[cdancette]

I don't get why this is the same thing : if every company is doing this, every company is still powered by fossil fuels, and just producing renewable energy that won't be used anywhere.

Edit: as the energy they buy is sent into the grid, if all companies do this, the renewable energy can be sufficient to power all companies, so I guess that makes sense

[ZeroGravitas]

There is some cost to integrating renewables into the grid, though most experts seem to suggest the first 80% or so isn't that hard, and we're so far away from that in most places that the positive externalities massively outweigh any negative.

If people did use this model to get to 100% then presumably the final 20% or so would be more expensive, since you'd still be paying grid prices for your usage, then selling the same amount of renewable power to try to cancel out that cost. If that renewable power is worth much less, because of integration costs, then you'll be paying much higher costs overall.

(Note, paying much higher costs is a good thing, since it gives a market incentive for people to invest in storage technologies, demand/response, efficiency etc. This is similar to big companies like Microsoft changing an internal carbon tax to redirect investment).

[cdancette]

Thanks !

And why do they sell at loss the energy ? Does this mean that they just exchange the energy they buy for grid energy to power their datacenter, and that the energy they get is cheaper than the one they're buying?

[toomuchtodo]

The spot price of power changes by the minute. Google pays for the wind farm's output; they're more concerned about replacing dirty MWs with clean MWs, and less about if they're making a profit on each MWh of power.