Climate Talk

Our cloud provider gave us a 'green' badge. I have questions

So my team's dashboard now shows a little leaf icon because our region is 'powered by 100% renewable energy'. Great. Very calming.

As far as I can tell this mostly means the provider bought renewable energy certificates to match annual usage. The actual electrons at 2am on a windless night are coming from whatever the grid has, which in some regions is coal.

Not saying it's meaningless, the purchases do fund new projects. But the badge implies something a bit stronger than what's happening. Anyone working in energy want to tell me if I'm being too cynical? (I'm usually being too cynical.)