Digital Realty ditches diesel for salad dressing in US to cut datacenter emissions
- Reference: 1712824392
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/11/digital_realty_datacenter_biofuel/
- Source link:
The global bit barn provider said that HVO will be introduced first at three of its sites in California and Oregon as an alternative to diesel for powering its backup generators. It expects this will help it avoid approximately 12,000 metric tons of CO 2 emissions, compared with previous years.
Those three sites will be the PDX12 facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, SC1 in Santa Clara, California, and LAX12 in El Segundo, California, according to Digital Realty.
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HVO, often referred to as a renewable or fossil-free form of diesel, is a biofuel made from processing vegetable oils or other residue oils. Digital Realty said that it already uses this at over 20 sites across Europe, and with this deployment in the US, it will be using HVO in seven global markets, covering about 15 percent of its global operating portfolio.
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Vice President of Sustainability Aaron Binkley hailed it as a significant milestone in its pursuit of solutions to address the environmental impact of operating huge data dormitories.
"We are pleased to be adopting HVO in the US for datacenters, and to be setting a new standard for datacenter sustainability worldwide," Binkley said in a statement.
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But Digital Realty isn't the only datacenter operator turning to HVO as an alternative to diesel. Last year, AWS said it was [5]switching to the biofuel for backup power generators at its facilities in Europe, with sites in Ireland and Sweden the first to make the move.
HVO has advantages over other biodiesel replacements, in that it does not require any modification to the backup generators and remains stable in cold winter temperatures. It is also said to deliver similar performance to conventional diesel.
However, there are some [6]potential disadvantages . Although CO 2 and soot emissions are greatly reduced compared with standard diesel, nitrogen and particulate emissions are said to be almost the same.
[7]Digital Realty: We hear you like your racks dense, how does 70kW sound?
[8]Digital Realty lines up hefty solar, wind projects for APAC datacenters
[9]Former Digital Realty datacenter reborn as urban farmstead
[10]Colocation giants shrug off inflation as demand surges
Costs were also said to be higher at one point due to limited supplies of feedstock, but can now be made from a wider range of materials, including waste byproducts.
Digital Realty claims that use of HVO has reduced its fuel-related lifecycle carbon emissions by 90 percent in France, and the company has since deployed the fuel across multiple sites in Amsterdam and Madrid as well.
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This time last year, Digital Realty was lining up [12]renewable energy projects such as solar and wind power for datacenters in the Asia-Pacific region as part of efforts to reduce CO 2 emissions there.
Other alternative power sources include hydrogen fuel cells, which one European datacenter operator [13]pioneered as a backup power source in 2022. Since then, their use has been expanded to being investigated as the [14]primary power for bit barns, while others are turning to more extravagant alternatives such as [15]nuclear power . ®
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/20/aws_wants_to_cook_its/
[6] https://volta-energy.com/en/blog-en/hvo-biodiesel-pros-and-cons/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/08/digital_realty_70kw_rack/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/16/digital_realty_solar_apac/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/12/digital_realty_farm/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/03/equinix_digitalrealty_ironmountain/
[11] 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=33Zhe0vfMR7sC2fuBLePFWowAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/16/digital_realty_solar_apac/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/15/northc_hydrogen_power/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/ireland_to_develop_datacenter_powered/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/amazon_acquires_cumulus_nuclear_datacenter/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Does HVO really reduce emissions ?
If it is burned to generate energy it will release CO₂ - that is just chemistry. The claim to reduce emissions is that HVO is "renewable" -- what this means is that it is not dug out of the ground but is grown (crop or animal), and that growth captured the carbon that the burning just releases again. If what was grown was kept then that would be carbon capture - which is good.
This is greenwashing, sophistry to convince those who do not understand that these are "good guys".
To make the energy planet friendly it must come from something like solar or wind -- but understand that these do have a carbon cost, mainly in building them.
Any use of energy impacts the climate, some more than others, reduce energy use is best - but that often impacts profits. That is part of the dilemma: profits vs planet.
Re: Does HVO really reduce emissions ?
I'd be interested in how long HVO can be stored before it has to be disposed of. Especially an issue with backup power. I know diesel doesn't last forever but I'm sure it's better than HVO.
I've had to resort to using Super Unleaded in my lawn mower simply because RON 95 left in the mower for a long period is going to degrade and damage the engine.
Re: Does HVO really reduce emissions ?
I suspect that one reason why this might make "business sense" is because of the wonky Biomass carbon-accounting rules that mean tree-burners (and food-burners) can attribute their emissions to the country(/state?) who supplied the fuel.. So there may also be an incentive there to use imported oil instead of producing it locally..
Burning food in a food shortage
Yay, because it's green.
Not that i'm a fan of Diesel-powered datacentres, but what is the efficiency of shoving veg oil into a diesel genset compared with solar + electrochemical storage?
The most efficient crops are (IIRC) 2%-5% efficient at creating fuel, and then you have to burn it in a Diesel engine that is itself 20-30% efficient, so overall solar efficiency in the 1% range, and it is taking away land from food crops, using up nutrients in said land (or requiring energy-intensive and polluting fertiliser). And there is a risk that someone will start using imported Palm Oil if they can't grow enough rapeseed.
Put them next to nuke plants? Great. But Biomass/Biofuels are and always have been a load of greenwash.
"nitrogen and particulate emissions are said to be almost the same"
Is that really a dis advantage ?
Some bad things are greatly reduced, some bad things aren't, but they're not increased either. Honestly, I'm tired of seeing these everything-isn't-perfect kind of comments. So it's not perfect. It's still better.
And it recycles already used oils, which, in my opinion, is even better.