Re: Environmental impact of Debian's AI usage

On Thu, 20 Aug 2026 at 20:00, Amin Bandali <[email protected]> wrote:

> Aigars Mahinovs wrote:
>
> > [... 16 lines elided]
> >
> > There are also lot of other, very much sustainable datacenters. Even the
> > big players, like Google invest a lot in developing the green grid in the
> > areas where their data centers are located -
> > https://datacenters.google/operating-sustainably/ . Sure, they are not
> yet
> > at 100%, but they are funding much more buildout of green energy and grid
> > than they are consuming.
> > [... 61 lines elided]
>
> "Google Admits It Missed Its Climate Goals — Again — Because of AI"
> https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/google-missed-climate-goals-ai
>
> From Google's own 2026 Environmental Report:
>
> | [...] reaching our climate moonshot is getting harder.  Growing our
> | data center footprint to build out the infrastructure needed to make
> | AI as helpful as possible to everyone requires energy and resources.
> | Like everyone in our industry, we experienced a surge in electricity
> | demand last year.  Our load grew 37% year-over-year -- a rate
> | tempered by our AI-stack efficiencies.  Long waits to connect to
> | the grid, fragmented markets, supply chain delays, and regulatory
> | bottlenecks continue to slow down new carbon-free energy from coming
> | online. We're working within energy systems that simply aren't clean
> | enough or flexible enough yet.



Yes, that is *exactly* what I wrote. Google is not 100% green in their data
center power sourcing, but they are investing *heavily* to bring up green
energy as fast as humanly possible. Without those investements, these green
energy systems would *not* have been financed or build. At the end of the
day, there is is far more green energy production there *because* Google is
using all it can get its hands on and is paying premium for it. Consumption
*creates* green energy.

Without AI *and* big players driving sustainability there would have been
*less* green energy on the grid today.

-- 
Best regards,
    Aigars Mahinovs