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Because AI and Crypto use so much electricity, what if a law was made that they had to power it with green energy?

Something on the lines of if your company facility is using over X amount of energy the majority of that has to be from a green source such as solar power. What would happen and is this feasible or am I totally thinking about this wrong

Edit: Good responses from everyone, my point in asking this was completely hypothetical, ignoring how hard it would be to implement a restriction. My own thoughts are that requiring the use of renewable energy for high electricity products could help spur the demand for it as now it’s a requirement. Of course companies would fight back, they want money

wewbull ,

Too much

T - double O. It’s a different word.

spongebue ,

Although “so much” would probably be a better fit anyway

therealjcdenton OP ,

I actually meant to say so instead of to, but it ended up working out

therealjcdenton OP ,

Fixed it

wewbull ,

Fair enough. I didn’t assume that because S & T are separated on the keyboard. Autocorrect can do weird stuff though.

mellowheat , (edited )

Generally speaking, pollution etc. is what economists call “external cost”. It should be penalized in some way, and the usual tool is taxation. It’s not just AI and Crypto that should pay for non-green energy, but everyone. It’s massively simpler that way too, and massively simpler = harder to circumvent and manipulate.

Simplicity’s bad side in this is that it’s difficult to slap a “correct price” on pollution. I.e. difficult to calculate how much actual damage they’re causing.

In actual world, thanks to rampant corporatism and other forms of fuckery, what we’re actually doing is subsidizing these fuels, which is of course completely ass-backwards. Just removing the subsidies would already help a lot, but actually penalizing those energy forms even just a little would be huge.

fruitycoder ,

Tax the greenhouse effect from the energy production, UBI to give people the money to afford what they need.

Trying to moralize every action on the market is a losing game though. I mean is this, the fediverse, worth the energy, are games, streaming, plant lights for your indoor plants?

It’s better to leave that to be individuals choices but make sure that the cost of the consequences are on the individual making the choices.

atrielienz ,

They would get around that with green washing the way a lot of companies are these days.

hglman ,

It all depends on the details, but power is a local produced good and is not something that can be escaped with laws that want to stop carbon emissions.

atrielienz ,

You say that like the laws we have right now against carbon emissions are working. I get what you’re saying but the laws probably need a re-write.

hglman ,

The current laws most certainly do not work. The fact that they don’t work is a willing failure on the part of the lawmakers.

zaine00 ,

I would say this is a dangerous slope to go down, since electricity is just electricity and IMO shouldn’t matter how it’s used as long as it’s payed for. It’s like the Net Neutrality situation where it shouldn’t matter how/what data is being transmitted through their network shouldn’t be discriminated for/against as long as it’s getting payed for.

Wiitigo ,

Something topic-adjacent is going down in BC, Canada right now.

We had a large timber company that branched out into crypto mining, augmented with solar. They made an absolute killing with this pivot, and wanted to expand. But need a metric fuck-ton of electricity. The local utility company denied them, citing their own issues with keeping up with demand in the near future. The timber company sued them, and I think it settled to this:

vancouversun.com/…/crypto-mining-company-loses-bi…

otl ,
@otl@hachyderm.io avatar

Super interesting story - thanks for sharing. Helps getting perspective:

> the data centres proposed by Conifex would have consumed 2.5 million
> megawatt-hours of electricity a year. That’s enough to power and heat
> more than 570,000 apartments

@Wiitigo @technology

tiny ,

Only proof of work crypto currencies require a ton of energy and the only way it’s profitable is by buying energy that would otherwise be wasted like methane flaring or excess renewable generation.

BananaTrifleViolin ,

Problem is energy from the grid is just energy. You’d get crypto companies buying “green” energy leaving the dirty enegery for everyone else. It’d be meaningless.

Ultimately crypto mining is a pointless industry. It benefits the miners financially but doesn’t produce anything meaningful, while expending huge amounts of energy and polluting the world as a result. It’s also an extremely energy wasteful way to run the infrastructure needed to maintain crypto currencies.

It wouldn’t matter if we were in some Nuclear fusion powered utopia with an abundance of energy. But we’re not - we’re in the middle of a climate crisis and desperately trying to move over to green energy. Growing demands for energy for crypto is countering that.

The real solution is to tax crypto mining - for example tax then on every kWh they use. Regions that entice crypto operations in are chasing fools gold - the costs out weight any local economic benefits of new data centres being built.

monobot ,

While being right about crypto being meaningless for some people (I guess there are people valuing hope in decentralized monetary system, even if it is misplaced.), you failed to mention that most of other industries are equally meaningless and good part of them are even harmful: fashion, fast food, industrial food, banking - in a way we have it, cars in current form(no need for this huge tanks)…

In comparation crypto is just wasteful and isn’t harming anyone.

uienia ,

It is a waste of energy either way which could have been used for actual useful purposes. So no, that is not a helpful solution.

gennygameshark ,

Force this unnecessary tech bullshit to invest in becoming self-sufficient through green energy

friendlymessage ,

Why not use that energy for something useful?

Usernameblankface ,
@Usernameblankface@lemmy.world avatar

If you mean their own green energy that they have to buy, set up, and maintain on their own, then sure. Force them off grid and bring enormous financial consequences if they pollute to make their energy

iopq ,

They would just set up in Kazakhstan or something. How does that help? There’s no way everyone in the world passes the same law

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Carbon offsets and credits, Wikipedia

BetaDoggo_ ,

There is no such thing as “green” energy, all energy has an environmental extraction/capture cost. Crypto has insane per user power usage, AI isn’t quite as bad but it’s still much higher than normal websearch. Both should be used sparingly in cases where they actually make sense.

smileyhead ,

Green energy is still not free energy.

Every amout of green energy a crypto miner uses is less green energy for everything else. You take 3% (country consumption) of capacity from the green grid, you must up at least 3% the production in existing coal plants.

Iamdanno ,

Or add 3% to the green grid

smileyhead ,

And spend it on calculating useless hashes instead of reducing coal mining?

ComradeKhoumrag ,
@ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pub avatar

Bankers are useless and a waste of resources. Replace them with computers

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