When a data center firm claims to be 100 percent carbon neutral, can we believe them? Does every electron used in that data come from a solar panel or a wind farm? Until we have reliable carbon accounting, we won't know for sure, and operators will continue to rely on renewable energy certificates (RECs) which match energy consumption over a year, instead of hour by hour.
Simone Accornero, CEO of FlexiDAO says we need "RECs on steroids" to move to hourly carbon accounting, and a blockchain-based protocol can deliver this without costing the earth in energy overheads.
Data centers are a small part of the global electricity market, Accornero says they are ideally suited to drive that market to better carbon accounting, and renewable generation which better matches electricity consumption.
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