxide. A Google spokesman told Reuters all emissions from its Iowa project were accounted for in its carbon neutral plan.

Ouch! A company that wants to be green needs to take every cost-effective measure to reduce its own pollution before paying other people to reduce their pollution as an offset. In general, I am a fan of Google's environmental action (and you can read all about what they are doing at their blog).

But carbon offsets are over-rated (see here and even here). And coal plants last for more than 50 years. Worse, NASA's James Hansen explains, "one quarter of the carbon dioxide (CO2) put in the air by burning fossil fuels will stay there 'forever', more than 500 years."

Data centers are electricity hogs, and Google should not be designing one that runs on coal power. You can't go green by burning coal and buying offsets. A cutting-edge company like Google needs to do better!

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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8 Comments | Post a Comment

carbon offsets

I think the "carbon offset" debate is caught up in "whose roof" rather than what exactly is the CO2 accounting.

If I put a wind turbine in my backyard and power my house, I'm considered green. If I don't get wind, or if my town forbids it, I can pay to put an equivalent wind turbine somewhere else.

But whoops, by modern accounting the turbine a hundred miles away is an "offset" and bad.

(I'm sure you are familiar with the numerics Mr. Romm, that my backyard turbine in grid-tie would be equivalent to a grid-tie elsewhere. It is all net-net.)

by odograph at 12:59 PM on 26 Jun 2007

Well

Well, I don't really trust carbon offsets.
However electron offsets, now that could work.

Essentially carbon offsets, except exclusively electricity.

Essentially you are paying to have the same number of green electrons put into the grid as you are consuming black.

-David Ahlport

by GreyFlcn at 1:52 PM on 26 Jun 2007

nm

That doesn't make so much sense because there are varying degrees of green and black.

-David Ahlport

by GreyFlcn at 1:55 PM on 26 Jun 2007
[ Parent ]

Cutting Edge?

Google's whole technology is Boolean search, which was repudiated back in the 1970s.

Figures they'd use coal.

Their basic technology is the information science equivalent.

by jabailo at 2:59 PM on 26 Jun 2007

grids vs atmospheres

Well, if we can account electrons, why not molecules? In both cases it has roots in the physical sciences.

P.S. - John, if google used "bolean" searches we'd all be typing queries like: "troll" and "grist" and not "bridge".

by odograph at 3:13 PM on 26 Jun 2007

Romm replies

First off, if all offsets were certified 100% new wind (and no one else was sold the green attributes of that wind at the same time) I would lose much less sleep over offsets.

Second, let's say I build a NEW data center and a new coal plant to go with it. Then I pay someone else to build some wind turbines. That doesn't strike me as behavior meriting recognition by the world as a "green" leader.

Third, a lot of offsets are lame, like planting trees. If I power my data center by coal, then plants some trees, I don't think anyone would call that green.

by jromm at 3:25 PM on 26 Jun 2007

Read about madagascar...

...actually saving parts of their rainforests because they were being protected by offsets, that seems like a good use.

by Jon Rynn at 3:30 PM on 26 Jun 2007
[ Parent ]

distance

"Second, let's say I build a NEW data center and a new coal plant to go with it. Then I pay someone else to build some wind turbines. That doesn't strike me as behavior meriting recognition by the world as a 'green' leader."

500 years ago, Baltissare Castiglione said that if you were going to do something heroic, do it where the King can see you.

With a little variation, now for popular opinion, that is what solar panels or wind turbines on your own roof do. They demonstrate to the public your heroic effort.

But, from a strict scientific measure, "topology" of the network is not what makes merit. It is whether you put more green electrons into the network (anywhere on the planet) than you pull out, and whether you produce a net reduction in CO2 emissions over the course of your actions.

Sadly, some people will take this further, with a theoretical economic argument that any solar panel on your own roof, or any wind farm in the next state, is ultimately futile ... because they all (no matter where they are in the topology) reduce demand for fossil fuels, reducing prices, and bringing more users.

I hope that's not true ... but I'll note that it also is really an argument independent of the "length of cord" between source and sink.

by odograph at 8:01 PM on 26 Jun 2007

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