Eco-friendliness: Plant trees or build nukes?
We recently became the first UK Web host to be Carbon Neutral accredited, but does it actually make a real difference? In fact, are we going about all this wholesome planet-saving the right way at all? As an aside, our arch-rivals over at RackSpace claimed they were the first UK Web host to be carbon neutral on the 10th October, but I have a certificate stuck to the wall above my desk that says otherwise.
Admittedly, we didn’t shout about it until late October since our PR machine is considerably less “fanatical” than RackSpace’s, but enough of the sniping. 
Is this “carbon neutral” craze just a PR thing, or is there merit in it? Well, for most companies it is mainly just about offsetting their effective carbon usage. In our case we are funding a project called Plan Vivo to plant trees in Uganda, so for every tonne of carbon (in the form of CO
Our real focus is not offsetting, but rather a commitment to energy efficiency, and that primarily comes from our UK-leading development of virtual dedicated server technology. Despite the conceptual proof that computations can be done with zero power (one of Richard Feynman’s if memory serves), modern computers are hungry beasties. Even the new Sun Fire X2100 boxes, much vaunted for their eco-friendlieness, use around 80 watts when idling, so 100 watts when you factor in the cooling requirements. While many online apps need they own dedicated machine, they do not need a whole physical server and could just as well be on one of our Miniserver™ virtual machines burning just 10 watts. The majority of servers idle most the time, so if server virtualisation was widely adopted the potential power saving could be enormous – maybe hundreds of megawatts.
Sadly though, when you take a step back even things like that start to pale into insignificance. I read recently that even if we shut down all power generation in the UK, China’s current rate of building power stations would have filled the gap within 3 years. In fact, almost all popular greenhouse-gas fighting measures are at best rather feeble.
Personally I think we are taking utterly the wrong approach, again treating the symptoms and not finding a cure. What we should be doing is stopping burning fossil fuels and start taking nuclear power seriously again; modern day fission reactors are very safe and very efficient, and we should stop acting like frightened children every time someone dares say the “N” word. If having to cordon-off a few square miles of some scrub-land to dump the fission-waste is still too much for you to stomach, then fine – lets really stop messing about and start putting some serious money into the thing that will probably by the ultimate savior of our environment: Nuclear fusion.
The Joint European Torus (JET, see left) has already managed to sustain a reaction, proving at least part of the theory of a Tokamak reactor, and the new ITER (planned to be operational in in 2015) should be able to sustain a continuous 500 Megawatt output. We really do seem to have fusion almost within our grasp, so why are we faffing about building ugly, inefficient wind turbines and planting trees to replace the million-year-old dead sea-critters we are burning when focusing on technology can give us a source of almost unlimited, clean power, perhaps within three decades?
Hi Kate,
You wrote “… so why are we faffing about building ugly, inefficient wind turbines …”
Because we will be suffering energy price-hikes and shortages long before Fusion Reactors come on-line and generate enough useful power.
BTW It was nice chatting to you at the LinuxExpo a few months back.
Peter
http://www.rarelist.co.uk (http://www.rarelist.co.uk)
Hi Peter,
Yes you are right, and I realise that I took a somewhat aggressive and impractical stance there since, as you say, we need to address the short term issues (which is why Memset offsets its Carbon production by planting trees!). I like to try and be a little contentious though – debate is healthy afterall
My personal frustration is that, at a political level, I feel nuclear power takes far too much of a back seat as a viable green energy source but that does seem to be changing, if slowly.
Kate.
Hi Kate,
I feel the same frustration as you but for slightly different reasons. It seems to me that too much effort is being used to maintain fossil-based energy systems for as long as possible (even starting wars) when we should be plowing all our effort in to renewable and Fusion energy before its too late.
Peter
http://www.rarelist.co.uk
http://www.eventprompt.co.uk
I wrestle with the energy issue.
Wind power, the way it is realised with current technology does pollute. The visual and aural intrusion into the landscape is really horrible. Of course people living in a city 200 miles away don’t really care about that. Or they don’t until their new holiday cottage looks like having one of these Triffid like erections next door.
I wonder if we could come up with some kind of sub-surface tidal energy generator that did not destroy the seascape, is not a menace to either sea creatures or those who travel upon the sea. We have heard a lot about the potential for this technology, but little has been delivered, as far as I know, apart from the Rance barrier, which was agfes ago and not quite the same thing.
As far as Nuclear Fission goes, I must admit to being totally confused. My technology training tells me that this is an efficient solution to a serious problem. However, my clansmen live with the legacy of Dounray in Caithness. What do I mean? Well visit the website – http://www.ukaea.org.uk/sites/dounreay_site.htm and you will see a lot of spin about pioneering nuclear clean up and clearing up the mess by 2033. Really? The last I heard was that they have dumped waste down a hole that is going to have to be watched for 350 years! I kinow Capability Brown built gardens that would take 350 years to mature, but do we have that degree of certainty anymore?
