Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba makes 9 datacenter energy patents available
(2022/04/22)
- Reference: 1650649093
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/04/22/alibaba_patents/
- Source link:
Chinese tech giant Alibaba is joining a coalition pledging to freely distribute energy efficient and green technologies, and has made nine patents available as part of the deal.
The [1]patents Alibaba is giving to the Low Carbon Patent Pledge (LCPP) mostly involve parts of its own in-house "soaking server" liquid immersion cooling system developed in 2015 that Alibaba claims reduced its datacenter energy expenditure by 70 percent.
Two of the nine patents were unrelated: one limits hard drive power consumption, and another was designed to improve hardware utilization rates.
[2]
Founded on Earth Day last year by HPE, Microsoft, and Meta, the LCPP promotes low-carbon technologies. A total of 544 patents have been pledged from 10 companies, including Lenovo, UPS, and the three founding organizations.
[3]
[4]
"We believe technology innovation is a key driver in transitioning to the low-carbon circular economy of the future. As a pioneer and global technology leader, we are committed to taking broader social responsibility," Alibaba Group VP and chair of the Sustainability Steering Committee Dr Chen Long said.
Alibaba's green energy [5]plan targets a 2030 deadline for the company to become carbon neutral, which allows for the purchase of offsets to balance a company's carbon footprint. More ambitiously, Alibaba Cloud Group has pledged to run entirely on green energy by 2030.
[6]
Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said in the company's 2021 Carbon Neutrality Action Report that Alibaba Cloud's ambitions include eliminating scope 3 emissions, which include anything emitted by third-party companies in Alibaba Cloud's supply chain. Like Google's [7]carbon-free initiative , Alibaba Cloud's scope 3 goal will be extremely difficult to achieve.
[8]US defense department wants to fund open, interoperable 5G
[9]IBM files IP lawsuit against mainframe migration firm
[10]Alarm raised after Microsoft wins data-encoding patent
[11]Immersion-cooled colo is coming to Ohio... via a crypto-mining datacenter
The first part of Alibaba Cloud's ambitions center around five of the company's hyperscale datacenters, which are being outfit with various clean energy technologies. At its Hangzhou and Zhangbei datacenters, a specialized chilled liquid coolant has been employed, and the latter site also became the first facility of its type in China to use heat-pump technology.
Alibaba is also looking at carbon management tools that can enhance energy trading schemes, launched its own chip that it said has a 50 percent higher energy efficiency ratio compared with other models and is exploring emerging technologies like pumping water for energy storage when renewable sources underperform.
Investments in green energy and sustainable tech have been growing, but it's worth noting that not all reports present data that hasn't been spun to look better than it actually is. Last year, [12]Amazon said it saw a 19 percent increase in its carbon footprint, but made the argument that its "carbon intensity" measure was lower, meaning its increased footprint in relation to gross merchandise sales was actually an improvement. A scientist we spoke to at the time commented: "The bottom line is that they are polluting more this year than they did last year." ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://lowcarbonpatentpledge.org/pledged-ip/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YmMll81@c6X14bEYfCy7DQAAAAQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[5] https://sustainability.alibabagroup.com/en
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YmMll81@c6X14bEYfCy7DQAAAAQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/21/google_on_the_road_to/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/10/us_govt_has_3m_to/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/22/ibm_lzlabs_lawsuit/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/19/immersioncooled_colocation_ohio/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/amazon_carbon_footprint/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The [1]patents Alibaba is giving to the Low Carbon Patent Pledge (LCPP) mostly involve parts of its own in-house "soaking server" liquid immersion cooling system developed in 2015 that Alibaba claims reduced its datacenter energy expenditure by 70 percent.
Two of the nine patents were unrelated: one limits hard drive power consumption, and another was designed to improve hardware utilization rates.
[2]
Founded on Earth Day last year by HPE, Microsoft, and Meta, the LCPP promotes low-carbon technologies. A total of 544 patents have been pledged from 10 companies, including Lenovo, UPS, and the three founding organizations.
