carbon-free energy on every grid where they operate also sounds like a significantly more ambitious goal than net-zero across the company, because it means actual reduction in emissions, rather than relying on offsets.

if it's a serious committment to being carbon-free, i think this sounds like a positive change. if it's a moonshot that they have no real intention of actually meeting, then it's a lot less impressive. i guess we'll see...

> carbon-free energy on every grid where they operate also sounds like a significantly more ambitious goal than net-zero across the company, because it means actual reduction in emission

Not necessarily. In the UK the market for zero-emission electricity is separated from the actual electricity itself. So you basically sell the "greenness" of the electricity separately from the electricity itself. Customers who want green electricity buy the electricity, and buy some "greenness" (called a REGO).

It does make sense, and a lot of people claim it's some kind of scam when it really isn't... But it does make the relationship between the consumption and production of green energy more complex.

For example, suppose 10% of power comes from green energy, but only 5% of people care about it remotely. The market value of a REGO is basically zero. Even if the number of people who care about green energy doubles to 10%, there's still perfect supply so the market value is still zero and it won't have any effect on green energy production. That isn't quite the case but it doesn't seem far off - I couldn't find up-to-date numbers but it seems like the market price of REGOs is on the order of £5-15/MWh, which is very low. Probably because the UK's energy mix is actually very green these days.

No idea how common this system is in other countries.

It would have been an ambitious goal in 2010. But the fundamental issue with it is similar to buying offsets.

If you are connected to the grid, the power you use is effectively generated by the power plant with the highest marginal costs. That often means fossil fuels. It doesn't matter whether you are buying generic power from the grid, or if you have a contract stating that the power you use is generated by renewables or nuclear. If you disconnect from the grid, the overall demand goes down, and some of the most expensive generation capacity is no longer needed.

In the long term, if there are many customers buying explicitly carbon-free power from the grid, it may increase the construction of new carbon-free generation capacity. But that effect is difficult to quantify.

It's going to happen anyway for at least a large portion of every day simply because it's cheaper. Electricity is a sizable chunk of the cost to operate a datacenter and at least while the sun is up, solar is significantly cheaper than any other energy source. Grid scale battery overnights is cheaper but less so obviously.

You don't need climate pledges when the thing you're pledging to do saves you substantial amounts of money, and we really don't need quite so much climate moralizing when now the transition to carbon free electricity seems obvious, inevitable, and imminent because of direct immediate cost.

Now the question is just how can we accelerate this a little without creating false economies or distorting the market too much, just a small incentive here and penalty there along with funding for big projects to make them happen earlier.

What’s the real difference? Don’t offsets also do the same thing?

If I emit 5g of CO2 but purchase similar in offsets - the offsets have to achieve a reduction of 5g unless something like a scam is going on.