Havering Friends of the Earth

Energy, Land-use & Technology

by John Robinson; first published 23-Aug-2024

Is this the best use of land? - John Robinson

The ongoing controversy over a proposed data centre, and local additions to the power grid infrastructure (which might or might not be related), should make us question how we produce renewable energy, and the uses to which we put it.

There are tough choices to be made about land use, but I think we should try harder to preserve the farmland that remains in Havering. There's a strong argument for putting solar panels on rooftops, rather than in fields. Wind and solar are intermittent resources, requiring short-term energy storage, and this too might be better done with batteries at a domestic level - not least because at grid-scale it's quite challenging.

We're missing a few tricks when it comes to local power generation. Why don't all electric vehicles have solar panels on their roofs? And remember those little dynamos that powered bicycle lights without batteries? The same thing could be done at scale to generate power from the physical activity of people exercising in gyms - it's not rocket science!

Now, where's all that energy going? The sad fact is that hi-tech, such as cloud computing, AI and cryptocurrency, consumes more and more of the power that could otherwise heat (or cool) homes, or provide traction for transport. In the long run, is that a good way forward?

We may feel powerless to reduce our energy use (by proxy) through technology - but there are a few options. For example: keep local copies of audio and video rather than downloading them from "somewhere" every time you listen or watch. CDs, DVDs and even vinyl records (if you're happy with the sound quality) are nice possessions, as indeed are physical books.

Keep emails short, and where possible send links rather than actual content; there's no point in creating multiple copies of big files! Delete unwanted photos, and reduce the size of those you keep when high resolution isn't needed.

When we set up a new computer or smartphone, we're likely to sleep-walk into dependency on remote data services. With a little thought, though, we can back up our photos, documents etc onto local storage such as memory sticks or cards, instead of the cloud. Like physical entertainment media, these give a sense of self-sufficiency. And they're cheap, so you can keep copies in several places for security.

Maybe if people thought more about their data footprint, we'd need fewer data centres?