This is true. But researchers are divorced from those realities. The day-to-day researchers almost never have to think like "If I run this, will it cost a ton?" Those kinds of agreements are usually made on a company basis, i.e. there's no cost to just leave a model running and see what happens. (Which is a huge advantage, by the way.)

Just a correction here: we build datacenters near large sources of renewable / hydro plants (I consider hydro a borderline case). We buy renewable credits for everything and are even trying to timeshift load now to match renewable generation peaks.

tl;dr: not coal plants :).

Is it just a coincidence that the Eemshaven (eu-west4) datacenter is close to a coal plant then?

I'm pretty sure we're going to close that plant soon though.

> Is it just a coincidence that the Eemshaven (eu-west4) datacenter is close to a coal plant then?

Presumably, since:

"Our data center in Eemshaven was the first to be powered by 100% renewable energy from day one."

https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/eemshaven...

I appreciate them buying credits, but as nice as those windmills and solar panels are, when the sun doesn't shine, and the wind doesn't blow, what gets burned is coal. Anyway I suppose that's more a policy issue of The Netherlands, I think it's quite shameful we still have coal plants. Those credits hide the real cost of renewable energy.

I'm not sure - they say the data center is "the first Google datacenter to be powered by 100% renewable energy from day one."

https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/dutch...

And they seem pretty serious about removing non-renewables altogether.

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-sustainability.appspot.c...