this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
439 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
71415 readers
2972 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"But through the lens of Wilson’s optical gas imaging camera, a scientific instrument that is used within the oil and gas industry and by regulators to detect methane emissions, the pollution becomes readily apparent. Huge, billowing plumes of pollution, including large volumes of unburned methane, rise into the atmosphere and drift off-site."
Have you read the article at all?
I did read that now. But why would it release methane at all? They are cooling computers. Methane is a terrible heat conducting gas last I checked.
Direct quote from the article:
Looks like it's not just cooling that they're doing there. The link in the quote leads to an article describing the data centre's new turbines, specifically referring to them as methane gas turbines.
I skimmed that article briefly and I don't think it points out the mechanism by which these turbines work - if it does, I must've missed it. I did however see a line that said the turbines also release formaldehyde during operation.
Methane in this case seems to me to either be a byproduct of power generation or unused fuel somehow leaking from the system. I have no clue how gas turbines work, so I'm talking out of my ass here. In any case this seems to be the source of the methane emissions.
Methane is what the majority of natural gas is made up of, and if your generator isn't made to be very efficient (like a real power station is), you'll lose some of your fuel unburnt into the atmosphere.
Kinda like unburnt wood smoke vapour, which could have been burned in a higher quality wood burner, but just goes up the chimney in an open fire.
It's amazing to me that cloud computing is so profitable that they can run inefficient gas generators to power it.
People don't think about the internet being fossil fuel powered.
They’re running generators to power the data centre. Apparently they’re incredibly inefficient if they’re releasing methane