[3]
[4]
"We believe technology innovation is a key driver in transitioning to the low-carbon circular economy of the future. As a pioneer and global technology leader, we are committed to taking broader social responsibility," Alibaba Group VP and chair of the Sustainability Steering Committee Dr Chen Long said.
Alibaba's green energy [5]plan targets a 2030 deadline for the company to become carbon neutral, which allows for the purchase of offsets to balance a company's carbon footprint. More ambitiously, Alibaba Cloud Group has pledged to run entirely on green energy by 2030.
[6]
Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said in the company's 2021 Carbon Neutrality Action Report that Alibaba Cloud's ambitions include eliminating scope 3 emissions, which include anything emitted by third-party companies in Alibaba Cloud's supply chain. Like Google's [7]carbon-free initiative , Alibaba Cloud's scope 3 goal will be extremely difficult to achieve.
[8]US defense department wants to fund open, interoperable 5G
[9]IBM files IP lawsuit against mainframe migration firm
[10]Alarm raised after Microsoft wins data-encoding patent
[11]Immersion-cooled colo is coming to Ohio... via a crypto-mining datacenter
The first part of Alibaba Cloud's ambitions center around five of the company's hyperscale datacenters, which are being outfit with various clean energy technologies. At its Hangzhou and Zhangbei datacenters, a specialized chilled liquid coolant has been employed, and the latter site also became the first facility of its type in China to use heat-pump technology.
Alibaba is also looking at carbon management tools that can enhance energy trading schemes, launched its own chip that it said has a 50 percent higher energy efficiency ratio compared with other models and is exploring emerging technologies like pumping water for energy storage when renewable sources underperform.
Investments in green energy and sustainable tech have been growing, but it's worth noting that not all reports present data that hasn't been spun to look better than it actually is. Last year, [12]Amazon said it saw a 19 percent increase in its carbon footprint, but made the argument that its "carbon intensity" measure was lower, meaning its increased footprint in relation to gross merchandise sales was actually an improvement. A scientist we spoke to at the time commented: "The bottom line is that they are polluting more this year than they did last year." ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://lowcarbonpatentpledge.org/pledged-ip/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YmMll81@c6X14bEYfCy7DQAAAAQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YmMll81@c6X14bEYfCy7DQAAAAQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YmMll81@c6X14bEYfCy7DQAAAAQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://sustainability.alibabagroup.com/en
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YmMll81@c6X14bEYfCy7DQAAAAQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/21/google_on_the_road_to/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/10/us_govt_has_3m_to/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/22/ibm_lzlabs_lawsuit/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/19/immersioncooled_colocation_ohio/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/amazon_carbon_footprint/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: The bottom line
Snowy
Nuclear will be part of it but not all, there is only so much of it and if more is used it is not going to last very long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kahih8RT1k
The bottom line
So, the bottom line is Alibaba is polluting more.
Well, increasing the number of datacenters is going to have that effect. As such, you can apply that argument to every single tech giant today. Amazon, IBM, Borkzilla, they're all doing it. And ?
The bottom line is this : nuclear (fusion when we get it) is the future.
You don't like that idea ? Fine, throw away your smartphones, your IoT shit, your electric car, your washing machine (and dryer), your dishwasher and everything else but your LED lights, your fridge, freezer, TV and sound system.
If we get back to the bare minimum, then yeah, solar, wind and a few coal plant will be enough. But we're not going to do that.
So, while Greenpeace studiously ignores all the coal plants that are being fired up to cope with the fact that its activities for the last fifty years have stifled the only viable solution we have, don't blame datacenters for doing their job.
We need nuclear. Not pressure water reactors that make plutonium so we can get yet more world-destroying nuclear bombs, no. We need Thorium reactors, and fusion reactors when we can get them. Once we have that, two smartphones and an electric car per person will be less of a problem, and datacenters won't be a problem at all.