Google Deletes Net-Zero Pledge From Sustainability Website (nationalobserver.com) 69
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google's CEO Sundar Pichai stood smiling in a leafy-green California garden in September 2020 and declared that the tech behemoth was entering the "most ambitious decade yet" in its climate action. "Today, I'm proud to announce that we intend to be the first major company to operate carbon free -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year," he said, in a video announcement at the time.
Pichai added that he knew the "road ahead would not be easy," but Google "aimed to prove that a carbon-free future is both possible and achievable fast enough to prevent the most dangerous impacts of climate change." Five years on, just how hard Google's "energy journey" would become is clear. In June, Google's Sustainability website proudly boasted a headline pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030. By July, that had all changed. An investigation by Canada's National Observer has found that Google's net-zero pledge has quietly been scrubbed, demoted from having its own section on the site to an entry in the appendices of the company's sustainability report.
Pichai added that he knew the "road ahead would not be easy," but Google "aimed to prove that a carbon-free future is both possible and achievable fast enough to prevent the most dangerous impacts of climate change." Five years on, just how hard Google's "energy journey" would become is clear. In June, Google's Sustainability website proudly boasted a headline pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030. By July, that had all changed. An investigation by Canada's National Observer has found that Google's net-zero pledge has quietly been scrubbed, demoted from having its own section on the site to an entry in the appendices of the company's sustainability report.
"Google Tries Not To Offend Administration." (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just an attempt to not get pinged by the Trump administration for paying lip service to the Democratic Hoax of Climate Change.
Don't kill the messenger. I'm just saying what's happening. I don't agree with any of it, but we live in a world where the worst offense you can commit is popping up on Trump's radar as paying lip service to something he has decided doesn't exist.
Re:"Google Tries Not To Offend Administration." (Score:5, Insightful)
Just remember that the laws of physics don't give a fuck, and will crush us with as much ease and as little concern as a tidal wave crushing an ant.
That we imagine we can alter physics by denial is a sign of what an utterly idiotic species we are.
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Just remember that the laws of physics don't give a fuck, and will crush us with as much ease and as little concern as a tidal wave crushing an ant.
That we imagine we can alter physics by denial is a sign of what an utterly idiotic species we are.
I wish that message wound sink in for the decision makers without having to wait out the entire process.
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"But Billy, you need to understand... We thought we all would be dead before Man-Beast-Pig came back." -- South Park (Grandpa)
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It's not even a matter of a change in plans, Google could be doing exactly what they were doing before but what the admin in concerned about is the appearance, they don't want Google having such things announced.
It all tracks with Ur Fascism point #3; Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identifi
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Coal and gas are tradition and thus must be protected.
Is that like the joke that navies around the world would not allow progress to get in the way of tradition? As in it was customary to mix rum with the water on ships from the days of sail, as otherwise there could be growth of bacteria to make sailors sick. A bit of rum also improved the mood of the crew, but carried some risk of sailors drinking too much and potentially being a hazard to themselves and others. This ran so deep that some navies still had a rum ration into the 1970s and 1980s. That was w
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Wasn't talking about Google chief.
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They weren't going to make it to Net Zero by 2030 anyway. The combined power usage for Google's datacenters can probably be measured in gigawatts, and there is no way that all of that is "clean" energy. I doubt that they could even afford enough carbon offset credits to make it net zero without royally pissing off their shareholders.
Blame AI (Score:5, Interesting)
This is Google realizing that since their whole business model has shifted to massive amounts of AI, and AI consumes energy by the freighter-load, they can choose their business model, or they can choose net zero carbon, but not both.
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"9 seconds of TV" without specifying the size of the TV)
Apparently, a TV that consumes 100 W (0.34 Wh * 3600 seconds / hour = 1224 Ws. Dividing by 9 s give 136 W, but we have only one significant digit, so call it 100 W).
According to Claude, a typical 55" LED TV consumes about 100W, and I think that's a pretty typical TV size in American homes these days, at least for the living room / TV room.
Energy [Re:Blame AI] (Score:2)
AI energy need is still shrinking fast.
Good to know. Unfortunately the complexity of tasks that the AI is being given to address, and the number of organiations trying to use AI to replace humans, are both increasing fast. So the question is, is the AI energy need shrinking fast enough?
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It's probably more of an AI energy budget problem, they can't afford to be sustainable with 10x energy costs.
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They have to choose between Trump and Europe, because in Europe there are business reasons why they need to have a net zero pledge. A lot of companies will only do business with other companies that have climate change commitments, because they need that for their own contractual obligations.
Google and pledges (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh hey just like that pledge not to use AI for weapons that they used to recruit top AI experts. After they did their work the pledge vanished.
Google's words are apparently worth nothing.
