Iceland's Data Centers Are Booming -- Here's Why That's a Problem (technologyreview.com) 114
The southwestern tip of Iceland is a barren volcanic peninsula called Reykjanesskagi. It's home to the twin towns of Keflavik and Njardvik, around 19,000 people, and the country's main airport. On the edge of the settlement is a complex of metal-clad buildings belonging to the IT company Advania, each structure roughly the size of an Olympic-size swimming pool. Less than three years ago there were three of them. By April 2018, there were eight. Today there are 10, and the foundations have been laid for an 11th.
From a report: This is part of a boom fostered partly by something that Icelanders don't usually rave about: the weather. Life on the North Atlantic island tends to be chilly, foggy, and windy, though hard frosts are not common. The annual average temperature in the capital, Reykjavik, is around 41F (5C), and even when the summer warmth kicks in, the mercury rarely rises above 68. Iceland has realized that even though this climate may not be great for sunning yourself on the beach, it is very favorable to one particular industry: data. Each one of those Advania buildings in Reykjanesskagi is a large data center, home to thousands of computers. They are constantly crunching away, processing instructions, transmitting data, and mining Bitcoin. Data centers like these generate large amounts of heat and need round-the-clock cooling, which would usually require considerable energy.
From a report: This is part of a boom fostered partly by something that Icelanders don't usually rave about: the weather. Life on the North Atlantic island tends to be chilly, foggy, and windy, though hard frosts are not common. The annual average temperature in the capital, Reykjavik, is around 41F (5C), and even when the summer warmth kicks in, the mercury rarely rises above 68. Iceland has realized that even though this climate may not be great for sunning yourself on the beach, it is very favorable to one particular industry: data. Each one of those Advania buildings in Reykjanesskagi is a large data center, home to thousands of computers. They are constantly crunching away, processing instructions, transmitting data, and mining Bitcoin. Data centers like these generate large amounts of heat and need round-the-clock cooling, which would usually require considerable energy.
Mother of all low-effort clickbaits? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Here's Why That's a Problem" in the title. But the summary mentions no problem what-so-fucking-ever.
As clickbaits go, this was low effort.
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Also.... 11 swimming pool sized "data centers" doesn't make for a boom in my book.... that term is reserved for at least 12 or more...
Re:Mother of all low-effort clickbaits? (Score:5, Funny)
Also.... 11 swimming pool sized "data centers" doesn't make for a boom in my book....
Most swimming pool sized "data centers" only go up to 10 . . . this one goes up to 11, and thus dangerous . . .
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11 swimming pool sized data centers? I live in Northern Virginia. There are places near here were there are that many in a square mile.
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Problem is there is no enough optical cables connecting Iceland to world, so the data centers focus on computationally demanding tasks, such as simulations, bitcoin mining.
There might be not enough electricity if the industry grows too fast. Iceland sells a lot of "green" energy, so the surrounding countries can claim they are ecologically friendly.
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Which are the surrounding countries?
Iceland would need to export it's electricity a good deal further than "surrounding countries" to "spread it's green goodness".
Which they are proposing in several ways, such as making hydrogen by the LNG-tanker full and sailing it away to displace some f
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this was low effort
Shame on you; what if Msmash spent hours coming up with that shit?? Even idiots have feelings, you know.
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Shame on you; what if Msmash spent hours coming up with that shit?? Even idiots have feelings, you know.
I like your style. I don't think I'd marry you, but you seem fun.
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"Here's Why That's a Problem" in the title. But the summary mentions no problem what-so-fucking-ever."
There is no problem. Computers stay cool, the land is cheap, electricity even more so.
Iceland apparently 'only' has 3 big tubes connecting it to the rest of the series and now foreign companies, running the datacenters, will put more of them into service for free, just as insurance since nobody else cares.
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The reason data centers like iceland isnt the "brisk weather", (as the article notes, its not that cold there) . The competitive advantage of iceland is cheap electricty- there are enormous geothermal and hydro reserves that are quite effectively exploited. That's why iceland is the aluminum capital of the world too- pulling that shit outta bauxite takes hella coulombs.
I read the (rather fluffy) article, and they seem to have missed that. And I agree, there is no real problem identified.
Cool icel
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Let me guess - it's for the penis museum?
Oh, sad! it's redirected to a shop offering " Spil FatnaÃur Bindi&Blæti GrÃn Sleipiefni-Smokkar-OFL" or even "SnyrtivÃrur". Quite what they're doing with Odin's 8-legged stallion ...
