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.

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p1mrx 3 days ago | parent [-]

"In 2024, we increased our 24/7 CFE percentage from 64% to 66%, and nine out of 20 grid regions with Google-owned and -operated data centers achieved at least 80% CFE."

Look at those numbers. 100% still is a very ambitious goal. Currently 0 global customers are buying 24/7 carbon free power from the grid, and even getting from 0 to 1 will require a lot of boots on the ground building real infrastructure. Afterwards, getting from 1 to [everyone] is just a matter of scale.

Even the "lazy" strategy of buying up capacity from existing nuclear plants requires outbidding the existing customers (if the law allows it), and only works in regions where nuclear plants actually exist.

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jltsiren 3 days ago | parent [-]

Buying carbon-free power from the grid was a big thing in Finland (and maybe in wider Europe) around 2010. But companies eventually stopped talking about it, as it's mostly greenwashing with limited real-world impact.

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p1mrx 3 days ago | parent [-]

Were they buying time-independent blocks of carbon-free power, or 24/7 carbon-free power? The latter is significantly more difficult.

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jltsiren 3 days ago | parent [-]

24/7. There was enough hydro and nuclear in the grid, and even more in the connected grids in Norway and Sweden. Most of the time, carbon-free power was no more expensive than generic power, which emphasized how meaningless the entire idea was.

It was a byproduct of the EU habit to create markets and competition where they don't naturally exist. You can buy electricity from any power company, and that company can then generate it itself or buy it from the market. Once you have a market like that, it's easy to add requirements such as carbon-free power. As long as the fraction of the market buying indulgences is lower than the share of the power generation meeting the requirements, fulfilling them is essentially free.

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p1mrx 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Most of the time, carbon-free power was no more expensive than generic power

Okay, let's ignore "most of the time" and focus on times when carbon-free power was more expensive. Were these companies actually footing the bill in that case? Because increasing the marginal funding toward clean sources when the grid is dirtiest is the whole point.

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jltsiren 3 days ago | parent [-]

You can pay the market price for power or agree on a fixed-term fixed-price contract. In the latter case, the power company carries the risks. The market is cheaper on the average, especially if you can adjust your demand down when the prices are high. Back then, the prices were relatively stable, but today they fluctuate wildly due to the prevalence of wind power.

In any case, carbon-free power from the grid is mostly a legal/financial construct with limited real-world impact. When the grid is dirtiest, market prices are set by fossil fuels with high marginal costs, and clean sources get the same price without any tricks.

	▲	p1mrx 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Perhaps one company buying 24/7 CFE won't make much of a difference in Europe, but it would make a difference in places like Singapore, where the existing grid is incapable of providing 24/7 CFE to anyone.