As luck would have it, the place in England, as opposed to Scotland, where I have a base is in Kent, its been declared ‘an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’. Really, looking out of my bedroom window I see 31 different power poles and wireless broadcast sites. This is a disgraceful intrusion opon a special landscape. Andf it gets worse, I walk across the valley and up the otherside to look down on one of England’s great views, across Romney Marsh to Dungeness. And what do I see, hundreds of hideous pylons marching across the Marsh, they are ugly and totally incongruous. I can just about put up with the power station at Dungeness, but those pylons -more pollution.
So please, as well as working on fusion can we devote some research to finding less visually polluting ways of moving electrical power and communications signals around the place. It is possible, we have a major limb of the natural gas reticulation network running through our valley, even if you examine aerial photographs you barely see any evidence of its existance.
If we are going to embrace a new technology lets plan to do it properly, and take account of all forms of pollution, not just the ones we measure.
I agree, treating the cause of our problems is very important, but I don’t think our cause is just use of fossil fuel energy.
At a more basic level we are not taking account of the wholistic limits that exist on this planet, and switching from one fuel source to another without understanding how our consumption and resource use relate to the environment in general, then we are still going to have a problem!
Nathan
Free newsletter shows you how to prevent global warming from getting worse.
Hi Nathan,
Admittedly there are indeed other potential issues. For exaple, one could argue that as all energy we use ends up as atmospheric heat even if we stopped all greehouse gas production we would warm up the planet directly, and that with our exponential increase in energy use that could become problematic.
We already see that effect with with cities which tend to be a degree or two warmer than ambient. However, the effect of heat generation is miniscule compared to the the sun’s warming of up to 1KW/square metre on a sunny day!
However, most such other issues are somewhat less pressing than the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, and over the next century that probably should be our focus. Even then, there are indeed areas outside fossil fuel consumption that generate greenhouse gas, most notably the practice of putting organic waste in landfill sites, which then degrade anaerobically (rot) and generate methane.
It is true there are many ways to help reduce global warming that are not related to fossil fuel consumption. My cousin recently shared some information with me about the fact that consuming beef actually contributes a lot to global warming because of all the methane that the cows produce.
With all this sort of info I know people often seem to feel overwhelmed trying to figure out how to help prevent global warming. The simplest way to think about it seems to me to realize that consuming less almost always helps!
Nathan
Learn three ways to help prevent global warming on your vacations by reducing your carbon emissions.
Methane is 21 times more potent as a greenhouse gas, hence the issue.
We recently switched our carbon offsetting to a methane capture project in Germany, in fact (which captures methane from landfill sites).
As for cows though, I for one don’t intend to stop eating beef!
In terms of people getting overwhelmed with information I do agree. There is, in general, one very simple way that people can reduce their carbon footprint though, and that is to use the car less; the damaging effect of burning fossil fuels directly to power transport is massive compared to almost every other form of personal environmental impact.
Algal biofuel for the mid term.
Nuclear for the short term. U.ranium for 50-100 years then Thorium fission afterwards or (ugh) breeder reacotrs
Fusion long term. Hydrogen fuson is too hard. Boron-Hydrogen ala the Bussard scheme if it can be scaled will be best. ITER is a long shot.
We need to increase our overall energy resources to continue growing as a population and society.
Tom
US
Carbon Neutrality, Offsetting…and especially planting trees to offset is a total farce and to answer your question on whether this is a PR thing…well yes it is.
How long do you think its going to take a sapling to grow and absorb the CO2 you talk about. The answer is years and years. I don’t know what your footprint is, but say you offset 50,000 tonnes of CO2 a year by planting trees, those trees are not going to ‘hoover up’ that amount of carbon in 1 year…..its going to take many, many years for that while at the same time you continue to emit CO2 at the same or even greater levels.
I applaud your general approach to environmental matters here – its just that becoming carbon neutral through offsetting just doesn’t work. We need carbon to stay stored in the ground not released into the active system. Offsetting projects don’t actually reduce the amount of carbon being released into the active system.
That is a little short-sighted, since until we realise that the “N” word is not something to be scared of we will still carry on burning fossil fuels to make power. In the interim, we still need to use electricity, so rather than doing nothing about it, surely it is better to make donations-in-kind that effectively offset the damage being done?
To put it another way, if we were not spending money to sponsor a methane capture project in the Rhur (we don’t plant trees anymore – too hard to quantity – instead we capture methane which is 21 times more potent as a green house gas as CO2), then that project would be reduced and more methane would be escaping.
We really do negate the effects of our power usage 100%. I agree that it is not a long term solution, but while government tip-toes around nuclear there is no viable alternative at this time.