It should be highlighted that "carbon-neutral" is often used as a pure
marketing greenwashing gimmick.
If by "carbon-neutral", you mean "buying carbon offset", there’s a very
high chance that this means mostly bullshit.
I certainly don’t want sourcehut spending any money with
carbon-offsetters (most of them are scam in a way or another and
multiple studies have shown that the carbon offset market is, in fact,
giving incentives in the wrong directions, often resulting in "more
carbon" emissions and more money in dishonnest pockets).
On the other hands, if sourcehut is willing to invest in long-term
ad-hoc solutions to reduce e-waste, that’s always appreciated (I believe
that the IT is overthinking the energy problem and underestimating the
e-waste problem).
The recent announce to block the GO proxy is, according to my
interpretation, a really ecological move: instead of increasing the
available ressources (and thus computers), sourcehut take an opiniated
stance to preserve ressources.
PS: a good read on the subject of carbon offset:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/18/greshams-carbon-law/#papal-indulgences
--
Ploum - Lionel Dricot
Blog: https://www.ploum.net
Livres: https://ploum.net/livres.html
On 23-01-09 16:41:46, Lionel Dricot - Ploum wrote:
> It should be highlighted that "carbon-neutral" is often used as a pure> marketing greenwashing gimmick.
At least Hetzner has a page where they detail the electricity provenance
for some of their co-locations[1]. I am not sure how much of this is
just for marketing purposes, but I assume that it's somewhat valid.
/Marius
[1] https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/
Some random thoughts as someone who has dealt with these kind of
questions quite often in the past. Opinions are mine.
On 1/11/23 10:55, Marius Orcsik wrote:
> On 23-01-09 16:41:46, Lionel Dricot - Ploum wrote:>> It should be highlighted that "carbon-neutral" is often used as a pure>> marketing greenwashing gimmick.
+1
> At least Hetzner has a page where they detail the electricity provenance> for some of their co-locations[1]. I am not sure how much of this is> just for marketing purposes, but I assume that it's somewhat valid.
You were probably not implying this anyway, but Hetzner and Sourcehut is
not a fair comparison. We don't _own_ any DC, and we are a _very_ small
fish in terms of DC customers. We have no ability to influence our DC
operator(s) with regards to that.
In addition to that, anecdote from my last job: we had a pretty big
space in a big DC in Amsterdam (where SourceHut is about to move). Not
big enough to assert influence, but big enough to demand detailed
information. Their response was basically: a DC needs so much power that
you cannot get it without (at least also) the state-owned utility
on-board, and NL is pretty big on nuclear, so essentially no way around
having some nuclear in the mix.
Nuclear is of course actually pretty good with regards to CO2, but
that's of course a whole different story (just always be careful with
marketing labels!).
>> On the other hands, if sourcehut is willing to invest in long-term>> ad-hoc solutions to reduce e-waste, that’s always appreciated (I believe>> that the IT is overthinking the energy problem and underestimating the>> e-waste problem).
SourceHut is very much about sustainability, in various ways. Instead of
wasting green energy we simply try to _not_ waste any energy at all. We
run a pretty tight operation with regards to hardware, and we try to
keep things simple so that we can continue doing so. We do not throw
away servers until they are broken (see outage last week :/), we simply
cannot afford that.
We also try to help everyone else save energy and avoid ewaste by
promoting simple, low-bandwitdth, low-energy solutions on the client
side that can be used on older hardware without going crazy.
And I think the latter part is extremely important and potentially much
more impactful. For example, the amount of energy saved will scale with
the number of SourceHut users.
Cheers,
Conrad
Interesting discussion!
I'll chime and mention ungleich.ch - the only hosting I know that
promises actual 0% carbon footprint: their servers are passive cooled
(allowing adequate space and ventilation between racks) and use 100%
renewable energy (solar + hydro power).
https://ungleich.ch/u/projects/data-center-light
(I have no connection with them)
On Tue Jan 17, 2023 at 8:20 AM CST, Conrad Hoffmann wrote:
> We also try to help everyone else save energy and avoid ewaste by > promoting simple, low-bandwitdth, low-energy solutions on the client > side that can be used on older hardware without going crazy.>> And I think the latter part is extremely important and potentially much > more impactful. For example, the amount of energy saved will scale with > the number of SourceHut users.
Here here! Reducing energy usage is energy you never have to produce in the
first place, through sustainable means or not.
--
Tim