Combustion produces byproducts, such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and depending on the fuel or the quality of combustion, sulphur oxides and other fantastically poisonous substances that are building up in our limited breathing air and drinking water.
Engines that use this process are called internal combustion engines, they mix the fuel with air and ignite it, this creates heat and pressure, because the big molecules that make up the fuel are broken down into a massive quantity of smaller ones. That pressure then pushes on pistons which turn a crankshaft that can be connected to a transmission in a car, or a generator in a power plant, the hot exhaust gases that make up a lot of the pollution then get forced out of the engine into the air.
Unless you’re asking why specifically those companies are the ones producing the emissions, in which case it’s a matter of the amount of carbon fuel they use to mine/refine/move the materials and build/run the factories, and the transport they use to move their finished product and run all of the processes that lead up to the product being made. All of which drives emissions.
To draw on an example thats incredibly apt right now, considering Utah is now allowing a datacenter that will use 9 GW of power, more than every combined person and business in the state uses.
A data center is designed in CAD software - electrical energy from the grid is used in the computer
The data center is built - Heavy machinery prepares the ground and Concrete is poured - earthmovers use carbon fuel, the concrete manufacturer itself burns fuel to create the concrete, then ships it via trucks to the building site where it is poured, setting concrete also releases carbon dioxide.
The computer components are built - rare earth metals are dug from the ground and refined into chips that are shipped to factories where they are assembled onto circuitboards - the material and manufacture requirements of these components take a lot of fuel, and a lot of highly specialised equipment that is energy intensive
The computer components are shipped to the site - this also takes fuel.
This is all contributing to the emissions cost that the company has racked up, and the datacenter isn’t even active yet.
ALSO, NONE of these examples take into account physical pollution, where crude oil or a carbon product (such as in Palestine… the American one; where a derailed train load of polyvinyl was set on fire and left to uncontrollably burn because it was cheaper than calling a chemical spill team) is either poured into the worlds water from crashed tankers or from drilling platforms (or from military actions where refineries are burned, and we get events like the mass swathe of marine life dieoff thanks to oil being spilled into the ocean)
Hopefully that answers your question, if not you’ll have to ask a different way because I don’t know what you mean when you say “why do they produce emissions?” (The answer is burning things makes emissions, and they’re burning the lot.)
The point they are trying to get at is that the vast majority of carbon produced by these companies is produced to see to the wants and needs of common people, and it is disingenuous to imply that solving climate change would impact no one except these companies shareholders.
Most carbon isn’t being created to build data centers. It is used to build roads, apartments, office buildings, cars, and trains. It is created by people driving cars or using gas stoves or eating hamburgers or running a heat pump on electricity generated in a coal plant. It is created when cheap plastic knick knacks are manufactured in indonesia, shipped across an ocean, and then transported overland to a store where they can be bought, used today, and thrown in the dump the next.
So regardless of where you apply pressure to stymie climate change, common people will be impacted, and pretending otherwise is essentially telling a lie to those common people.
I’m being a bit annoying about it because the companies don’t burn all that crap for fun but, as you laid out, for our collective consumption patterns. I developed the impression that the whole “x companies do y% of emissions!” thing, similar to “no ethical consumption” reminders tends to fulfill a function not aimed at motivating larger-scale changes (e.g. banning animal agriculture wholly instead of making an individual choice to not consume em; banning ICE cars from being produced/sold while creating comprehensive public transport instead of merely biking to work yourself) but at detaching oneself from the role we do actually play in society. (Also, smaller/individual scale weirdoes are a good source of activists that can radiate social structures out into general society)
To be clear: the direction I’d like to see isn’t ignoring larger-scale changes but embracing that these things are linked. Companies don’t burn fuel for fun, but for profit (or non-capitalist modes of resource allocation - if the central party committee decides to satiate the people’s hunger for meat and cars, that’s also a problem). And the profit there comes from all of us, individually as well as collectively. So action against that probably should also happen on both levels.
I think the issue lies in that the corporations have an incentive to keep the increased carbon footprint and the average person composting or sorting trash for recycling (typical footprint reduction suggestions) does nothing to reduce this incentive. Moving the markets desires away from items with high carbon footprints is a monumental task and one we should strive for but a faster method of reduction would be direct pressure to the corporations exploiting cheap labor that has a higher carbon footprint cost
Combustion produces byproducts, such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and depending on the fuel or the quality of combustion, sulphur oxides and other fantastically poisonous substances that are building up in our limited breathing air and drinking water.