Of course they are well within their rights, given that they are part of the group of billionaires that purchased (or I guess leased) the governance of the united states.
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They may have believed the sales pitch, that they own the United States
Re:This is what the majority wants (Score:4, Interesting)
Climate change will render all of that moot. It is the one thing that not even bloviating halfwits can alter. You see, people are morons.
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second - no, the world itself will not end. What will end is the planets ability to support life as we know it due to man made climate change. And, before that happens, scarcity of resources will result in the collapse of most, if not all, societies leading to some really unpleasant scenarios.
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What they mostly want is a good job, reasonable pay, and the ability to afford a house. If you can give them that *and* stop climate change, they'd be on board.
There's a whole bunch of change that's obviously coming. That very directly means that jobs, pay and so houses depend on being ahead of that change. Solar is by far the cheapest way of generating electricity. Wind remains cheaper than any traditional alternative apart from some coal plants. Both of them are variable output sources which means that, in order to get a stable supply they have to be overbuilt with grid connections and more theoretical capacity than is actually needed. Both of them have zero inp
Re:This is what the majority wants (Score:5, Informative)
And the majority voted for this administration. So this is literally what the majority of Americans want.
Not quite. Trump won the 2024 United States presidential election [wikipedia.org] with 49.8% of the votes to Harris 48.3% -- only a 1.5% margin -- with only a 64.1% turnout, meaning about 1/3 of eligible voters didn't even vote. So while he won by a very, very narrow majority of the votes, he didn't win by a majority of eligible voters or Americans. Some people continue to love getting this bit very wrong.
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It's not so cut and dry, Republicans saw a like a 6 point swing, absolutely massive across the board, historic even, and they still were only able to pull 1.5%
The fact American's are so fickle and susceptible to media influence cuts both ways. These are also Trump numbers and it's undeniable at this point is a generational candidate, they don't have another one just ready to go and his massive influence may work against finding another candidate. All the previous heir apparently like DeSantis got cooked b
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Republicans seem to be doing this - yes they are doing it by lying - but they seem to be connecting better to Joe Sixpack than the Democrats.
I have to conclude that my impression of Joe Sixpack as being a down to earth, but fundamentally principled guy, was naive.
Electricity will become like housing (Score:3, Interesting)
So we can't physically build any more gas turbines because the companies that make them don't have any more capacity to make more.
It's too expensive for them to build more capacity given the risk of trump not getting a third term. Without a third term of trump they won't have the backing they need to make a profit if they expand.
Meanwhile Donald Trump and the Republican party have basically put the kibosh on all wind and solar. Wind and solar is so profitable that they couldn't do it just by cutting subsidies so they just started denying them the right to build new installations. Real free market capitalists over there...
If this keeps up and it will the price of electricity is going to be driven up by AI without any chance of new capacity. And no we are not going to build nuclear power plants to fix that. Even if we ignore all the safety regulations again nobody's going to risk building a plant without safety regulations without assurances that Trump is getting a third term and that's not guaranteed yet. And it's too expensive to build a safe nuclear power plant so without the government basically paying for it like they do in France nobody really does that.
At some point something has to give and it's not going to be the AI data center is owned by multi-billionaires. You're going to have to start rationing electricity like they did in Soviet Union and like they do in Venezuela.
Re:Electricity will become like housing (Score:5, Informative)
US gas-fired turbine wait times as much as seven years; costs up sharply [spglobal.com]
Companies like Mitsubishi are looking to expand production [datacenterdynamics.com] but that is also not exactly a fast process
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There is demand for gas turbines outside of America but the demand keeps going down because wind and solar are just so cheap comparatively.
In America political pressure keeps demand for them relatively high but the problem is communities are tired of paying for the health problems caused by burning all th
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Yeah MHI says as much in the article, talking about doing the expansion as lean as possible since demand could dry up in short order. I think as much politically with how long these things take to build that a lot of the current in place orders are built on the assumption of continued AI driven growth. The whole thing hinges on the line continuing to go up.
It's Disco Stu business logic; "Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976, if these trends continue...AY!" [youtube.com]
Yeah right n
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The Republican party simply does not have another viable candidate besides Trump. It remains to be seen whether he will be in good enough Health to run for a third term. There's also a chance to public maybe unwilling to give him a third term although I think it's safe to say the supreme Court will allow it.
The US Constitution is clear that a President cannot be elected to a third term. If Trump manages to serve a third term, then it would be through some other method than being elected to the office. You're saying the Supreme Court would allow that?
Yes, I have heard of some back-door ways he might get into office a third time, like running on a ticket as the Vice President, and then having the elected President resign in Trump's favor. Or being elected Speaker and then having the President and Vice President
If he's even able to stand (Score:2, Troll)
The supreme Court will rubber stamp it. I suspect that they're just going to say that will of the people and ignore the Constitution or something and make the excuse to the terms aren't consecutive.
