Facebook hires Google’s former Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl, and increases its commitment to renewables
Google has had an impressive record in renewable energy. They invested over $850m dollars in renewable energy projects to do with geothermal, solar and wind energy. They entered into 20 year power purchase agreements with wind farm producers guaranteeing to buy their energy at an agreed price for twenty years giving the wind farms an [...]
FaceBook open sources building an energy efficient data center
Back in 2006 I was the co-founder of a Data Centre in Cork called Cork Internet eXchange. We decided, when building it out, that we would design and build it as a hyper energy-efficient data centre. At the time, I was also heavily involved in social media, so I had the crazy idea, well, [...]
It is surprisingly easy to leave yourself open to claims of Greenwashing!
Companies need to take a lot of care when making Green claims. The whole Green energy space is massively complex and it is surprisingly easy to leave yourself open to claims of Greenwashing. What do I mean? Well, take the Irish energy sector, for example. Anyone who generates electricity in Ireland, which is to be [...]
Is there really any need for baseload power?
Photo credit wonderferret The electricity grid may not need “baseload” generation sources like coal and nuclear to backup the variability of supply from renewables. Jon Wellinghof is the Chairman of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC is an independent agency that amongst other things, regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and [...]
Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind!
Ok, not all the time, but last weekend at 5:50am on Sunday morning (8th Nov) Spain set a new record, hitting 53.7% of its energy requirements being supplied by wind energy.
As you can see from the graph above, the amount of electricity being supplied by wind, the light green portion of the graph, doesn’t [...]
