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  • Hacker News
  • Carbon tax would shift the economics in favor of renewables.
    by coralreef
  • Permitted maximum of 10 grams(2 nickels) of CO2 per hour for every person in the US. 33 million tons * 2000 ton/pound * 454 g/pound / 365 days in a year / 24 hours in a day / 342.6M people in us = 9.984 grams
    by paulkrush
  • https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/direct-... Solar dc data centers are marginally cheaper. However right now the incentives are on buliding data centers (including power sources) the fastest. Despite this i would bet that you could build solar and batteries as fast as (or even faster) as building gas power plants, but the current governmend really likes to see fossils and setting the planet on fire.
    by thatsit
  • Don't these things get more efficient as they scale up? One big plant is probably better than 30 small ones.
    by synack
  • At least these sites (its more than Amazon) are being built near the energy source they will consume. Straight out of the ground into a turbine and then into the electron spinners.

    Also there's not a lot of anything where these sites are located (Near El Paso). The 4-5 Road Runners who live around there will probably appreciate the change.

    West Texas is basically Mad Max 2.

    by MarkWayneNewton
  • Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220350

    256 comments, 8 hours ago

    by fhdkweig
  • Some thoughts:

    * you can run data centres on grid electricity, which can come from mostly-renewable sources (in short, you need gas mainly as as an occasional backup).

    * running things off-grid is dumb, and they’re only doing it because they’re desperate to get their data centres up and running yesterday so that they’re the ones who get to the singularity first (or some approximation thereof).

    * the US electricity grid is f**d, mostly for the same reasons you can’t build any linear infrastructure in the United States - too many bodies hold veto powers and use any such infrastructure as an extortion opportunity.

    * The spike in gas-powered generation for data centres is essentially a US phenomenon. Globally, the vast majority of new electricity supply is coming from renewables.

    * in a sane world, Amazon and new large-scale data centre providers would face punitive carbon charges to incentivise them to switch to mostly renewables as soon as possible.

    by rgmerk
  • Let's add as well "SpaceX’s Terafab will rely on natural gas power plants, not Tesla solar panels" to the mix :o(

    https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/07/spacexs-terafab-will-rely-...

    by zepearl

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Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Country · Birbla