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 <[email protected]> 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-
> [email protected]] *On Behalf Of *john cummings
> *Sent:* Friday, 13 January 2017 12:22 AM
> *To:* Research into Wikimedia content and communities <
> [email protected]>
> *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) <[email protected]>
> 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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