As we all know, environmental protection is a big deal for major American technology companies. A few years ago, if you saw Musk, he would be reported if he wanted to fly a rocket. It was said that it affected the hearing of seals. It is not good for humans and animals to suffer from insomnia. They will not approve it. Later, it may be because I have to deal with these trivial things every day. How can I not be popular? How can I land on Mars with a bunch of bugs like you? He turned around and supported Achuan. As for the two people's quarrel now, that's a story for later, let's not mention it for now.
As for the environmental protection requirements of the United States, all major manufacturers are treated equally. Musk has to hold his nose to get over the hurdle, and it would be the same for anyone else, but foreign operations in order to protect the environment have developed a bit gaudy in recent years.
For example, I recently discovered that Microsoft has even begun to bury shit for the sake of environmental protection.
This is what happened. A few days ago, it was suddenly revealed by the media that Microsoft had signed a large deal worth US$1.7 billion with a company engaged in low-carbon and environmental protection. Think about it, this is 1.7 billion. If converted into RMB, it would cost 10 billion. It is almost catching up with the box office of Nezha 2.
After a careful investigation by the foreign media, they found out that it was incredible. The company that signed a contract with Microsoft is none other than Vaulted Deep. So what kind of environmental protection law does this company have? It is the burying of manure we mentioned earlier, and it has to bury 4.9 million tons...
Have you seen the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt? It only weighs 5 million tons.
It sounds a bit disgusting, but fortunately we are all civilized people, and Microsoft will not really be a strawberry tower as big as one side of the pyramid.
Moreover, these 4.9 million tons do not have to be obtained at once. After all, there are 350 million people in the United States. Even if everyone has smooth bowel movements and is not constipated, it will take two months to count the entire country. Therefore, the contract signing time is also long, a full 12 years.
Friends who see this may have to think about it. You said that Microsoft is a big company with a good reputation, so why did it study this matter? It would be shameless to tell it.
But sometimes, other big manufacturers are really different from what we think. If you want to follow what we think, when it comes to reducing carbon emissions, you should protect the forest and cut down fewer trees. The Amazon rainforest has become like this for you, and you still have to blame us Chinese.
As a result, I checked,I found out that they had really done this to protect the forest, but they failed.
This has to be said that they have a corporate carbon credit, which is how many tons of carbon dioxide emissions are reduced. They take this thing very seriously. There's even something calledESG score, specifically to examine how your company is doing in terms of environmental protection, social responsibility, etc. The key is that the capital market really takes this seriously and will not be willing to invest if the score is low.
Therefore, many companies will find ways to brush their carbon credits and engage in emission reduction activities.The most typical example is to protect a forest that is said to be cut down(Avoiding deforestation), or building wind farms, etc. This is called carbon offset.
The starting point of this kind of thing is good, but the execution is often bad.
Firstly, it is difficult to quantify how much forest has been protected. Secondly, multiple surveys in the United States have shown that up to 90% of rainforest offset projects here are worthless becauseThe forests they protect are not at risk of being cut down in the first place. . . To put it harshly, it is a lie and a sneak attack.
Because the carbon credits obtained from these things are often said to be worthless and of low quality, even if a large manufacturer pays for this, they will be scolded after the fact, saying that you areGreenwashing(Greenwashing), the pure act of buying indulgences.
These major manufacturers themselves did not want to be scolded, so they later began to reduce their participation in such carbon offset projects and began to engage in carbon removal.
The so-called carbon removal means that I directly transfer the carbon dioxide that was originally intended to be emitted into other components so that it cannot be emitted.For example, many large factories in Silicon Valley have now developed the habit of planting as many trees as they emit carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to all the carbon dioxide emitted being stored in the plants. Even many big factories in our country also plant trees. I have also planted a lot of Haloxylon ammodendron trees myself.
However, for enterprises, things like planting trees require a lot of long-term investment in time and money. You can’t just dig a hole and bury it. Fires, pests and diseases or illegal logging all pose a risk of reversing carbon releases.
