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   Gerry McGovern (gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green)'s status on Thursday, 06-Jun-2024 00:40:30 JST Gerry McGovern

   "We have forecasted that power demand from data centers is going to nearly quadruple over the next 15 years. … The data centers are certainly the largest power users of any industry, and they represent about 20% of our electricity sales in Virginia.
   Over the next 15 years we're going to be building a lot of new power plants in Virginia, and a lot of new electric transmission infrastructure."

   https://www.wmra.org/2024-06-04/ghosts-in-the-machine-data-centers-in-our-region

   • Embed this notice
     Tom Ritchford (tomswirly@toot.community)'s status on Thursday, 06-Jun-2024 05:30:00 JST Tom Ritchford

     in reply to

     • Peter Brown

     @peterbrown @gerrymcgovern In fact, it's a huge problem.

     We needed to decarbonize our society by 90% in less than 10 years to avoid climate disaster. We won't hit that target, not even close.

     Every watt of additional power that we pile on makes that target even further away.

     Imagine CO2 was a monetary debt. We are in a huge amount of debt; every year we go further into debt.

     Now people are proposing spending even more CO2/debt on data centers.

     1/

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 06-Jun-2024 05:30:00 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Tom Ritchford
     I share your concern
     ISTM that the greatest challenge is to use the growing demand towards growing renewables capacity even faster, so that it quickly attracts demand that currently goes to non-renewables.
     that's not a given, and there's a significant risk for the growth in demand to drive increase in non-renewables, but the economics of renewables are so good that I wouldn't rule out their taking over either, especially if (and that's a big if) public policies shift the economic incentives the right way
   • Embed this notice
     Peter Brown (peterbrown@mastodon.scot)'s status on Thursday, 06-Jun-2024 05:30:01 JST Peter Brown

     in reply to

     @gerrymcgovern I don’t see that as necessarily a problem provided the electricity generation is by renewables