Wind turbines and solar panels are finite. They are made of stuff. Every wind turbine that gets tasked with supplying a data centre running a chatbot that tells lies as fake search results should actually be serving societal demand and cutting down on fossil fuels fortune.com/2024/05/01/m...
This is (partly) why I’m not convinced that every new renewable converter necessarily displaces a counterfactual fossil converter. If it inadvertently powers a propaganda generator, it might end up enabling a fossil converter elsewhere while no fossil converter would have been built in its absence.
These socially useless (or harmful) but energy-wasteful industries are such a perfect test of intention for clean energy companies and organisations. Do they care more about [maximum panels and turbines] or [minimum emissions]? They kinda have to choose. www.irena.org/news/article...
