
Energy Idea for Mars Yields a Clue for Powering Data Centers - known
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/business/energy-environment/data-center-energy.html
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cjslep
It's been a while since I've seen the sly "natural gas is more
environmentally-minded" argument passed off without clarifying that it is
still a pollution source. Or at least burying/deemphasizing it.

I still remember an Areva VP at an ANS student conference around 2012
furiously pounding his fists repeating "Clean coal is not clean. Natural gas
is not clean."

The kicker is that the article buries the info pretty deep, and it isn't
exactly a fair comparison (citing Bloom's unverifiable response vs hard data,
presumably):

 _> Bloom puts the emissions of its natural-gas cells in the range of 679 to
833 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, while coal plants released
2,252 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in the second quarter of this
year_

I can put that number as "still definitely dirty" and would propose that
pushing this form of energy production is not exactly "environmentally minded"
given the state of renewables.

Cutting in half is just not good enough, in the world of big powerplants.

Edit: For the small powerplant world, I remain hopeful for traditional
batteries, Small Reactors, or Reactor Batteries.

~~~
Retric
30% (679/2252) to 37% (833/2252) is much better than half. Creating 1/3 the
carbon and far fewer of many other pollutants is a massive improvement, it's
like comparing a 20 MPG car with a 60 MPG car.

The great thing about gas turbines is they are easy to turn off and on which
helps adoption of cleaner but intermittent energy sources. Coal/Nuclear on the
other hand is such as base-load power which is very much a bad thing. If you
accept say 20% natural gas you can hit 80% renewable power with very little
storage. Even 5% allows for a drastic reduction in the need for storage.

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joezydeco
Man, that's a hell of a long pivot for Bloom.