The Penis Museum is The Icelandic Phallological Museum [phallus.is]
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They did mention some “problems.”
The data centers are using 91MW of power. That is power that could be better used for Iceland non-existant fleet of electric cars.
Someone may be double counting carbon offset certificates. This could risk exposing the entire carbon offset economy as a sham.
Iceland may have to out in another submaire cable. Accoding to Cyrus West Field’s research, cables can take over 4 years to lay and can only be expected to last about 3 weeks.
Re: Mother of all low-effort clickbaits? (Score:1)
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Desiring a succinct summary is not laziness, as such summaries are necessary in order to optimize one's use of time. There is only so much time available to read full articles, and most people do not have nearly enough time to read them all. So, succinct yet complete summaries are essential. There is nothing lazy about it.
Incidentally, I find most slashdot article summaries to be quite wordy, easily 4x as many words as necessary to get the point across. My guess is the editors are too damn lazy to actua
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The laziness argument can also be taken infinitely steps backwards.
Why be 'lazy' and RTFA when you merely can email the writer and people involved and ask them first hand for the information and get it in more detail? Or, maybe that's too lazy and you should get a degree in the subject and work it out for yourself rather than trusting second-hand sources. etc etc.
So we can dismiss literally any activity where someone else did part of the task for you as being lazy.
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My point here, is that an article is only a summary itself of the bigger issue.
Re:Mother of all low-effort clickbaits? (Score:5, Informative)
Did you try reading the article? Or are you so fucking lazy that you want everything without having to read?
Did you read the article? I did and I still didn't see any problems. I saw the need to invest more in energy production and connectivity with mainland Europe, but both of those are a good thing as they will lead to even more investment into Iceland's infrastructure. From the last paragraph of the article: "the positive impact of such investment is 'almost indescribable,' says Valdimar O. Hermannsson, Blonduos’s mayor. The influx of money means jobs are being created and homes are being built."
Re: Mother of all low-effort clickbaits? (Score:3)
The problem is that companies in other countries are able to buy carbon credits from this very clean industry as a greenwashing exercise instead of actually cleaning up their act.
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So?
The cost of "cleaning up their act" versus "buying carbon credits" changes all the time. Buying carbon credits is not zero-cost - the green company selling them makes money doing so (not a bad thing - an incentive for going green), while the polluting company is now having an extra budget line item cost - they have to pay for th
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The cost of "cleaning up their act" versus "buying carbon credits" changes all the time. Buying carbon credits is not zero-cost - the green company selling them makes money doing so (not a bad thing - an incentive for going green), while the polluting company is now having an extra budget line item cost - they have to pay for those carbon credits.
Plus it gives Iceland additional incentive to keep investing in their clean energy resources.
Re: Mother of all low-effort clickbaits? (Score:2)
Re:Mother of all low-effort clickbaits? (Score:5, Interesting)
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This being true is without comment on the reality or not of AWG. No need to call me a troll here.
Well, in that case, be so good as to provide a little bit of evidence to back up your claim that all carbon certificates are there to collect tax and line pockets? Taxes are a policy instrument to steer behavior. Carbon credits are, if anything, much to cheap at the moment. I would love to see those taxes collected: over here they actually go to roads, education, health care and social security. And they get taken from the most polluting industries. Win-win in my book.
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So you allow companies and individuals to buy carbon credits to offset the guilt over polluting the environment. If the carbon credits are used for anything but helping us reduce overall carbon emissions, it's not actually helping at all.
Your roads, education and healthcare won't mean squat if we fuck the environment over hard enough because we allow people and companies to buy their way out of caring about the environment.
Carbon credits at the very least should be a revenue stream exclusively used to help
So why is it a problem? (Score:1)
Re:So why is it a problem? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not. It's a clickbait headline. Buried deep in the article there's this:
Under a European Union system that resembles carbon offset programs, Icelandic energy producers have been selling green energy certificates to energy customers elsewhere in Europe. This allows foreign customers to call their electricity renewable even if it’s not, because they are offsetting against Icelandic production.
However, a 2016 report commissioned by the Icelandic government warned that improperly monitored sales of energy certificates could eventually lead to double counting, with both foreign offsets and local companies laying claim to the same renewable energy.
So a report from 3 years ago noted there might be an accounting issue with carbon credits. That somehow got spun into a problem with data centers three years later. Is it even a problem, or have they fixed that system based on that report since then?