No back door needed when the supreme Court is this corrupt. Go actually read the rulings that overturned roe v Wade or that struck down the student loan debt forgiveness. They are absol
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Here's a quote from the 22nd Amendment:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once.
Nothing about (non-)consecutive terms.
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The Republicans in Congress are floating the idea of a new amendment to make the consecutive term the new standard but that's what they say now.
We can't forget that Republicans no longer care about rules and norms and laws, only to the extent that they can use them against liberals who do care about those things. There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
If Trump is alive 2027 and Trump wants to go for a 3rd they wil
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Yup and that's just the thing, institutions are not self enforcing so they only work if enough folks believe in the rules to begin with.
When evaluating how Trump is going to act in any case you can't say "well, the law says this" because he and his people don't care about rules.
Six members of the supreme Court (Score:2)
If Trump is physically fit to run he gets to run and Americans will probably put him back in the white house for a third term. Propaganda will get him the 47% and voter suppression will make up the difference.
If the left wing would get off their asses and stop whining about centrists long enough to do something about voting rights that wouldn't be a problem.
But it's hard to do tha
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It's not as much the Democrats fault as people think. The public is gullible enough to fall for propaganda and the wealthy flood the zone with it and you only need closer to 50% to be fooled all the time. If you can protect voting it gets much harder to fool 51% but it will not be impossible to get good enough to fool a slight majority all the time. At which point you should have the power to start culling the smarter people.
Trump shot down everybody eventually, with the help of the media. He is Teflon and
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Logic means nothing to SCOTUS anymore. It's like Thomas has said forever, they decide interpretation solely by their power without any restrictions like logic or math or science... We are on the edge of eliminating the court anyhow. If Trump didn't fear a murderous mob he'd have completely ignored the courts long ago; he just mocks, games and corrupts them as much as he can get away with.... and undermines the system which extends what is tolerated.
It's a fallacy to claim something is there by it's specifi
Re: If he's even able to stand (Score:1)
What's constitutional is whatever the supremes say it is. Making the president immune from prosecution for official acts isn't in the constitution either.
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I don't say this to offend you, honestly, but I don't think that the US Supreme Court is familiar territory for you. Sometimes in decisions they go back very far to show historical precedent, or the absence thereof. Dobbs was not even close to being the first modern decision that cited the 17th century. Though, I don't know what witchfinder you're talking about. The decision refers to the work of four ke
Re: Electricity will become like housing (Score:2)
Yes the Constitution states the term limits of the President. However, the Constitution is not some caped superhero that swoops out of the sky and ensures that the provisions contained in the Constitution are carried out. We the People put elected officials in charge of carrying out those provisions. If said officials decide that the Constitution is only a suggestion or a set of guidelines and ignore the provisions contained therein, then it is a meaningless piece of really old paper.
In the ancient Roman R
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The Republican party simply does not have another viable candidate besides Trump.
What are you smoking? Could you share?
I've been following the politics some and it appears Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth are popular. That can explain why Trump asks these men to appear in the background when he has important things to say to the public. It's also a good look to have the VPOTUS, SecDef, and SecState to appear when anything involving international issues come up as they all have an important role to play in international relations.
Then we can look to popular Republican candidates for POTUS in
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The turbines themselves are easily built. We have the manufacturing capacity, as do foreign manufacturers.
What we don't have is the (cheap) natural gas. My state, arguably one of the most screaming lunatic greenies of the bunch, recently passed a citizen's initiative against a moratorium on gas cooking/heating. On the surface, a nod to capping carbon emissions. But in actuality, an effort backed by our major private utility to reserve natural gas for its turbines. So they could sell the same energy to the
Um, no they're not (Score:3)
And we absolutely do not have the manufacturing capacity. We have reached our limit on the number of gas turbines that can be built.
I guess you could make the argument that the rest of the world has more capacity but we
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You need heavy manufacturing capacity for that.
We have it. We've had it for decades. Gas turbines aren't really new technology. They have been built for many decades, to pretty much the same blueprints.
States are banning the use because burning all that natural gas causes pollution
Yes and no. States don't want YOU (i.e. the little people) burning it. But it's fine for the utilities to do so. And then sell you the electricity. Or rather sell it to the data centers.
Again no we really don't (Score:2)
Just because you do not like reality does not make reality go away. This is a common problem with the right wing where you insist things that aren't real or real because you want them to be real.
Reality always wins in the end. And the right wing always loses with the leopards eating their faces...
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They have already sold every turbine they can manufacture for the next 5 years.
That's not unusual for major capital equipment. Substation transformers take about that long to order as well.
