Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

YYeGoblynQueenne about 5 hours ago 84 commentsRead Article on theguardian.com

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Discussion (84 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

defrost•about 4 hours ago

In related current news:

Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2026/07/11/irish-datacen...

  The latest figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that giant server farms now account for nearly a quarter of the country's metered electricity consumption.

  Their share rose to 23 percent in 2025 after passing 20 percent in 2023 and 14 percent in 2021 – up from just 5 percent way back in 2015.

Luckily this will all be offset by the pot of gold at the end of the AI rainbow.

Muromec•about 4 hours ago

23 percent is a bit fucked actually

amarcheschi•about 3 hours ago

One more datacenter bro one more datacenter bro please I swear bro one more datacenter and everything will be OK please bro

simianwords•about 3 hours ago

The optimal number of data centers is just enough so that my personal use is covered. No more. No less. Screw other people’s needs and demands because I know better.

Pluralism? What’s that?

fallingbananna•about 2 hours ago

I know that market, and people for that matter don't care, but the environmentalist in me questions the word "needs" in the context of using AI.

mike_hock•about 1 hour ago

It literally has only downsides except some convenience for people who don't want to think and don't want to work.

altern8•about 1 hour ago

Not to worry.

There are laws in the EU that will save the planet, like drinking from soggy paper straws instead of normal ones and requiring caps stay attached in plastic bottles.

And just to make sure, at least in Poland they now charge you $0.10 if you buy anything plastic until you bring it back to the grocery store empty.

We are safe.

garganzol•about 4 hours ago

For a context: France relies heavily on automotive transport, plus it's a home to enormous agricultural sector, tractors are literally everywhere in the country during the summer. To a certain degree, structurally it resembles USA a lot.

timschmidt•about 3 hours ago

However they also quite famously rely on a majority of nuclear power for their electric grid. Great for France, but that makes them an already-low carbon emitter compared to many others and an ungenerous comparison.

cold_pizz4•about 4 hours ago

We don't really need the French on the other hand, how could we live without AI?

JodieBenitez•about 3 hours ago

Yann Le Cun enters the chat...

spicyusername•about 2 hours ago

Pretty small if you consider the value they provide, honestly.

And they'll ride the transition to green energy for "free".

pebble•about 2 hours ago

Is this value in the room with us?

baggy_trough•about 1 hour ago

Do you know what site you're on?

runarberg•35 minutes ago

AI produces way more harm then value.

Muromec•about 4 hours ago

But... Datacenters don't burn anything, right? Powerplants do and we try to switch all the transport and heating and whatever to be electric.

So the answer is to build the damb nuclear power and a lot of it and price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere

scottcha•about 2 hours ago

They do have a growing amount of Scope 1 emissions (emissions from their on site sources) which originally was primarily on site diesel but due to grid interconnect delays have been growing number of on site gas turbines.

This certainly wouldn’t be necessary with adequate generation and transmission capacity.

black_puppydog•about 3 hours ago

> price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere

This is the only relevant bit actually. The rest will follow from there. And in principle, at least in Europe, we already have some mechanisms to do this. We'd "just" have to up the prices.

BUT of course with the right wing on the advance, and with them having identified basic physics (i.e. climate change) as a culture war terrain, this keeps being watered down... Oh well... This is why we can't have nice things... like a future...

59percentmore•about 3 hours ago

*raise the prices

simianwords•about 2 hours ago

The left wing version of climate conspiracy is that climate change will end humanity itself. This is not based on science.

Often repeated everywhere as a trump card to get what they want - crush technological and economic progress.

amazingamazing•about 2 hours ago

legality of the datacenters aside, I wonder why countries don't at least demand that they're totally carbon neutral or free. it's possible today. it's not like it's sci-fi.

fulafel•about 1 hour ago

USA is partly a petrostate so regulatory capture is a problem. Negative externalities are not paid for by the polluters. To mitigate the climate catastrophe it would be important to ramp down fossil fuel production in a big hurry.

In Europe this is covered by the emission trading system (EU ETS) and datacenters have to share the same shrinking emissions quota as other industries.

jezzamon•about 2 hours ago

I think most ways of obtaining carbon neutrality are a little bit BS, that's why.

An alternative is what Google is theoretically aiming for: being carbon-free. But they've already started using language describing it as a moonshot or idealistic goal so seems likely they'll abandon that

https://sustainability.google/reports/247-carbon-free-energy...

Laurel1234•about 1 hour ago

Carbon offsets are absolutely a scam but you could easily force data centers to provide their own renewable energy.

ChrisArchitect•about 2 hours ago

Microsoft latest report shows 25% emissions raised due to AI data centers

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870229

bamboozled•about 4 hours ago

Man, we are cooked, literally

timschmidt•about 3 hours ago

The solution is simple: require datacenters to overprovision solar panels and grid-scale batteries for themselves, and use that capacity to strengthen the grid and transition off of hydrocarbons.

ch4s3•about 3 hours ago

You can’t get a grid tie for those panels in most of the US right now. The process for connecting to the grid is done serially, and requires a large study for any new generation.

timschmidt•about 2 hours ago

No idea what you're talking about. My local utility lit up 100MW of solar over the last year alone. Everywhere I look is doing the same.

simgt•about 4 hours ago

No, wait! The increased productivity will lead to a decoupling of the economy from resources consumption and GHGs emission. Just one more data center.

bamboozled•about 3 hours ago

It’s such a tiring narrative isn’t it ?