How the fuck did this turn into a story in 2019, and how have you not been fired if you're an editor at a website and you approved this garbage?
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...and how have you not been fired if you're an editor at a website and you approved this garbage?
Were there clicks? Page views? Ads served?
There's your answer.
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Your name somehow goes very, very well with all of this situation.
Wtf Slashdot.
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how have you not been fired
A) The idiot is sucking-off their boss.
-or-
B) Their boss is even dumber.
Where is the problem? (Score:3, Funny)
Worried about global warming again Slashdot?
SirAstral is uneducated (Score:1)
SirAstral is uneducated
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Clickbait articles cause 5 times the carbon emissions as regular articles.
Canada and Scandinavia (Score:2)
Sounds like it would be a lot less trouble to be on the mainland. And there are cold places on the mainland as well. Countries connected with a lot more than 3 cables, and probably more redundant electricity sources as well.
Re:Canada and Scandinavia (Score:5, Informative)
Iceland offers cheap hydro and geothermal baseload power as well as a natural heat sink. This saves so much money that it actually pays to ship bauxite in from Australia for smelting in Iceland, and then ship aluminum up to halfway around the world again to markets.
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you could be on the mainland near the shores, Nova Scotia, Labrador, some places in Quebec, British Columbia.
And then coastal Norway, Sweden, Finland are also all on the mainland.
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Coastal Norway is awfully wet. This is not a disaster for air cooling, but you do have to be careful when your cooling system relies on 100% saturated air.
Easily solved with a dehumidifier, but then you might as well air condition...
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Not necessarily a problem for most modern rack servers. If your 100% saturated air is ±60F (±15C) or lower, no dehumidification would be needed. If the air is much above that, then you'll probably need A/C anyway (that is, unless you're running the data center hot, in which case even warmer saturated air could be OK, as far as Relative Humidit
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Iceland has the distinct advantage of being situated on the midatlantic ridge. That means their electricity and heat is basically free. Basically free electricity is why the datacentres are there. The cool, stable climate is just a bonus.
Every time more than five Icelanders get together they build a swimming pool because hot water is free. Seriously.
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Facebook has built a large data centre in northern Sweden close to hydroelectric power, and Google has built one in Finland.
Microsoft and Amazon are building data centres in middle Sweden right now.
So actually not really a problem (Score:5, Informative)
I read the whole article.
The only actual problem I can discern, is that since Iceland is selling credits to EU countries there may be some double counting for the amount of green energy that Iceland produces (they have a lot of geothermal plants, something the article really should have brought up!!).
But in reality, ignoring the virtual spat over credits, you are left with the very real fact that the data centers that actually are in Iceland are using very green energy to power them, and calling needs are greatly reduced because of natural climate.
The only thing in the article I could find vaguely against this otherwise perfect arrangement was someone complaining that the power produced by Iceland should be reserved for electric cars because it's "not endless". That seems kind of a silly argument though in an area with as much geothermal potential as Iceland with as few people as they have living there permanently. Plenty to go around, for cars and servers...
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The only thing in the article I could find vaguely against this otherwise perfect arrangement was someone complaining that the power produced by Iceland should be reserved for electric cars because it's "not endless". That seems kind of a silly argument though in an area with as much geothermal potential as Iceland with as few people as they have living there permanently. Plenty to go around, for cars and servers...
I would even argue that fossil fuel cars make more sense in places like Iceland. With the combination of low population density and the weather conditions, being able to drive around with an extra can of gas in your trunk if for some reason you were to get stranded or run out of gas. If your battery dies it's kind of hard to carry around a backup.
Yes, agree (Score:3)
I would even argue that fossil fuel cars make more sense in places like Iceland.
For sure they do at the moment, there is a lot of area to cover and it's way easier to have some extra gas on hand... even spare solar panels to recharge a car in a pinch might not work for a while as they have lots and lots of cloud cover going on pretty often.
Probably for the main city they make a lot of sense but there's just not so much load from all the people living there you can't spare energy for lots of other purposes!
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How many other countries can manage to turn a power plant into a major tourist attraction...
Russia did. In Chernobyl.
Re:Yes, agree (Score:4, Interesting)
Russia? Chernobyl never was in Russia.
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Best not to build such things in Mother Russia comrade. Build in Ukraine (literally, borderlands).