Just because you do not like reality does not make reality go away.
I used to work in the utility business as an engineer. I'd venture a guess that I've got a much better handle on reality than you.
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There are some states especially in the Northeast where natural gas is extraordinarily expensive and has to be shipped in LNG form to local ports because of opposition to expanding supply pipelines. In most of the rest of the country, however, natural gas is cheaper or nearly so than it has been for about twenty years now, down from peak prices by at least a factor of five, partly due to fracking and partly due to producers getting very good at it.
Across most of the country natural gas is replacing coal fo
It was all good until AI (Score:4, Insightful)
And suddenly they needed huge quantities of energy that they didn't need before. Oops, didn't see that one coming.
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And suddenly they needed huge quantities of energy that they didn't need before. Oops, didn't see that one coming.
Nah. Data centers were never low-energy. If they could do it before, they still can. It’s just a scaling problem. My guess is that either A. someone else did it first so they can’t be the first, B. they are trying to placate the current political administration instead of the last one, or C. they decided it would be more expensive than what they wanted to spend, i.e. “We did it, Patrick! We durably saved the world!”
From "Don't be evil" to.. (Score:3)
Well done, hope everyone still working for them are very proud of themselves and all they're doing.
Link to the CEO's words: (Score:2)
"Today, I'm proud to announce that we intend to be the first major company to operate carbon free -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,"
https://youtu.be/oPz-6eCXpCo?t=143
i did the same (Score:1)
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I constantly reuse my plastic bags. On St Croix, where I often frequent, they even charge a fee for plastic bags at stores. We just save them and reuse them until they finally wear out. We even save the stronger ones that we get from Kroger delivery, and bring them with us for reuse. They are light, and make good filler in the suitcases anyway.
I have 2 EVs at home, and have personally been fully EV since 2011. I didn't do it because of the environment, I did it because they drive better, they are nice
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The plastic grocery bags here in the US are so enshittified that they often won't last the trip home without tearing. So they double-bag them, then when you get home you've got a bunch of not quite torn bags, that are also too small to be useful for anything. I avoid that by leaving cloth bags in my car so that I will always have some, and I can carry them back to my car on my arms confidently, instead of having to take then in the cart up and back. In other words, I don't use cloth bags to save the environ
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Just so you know, St Croix is part of the US. That's why it's called the "US Virgin Islands". :)
But I hear you. Different places have different quality bags. The Kroger delivery ones are super thick. You can put a 20pk of 16oz drinks in it and it will survive fine. Those are our go-to for reuse. The ones on island are pretty thick too, but that's also because they're built to last since they're sold rather than given away as a default.
EVs are an acquired taste for sure. I don't blame anyone for not h
Scale (Score:5, Interesting)
It's data centres. For the past decade and even through the pandemic-era surge in data centre demand the hyperscale providers have been pushing for 100% renewable energy solutions. That changed last year with the ramp-up of AI demand. In the US the utility providers are really struggling to provide anywhere near the power that is being requested. I've got campuses that will only get 10-20MW in the next year and then have to wait 3+ years for any additional capacity and I wont be at all surprised if any dates I have now will slip as they get closer. There is literally NO POWER.
The fastest and easiest way to lots of cheap power is gas. There are so many projects going on right now where a provider has bought huge tracts of land in Texas, and is simultaneously building a gas power plant and a data centre campus capable of 200+MW of IT load. And if you build the redundancy into your gas plant you can save $100s of millions on diesel generators.
"But, but solar is cheaper and clean, etc" Yes, but it doesn't work at night. So you need batteries. Lots of expensive batteries. Imagine the amount of batteries you'd need to provide 200MW of power for 8+ hours. It doesn't work.
"But then just grid tie the solar!" Sounds good. But for that you need a power supply and use agreement with a utility and that takes time and money and most utilities will want to own/operate the generation facility. Building the power transmission infrastructure to your 500ac campus in BFE Texas is not a cheap walk-in-the-park either. Half of all my delays are just getting the power *to* the site.
That is why ALL of these companies are silently backing away from their climate pledges. For the record, my company has not and will not back away from our climate pledges. We've been 100% renewable for years and will continue to be.
wind (Score:2)
The wind direction changed.
The pledge (Score:2)
was made before AI, now that they are realizing that an AI energy increase to the energy sustainability plan would make costs go through the roof, they are going back on that pledge.
Not surprising (Score:2)
net-zero is nonsenst - should be like 90% down (Score:2)
We do not need to go net-zero - cost of it is astronomical.
But we should be able to reduce CO2 by 80 maybe even 90%.
There should be CO2 tax like EU ETS that is collected and the redistributed among all people as we all are impacted...
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Throw it out back on the "Don't Be Evil" Pledge (Score:2)