Hoi,
The reason why people sign up to 100% green energy is not because THEY want
certifiably 100% energy that is green from a wire, they want to see the
amount of CO2 that is produced reduced. So I call bullshit to your argument
because the effect of buying 100% green energy is that the total amount of
CO2 is reduced. That is what it is about.
The same is true for your argument about arguments about "green in
manufacture", the point is to be disruptive. Less CO2 produced is better
you cannot not buy into certifiable "green in manufacture", it is an
argument that does not sell energy contracts so it is just words.
Practically it is does make no difference. The same is true for bying CO2
certificates; they are a swindle because all too often there is a promise
of less CO2 production but an accounting finds that it is empty words; it
did not happen.
When the WMF is asked for its carbon footprint, it can buy into green
energy and prevent the building from coal or oil/gas based electricity
stations somewhere if it wants to offset it. It is disrupting current
energy practices. They need to be disrupted anyway. One argument that you
did not mention is that by connecting all the energy grids in the USA and
producing based on country wide demand the biggest drop in CO2 production
would be created. This argument is not heard because it is part of the all
too narrow focus on keeping the status quo and seeking the arguments that
fit. This one does not fit at all, does need a huge investment and is
negative financially for the current producers of energy.
The WMF has an endowment and it is a polluter. It can make a difference if
it chooses to. When it invests in the traditional stuff, it will just
finance what traditionally gets money and it is not an instrument for
change, for the better.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 12 January 2017 at 23:00, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com> wrote:
It is actually very hard to measure carbon footprint
because there are so
many factors to take into account.
I realise people can sign up to X% renewable suppliers, but unless that
supplier has dedicated power lines to your premises, you aren’t getting X%
renewable power. Most of us get our power from a common grid. Because there
is electricity loss in transmission along the wires, the electricity that
comes into your premises is mostly likely to be generated by a nearby
generator (because that’s less wasteful), which might be 100% dirty coal.
Who you pay and who delivers are highly de-coupled in the world of
electricity. What you pay for with X% renewable is for increased renewable
power somewhere into the grid (which is a good thing, of course, but
doesn’t make your personal use carbon-neutral).
It’s like owing an electric car; wow, that’s green, isn’t it? But if you
recharge from a “dirty” supply of electricity, it’s not green at all,
you’ve just swapped petrol for coal.
This is why massive server farms are sometimes situated near green power
sources, so they can directly use green power and sell their services on
that basis. But most servers and most users are supplied by a grid, which
in most countries are not very green at all.
The other thing that has to be considered is the embedded carbon costs of
anything manufactured. A lot of “green-in-use” things are not
“green-in-manufacture”. Which leads to a number of ironies. When someone
knocks down an old building to build a new “10-star green rated” (or
similar claims) building, actually most cradle-to-grave studies will
suggest that it is more “green” to refurbish the existing building because
of carbon costs associated with the constructions and embedded in the
building materials used in the construction and in the demolition and
disposal of the original building. However, people (owners, architects,
construction companies, city planners) want to build new buildings and not
refurb old ones, so we choose to overlook embedded carbon costs in favour
of operational carbon costs. We have the same situation with our existing
non-green power plants, there is a huge embedded cost in replacing them
with a green power plant so we are probably “greener” to continue to use
them for their effective working life than to replace them, as
contradictory as it sounds.
In relation to Wikipedia, you could turn the question around and ask “how
much less carbon would be produced if Wikipedia didn’t exist”, which is a
different question again because it asks how would we live our lives
differently. If there was no Wikipedia, would its staff, readers and
contributors all spend more time growing organic vegetables in their own
backyards or would they spend their time on Facebook and YouTube or …
instead? If Wikipedia didn’t exist and all people did instead was spend
the same amount of time Googling and reading web pages, arguably there is
no carbon cost to Wikipedia as we would have the same embedded and
operational costs in alternative activities. For something like the
Internet, we probably should ask the cost of it as a whole because the
specifics of what people actually do on the Internet probably doesn’t make
a great difference (view porn, watch cat videos, sway the presidential
election), it’s all just bits down the wire between a bunch of computers
and that’s where the carbon costs are.
Kerry, feeling a bit nihilistic today
*From:* Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-
bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *john cummings
*Sent:* Friday, 13 January 2017 12:22 AM
*To:* Research into Wikimedia content and communities <
wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
*Subject:* Re: [Wiki-research-l] Global footprint for carbon
This is super interesting, I wish I knew more about renewable energy
suppliers in the US so I could offer something constructive, in the UK you
can simply switch your energy supplier to a 100% renewables company e.g
Ecotricity and your web hosting company that uses the same.
On 12 January 2017 at 14:34, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Gerard Meijssen, 12/01/2017 07:48:
Has anyone ever calculated what the footprint of Wikipedia is in terms
of the production of carbondioxide?
WMF is no longer as transparent as it used to be about which servers are
used etc., but someone tried some calculations:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Environmental_
impact#Calculating_Wikimedia.27s_energy_use
Nemo
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