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Agreed. I think we can also agree it was never Russia that turned Chernobyl into a tourist attraction. Plus Chernobyl tourism is a fairly recent phenomenon. And I'm not sure how the Ukranian government feels about it.
Re:So actually not really a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Iceland is only 300 miles wide. You really shouldn't have an issue getting stranded when the longest trip you can take on the island is on the order of a tank of gas. For reference, Texas is more than twice as big.
Norway is way, way bigger, and EVs do fine there.
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> Iceland is only 300 miles wide
Maybe, but looking at Google Maps, it appears that 99% of the country lives within a mile or two of a ring road around the country, so most east-west trips across the country probably involve a substantial amount of additional north-south driving.
It's actually kind of entertaining to look at a map of Iceland & recognize a shockingly large number of place-names courtesy of Ikea :-D
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Companies with operations in the Northern Virginia data center market claim to be renewable solely from carbon credits.
Some very large and very famous companies even claim 100% renewable energy in a region that is powered primarily by coal and natural gas. The two closest nuclear plants are too far from here.
Problem is obvious! (Score:2)
The biggest problem with the article is that it was printed in a journal carrying MIT's good name.
So not a problem? (Score:2)
The summary completely skips the case of it being a problem, and the article itself vaguely conveys that it might be a problem, but then also suggests that maybe it isn't.
Re:So not a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary completely skips the case of it being a problem, and the article itself vaguely conveys that it might be a problem, but then also suggests that maybe it isn't.
It's a problem because we are all* supposed to move back to the cave and live off berries, so if people actually use green energy and solve cooling problems with minimal energy, well, we just can't have that!
* Well, not all of us ... the connected and famous of course are exempt. As are politicians who work hard to put you back into the cave.
Re: So not a problem? (Score:1)
You know too much. Expect a knock on the door at 6pm.
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Dad?
Climate is gonna get you (Score:1)
Climate is gonna get you
The climate is gonna get you
Climate is gonna get you
The climate is gonna get youuuuuuu..... TONIGHT!
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Are you just bitter that Miami Sound Machine never toured Iceland?
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I think the author wants the hot computers put in hotter places. To save the planet or something.
But basically people have servers in Iceland for strong data privacy. The author needs to solve that problem elsewhere first.
I'm OUTRAGED at this! (Score:1)
As problems go this problem is very problematic. What were we talking about. Oh yeah, I'm outraged!
mining Bitcoin is not a sensible use of energy (Score:2)
It is smart to use Iceland's naturally cool weather for cooling data centers.
Hopefully most of the data crunching is something productive rather than mining bitcoins.
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Bitcoin uses an order of magnitude less power per dollar than old-fashioned banking (or even the manufacture of soda cans). Let's not go after the new automated systems when the old manual ones are far more wasteful.
You might as well complain that combines use more energy than donkeys with plows, but even that would be quite awkward in sensible company.
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Oh really? And you are counting watts per transaction here?
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Bitcoin uses an order of magnitude less power per dollar than old-fashioned banking (or even the manufacture of soda cans). Let's not go after the new automated systems when the old manual ones are far more wasteful.
You might as well complain that combines use more energy than donkeys with plows, but even that would be quite awkward in sensible company.
Actually, bitcoin uses as much energy as the Czech Republic [digiconomist.net]. It's used a very low amount of transactions as actual currency (some for drugs, scams and ransomware) with most of its use being to find a bigger fool.
. One transaction requires more than 500 kWh...
When it comes to efficiency, it seems to be about a million times less efficient than visa. [statista.com].
the mercury rises - OT (Score:1)
Why not write "the temperature rarely rises"? ;-)
EU banned non-electronic mercury thermometers over a decade ago[1]
So why start talking about toxic chemical elements nobody born after year 2000 will understand the relationship of.
[1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+IM-PRESS+20070706IPR08897+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
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Because the world seems to have gone nuts for cliches. I remember thinking my English teacher was a bit barmy for getting irritated when someone used a cliche, but now I know exactly what she was talking about. Maybe it's because professional writers have been replaced by an army of amateurs who think "inked a deal" is the greatest phrase ever.
Oh noes renewable energy (Score:2)
Explain again why that's bad?
Will the market bubble of data centers burst soon? (Score:2)
As I drive around Northern Virginia and its hundreds and hundreds of data centers, and more being built to the west and south, I wonder if there is going to be a market bubble burst of data centers and what the outcome will be.
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Do we need it? (Score:2)
Language barrier? (Score:2)