Engines that use this process are called internal combustion engines, they mix the fuel with air and ignite it, this creates heat and pressure, because the big molecules that make up the fuel are broken down into a massive quantity of smaller ones. That pressure then pushes on pistons which turn a crankshaft that can be connected to a transmission in a car, or a generator in a power plant, the hot exhaust gases that make up a lot of the pollution then get forced out of the engine into the air.
Unless you’re asking why specifically those companies are the ones producing the emissions, in which case it’s a matter of the amount of carbon fuel they use to mine/refine/move the materials and build/run the factories, and the transport they use to move their finished product and run all of the processes that lead up to the product being made. All of which drives emissions.
To draw on an example thats incredibly apt right now, considering Utah is now allowing a datacenter that will use 9 GW of power, more than every combined person and business in the state uses.
A data center is designed in CAD software - electrical energy from the grid is used in the computer
The data center is built - Heavy machinery prepares the ground and Concrete is poured - earthmovers use carbon fuel, the concrete manufacturer itself burns fuel to create the concrete, then ships it via trucks to the building site where it is poured, setting concrete also releases carbon dioxide.
The computer components are built - rare earth metals are dug from the ground and refined into chips that are shipped to factories where they are assembled onto circuitboards - the material and manufacture requirements of these components take a lot of fuel, and a lot of highly specialised equipment that is energy intensive
The computer components are shipped to the site - this also takes fuel.
This is all contributing to the emissions cost that the company has racked up, and the datacenter isn’t even active yet.
ALSO, NONE of these examples take into account physical pollution, where crude oil or a carbon product (such as in Palestine… the American one; where a derailed train load of polyvinyl was set on fire and left to uncontrollably burn because it was cheaper than calling a chemical spill team) is either poured into the worlds water from crashed tankers or from drilling platforms (or from military actions where refineries are burned, and we get events like the mass swathe of marine life dieoff thanks to oil being spilled into the ocean)
Hopefully that answers your question, if not you’ll have to ask a different way because I don’t know what you mean when you say “why do they produce emissions?” (The answer is burning things makes emissions, and they’re burning the lot.)
The point they are trying to get at is that the vast majority of carbon produced by these companies is produced to see to the wants and needs of common people, and it is disingenuous to imply that solving climate change would impact no one except these companies shareholders.
Most carbon isn’t being created to build data centers. It is used to build roads, apartments, office buildings, cars, and trains. It is created by people driving cars or using gas stoves or eating hamburgers or running a heat pump on electricity generated in a coal plant. It is created when cheap plastic knick knacks are manufactured in indonesia, shipped across an ocean, and then transported overland to a store where they can be bought, used today, and thrown in the dump the next.
So regardless of where you apply pressure to stymie climate change, common people will be impacted, and pretending otherwise is essentially telling a lie to those common people.
I’m being a bit annoying about it because the companies don’t burn all that crap for fun but, as you laid out, for our collective consumption patterns. I developed the impression that the whole “x companies do y% of emissions!” thing, similar to “no ethical consumption” reminders tends to fulfill a function not aimed at motivating larger-scale changes (e.g. banning animal agriculture wholly instead of making an individual choice to not consume em; banning ICE cars from being produced/sold while creating comprehensive public transport instead of merely biking to work yourself) but at detaching oneself from the role we do actually play in society. (Also, smaller/individual scale weirdoes are a good source of activists that can radiate social structures out into general society)
To be clear: the direction I’d like to see isn’t ignoring larger-scale changes but embracing that these things are linked. Companies don’t burn fuel for fun, but for profit (or non-capitalist modes of resource allocation - if the central party committee decides to satiate the people’s hunger for meat and cars, that’s also a problem). And the profit there comes from all of us, individually as well as collectively. So action against that probably should also happen on both levels.
I think the issue lies in that the corporations have an incentive to keep the increased carbon footprint and the average person composting or sorting trash for recycling (typical footprint reduction suggestions) does nothing to reduce this incentive. Moving the markets desires away from items with high carbon footprints is a monumental task and one we should strive for but a faster method of reduction would be direct pressure to the corporations exploiting cheap labor that has a higher carbon footprint cost