So in addition to this method of planting trees to sequester carbon, likeFor companies like Vaulted Deep mentioned at the beginning, they also came up with a strange trick: bury it.
To put it simply, animals and plants like you have fixed carbon in living things, but since you are living things, you have to die and excrete. After all, these debris and excrement, no matter whether it is burned or something, they have to be decomposed.
Then, wouldn’t the carbon fixed in the excreta, debris and waste materials escape into the air again?
It did sound reasonable, so they proposed,As long as I take an extra-long pipe and poke it into the ground, as deep as the Kola Super Deep Well in the former Soviet Union, and then pour all the excrement, debris and waste into it, then the carbon will not be emitted into the air.
According to the Vaulted Deep company, their method uses mature industrial waste treatment technology and can sequester carbon for more than 10,000 years, just like coal.
Moreover, this method is cheaper, as it can be purchased directly from sewage stations and landfills. If it weren't for the fact that there are less excrement trucks nowadays, they might still have to go door to door looking for raw materials.
But there is one thing to say. Although what I talked about today is a bit tasteful, this is not the first time Microsoft has engaged in excrement disposal.
As early as 2015, Bill Gates personally invested in a project called Omni-Processor because he saw a report that in many third-world countries that cannot afford to build sewage treatment systems, people often dump their excrement directly into the river. But not every river is as clean and sanitary as the Ganges. They dump it while also drawing domestic water from the river. As a result, "three million children die from dysentery every year."
So the Gates Foundation came up with a feces incineration device, which first evaporates the moisture in the feces and then burns it. The moisture in the front can just drive the turbine and provide power to the system. Therefore, this thing does not require external power and water sources, and it can also distill pure water.
This system has been used in several countries. When it first started running, Gates even took a sip of the water processed by the machine with feces, saying that it tasted like drinking water.
However, compared with a purely public welfare project like Omni-Processor, this underground excrement project is not just about environmental protection.
The main thing here is that in the past two years, Microsoft has not only been engaged in cloud computing, but also practiced AI. As a result, everyone knows that these purely computing things are really waste of electricity.
For example, GPT-4o alone consumes 460,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity and emits hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon emissions, which is equivalent to driving more than 30,000 gasoline trucks for a year.
Originally, Microsoft said that it would achieve negative carbon emissions in 2030, but as a result, its emissions in fiscal year 2023 were 23.4% higher than in 2020...
So, they had to think of ways to do some carbon removal projects to offset it. It just so happened that the cost of this project of burying manure underground was low, and the carbon sequestration effect couldn't be faulted, so I let him fix it first.
On the other hand, just like domestic subsidies for garbage incinerators, Americans also have environmental subsidies. One ton of carbon reduction will give your company an $85 tax deduction.
The company’s last order was from Frontier. They spent US$58.3 million to remove 152,000 tons of carbon dioxide. Based on this calculation,If Microsoft's $1.7 billion is spent, more than $300 million may actually be deducted tax-free.
Julia Reichelstein, CEO of Vaulted Deep, also said that the 1.7 billion is not the actual price paid by Microsoft. In the future, the cost will continue to decrease with technology optimization. In this way, Microsoft will not be able to spend so much, and it is still worthwhile overall.
But just like planting trees, let's landfill it. Although it seems to be very effective, some people actually complain about it.
For example, although you have sequestered carbon, you still did not reduce emissions during the production process, or even increased them, so this is still an act of indulgence.
Moreover, even if it is landfilled, under certain conditions (such as specific soil pH, combined with certain nitrogen fertilizers), it may increase the emission of nitrous oxide (N2O), which has a stronger greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide.
But let me tell you, people’s attitudes are at least good. Although the development of AI has increased carbon emissions, they have indeed spent money to solve environmental problems. The merits and demerits balance out, which is also a good thing.
Therefore, in order to let AI work for the benefit of mankind as soon as possible, it is acceptable to bury some feces. If you raise a cat, you have to change the cat litter.
Anyway, they were buried deep. Maybe in a few hundred million years, when the next human civilization learns to mine coal, they will find that the sacred relics left by their ancestors for forging artifacts will help them light up the future of industrialization.