Re: Environmental impact of Debian's AI usage

On Thu, 20 Aug 2026 at 12:31, Simon Richter <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 8/20/26 6:30 PM, Aigars Mahinovs wrote:
>
> > It is a basic failure of logic. If you claim that "all dogs are black"
> > and I show you a white dog, then your argument is refuted. It does not
> > matter how many black dogs you can show. It does not matter that the few
> > very popular dogs that are all the time on TV are all black right now. I
> > hope that clarifies my line of argument.
>
> Yes, it means that your argument hinges on the hope that one day an AI
> provider will appear that is not destroying the environment.
>

It's not a "hope". I've linked to several such providers (for running you
AI inference payloads) already existing. A lot of datacenter providers in
Europe have been investing tons of money to be as green as possible for
many years. In part because it is actually cheaper and in part because
their customers have demanded this and are willing to pay more for green
compute. Now many of them are also providing GPU/AI compute options.


> That is theoretically possible, but so far has not happened at even the
> lowest level, where we accept the argument that paying the "renewables"
> rate for electricity is sufficient.
>
> Looking at the system as a whole, it is not: as long as nonrenewables
> are part of the same grid, any additional consumption will slow down the
> phase-out of nonrenewables -- even a datacenter running 100% on solar
> power is a net negative compared to a solar park of the same size
> without an attached consumer.


The grid buildout is far more compex than that. Energy companies that are
selling their customer the service of "100% green power" must ensure that
they can access sufficient green power generation capacity to be able to
provide that power. That is why, the higher demand there is for green
power, the higher is the pressure to provide such power and that pushed the
power companies to offer more and more incentives to new green power
developments - easier conditions for grid connections, new power lines and
substations to service solar parks and wind farms, higher feed-in tarrifs
in long term contracts. They also spend lots of money to upgrade the grid
and even contract out storage solutions so that they can fulfill their
"100% green power" contracts over wider time spans without being forced to
buy green power from other, neighbouring power companies (for a high price)
when there is, for example, a local wind slowdown in the night. A solar
park may not be build if there is not a consumer paying for it to be build.

It might sound counter-intuitive, but knowing more about how power
companies work - more consumption of green power is actually *good* for
buildout of more green power.

Economy is a complex system. Less consumption does not *always* mean better
for the environment. It does matter what is being consumed, when and how.
-- 
Best regards,
    Aigars Mahinovs