The electricity we use

I am curious about … where does my electricity come from. My electricity coop assures me that my home leccy comes from renewable resources - wind, sun, water (in-land currents) and I can actually see some (difficult) steps taken to create small - scale power stations so that they are as close as possible to the communities that consume that power.

But I have no idea of what kind of electricity my favourite servers use. And I wonder if their admins know.

So without giving any guilt trip, and if necessary, actively avoiding one, I would like to ask some questions like …

do we know what kind of electricity our servers use? Is the provider more like EDP or BP (insert your national biggest power provider) or more like eco-tricity (insert your national favourite ethical power provider)?

Do we have the capability of obtaining a reliable answer if asking our colocation admins?

In the list of preferences, how would our collectives rate this issue when deciding a colocation centre? As in, if privacy of our users is a 10 out of 10, how would rate the quality of the electricity that our servers use? In a scale of 1 to 10, how prepared would collectives be to consider looking around for more ethical colocation centres?

Should we put these questions on a wiki to agree on more before collecting answers?

do we know what kind of electricity our servers use?

we often dont know exactly what we use, but some datacenter providers / hoster have certificates from where the electricity is
some dont actually use green energy but they support it and are “CO2 neutral”

Do we have the capability of obtaining a reliable answer if asking our colocation admins?

sometimes, if they have certificates

In the list of preferences, how would our collectives rate this issue when deciding a colocation center?

most colocation centers are already “CO2 neutral” or use “electricity from renewable energy” because they can advertise with it
of course you need to check if there are some actual proofs…

I think… more than certificates, I was thinking of the general ethos
of the companies that supply our electricity.

For example I don’t ask for certificate from the tech team of the
electricity coop of which I am part. (should I?)

That’s why my question was whether our suppliers would be more like EDP,
BP, Iberdrola, Endesa or more like eco-tricity, som-energia, goiener or
energetica (I can only put examples from UK and Spain, I’m sure you can
think of examples from your own countries).

So, rather than asking for datacenter providers / hosters’ certificates,
I would probably just ask for the name of the electricity providers of
those physical places, and what they say about their use of (green)
energy and, maybe, what “CO2 neutral” means for them.

I think that is what I meant by the “capability of obtaining a reliable
answer”. If a customer represents no more than a fraction of a
percentage of an operation, a request for that kind of information may
not have any significant priority.

cheap hetzner has this to say about its dcs : https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/
let’s hope it’s true… :slight_smile:

locally in greece (ie our offices - we don’t host anything in GR), energy from renewables still lags behind lignite, which is the primary source for nationwide electricity. 2018 numbers from DEI (main power company) for total electricity produced :
40.6% from lignite
23.2% from natural gas
18.5% from hydroelectric plants
16.8% from oil
0.9% from renewables
link : https://www.dei.gr/en/i-dei/enimerwsi-ependutwn/etairiki-eikona/tautotita-etaireias

so we still got a long way to go locally…

Our servers in our Sheffield datacentre are on an electricity meter that is powered by Good Energy, the same goes for our office and also my home (which is of course where I’m working from at the moment). We chose Good Energy as we consider them to the the most environmentally ethical electricity supplier in the UK. The way the UK grid works means that we have no idea where each election comes from — all you can control is where your money goes.

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