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Apple: 75% of Our World Wide Power Needs Now Come From Renewable Power Sources
skade88 writes "Apple now owns and runs enough renewable energy power plants that 75% of their world wide power needs come from renewable sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and hydro. From the Apple Blog Post: 'Our investments are paying off. We've already achieved 100 percent renewable energy at all of our data centers, at our facilities in Austin, Elk Grove, Cork, and Munich, and at our Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino. And for all of Apple's corporate facilities worldwide, we're at 75 percent, and we expect that number to grow as the amount of renewable energy available to us increases. We won't stop working until we achieve 100 percent throughout Apple.'"
We mean human souls... Muahahahaha
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Does that include the Asian suppliers' and subcontractors' plants that actually manufacture all of Apple's products?
I didn't think so.
So perhaps Apple should not too their own horn very loudly on this.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Green Apple then?
Oil IS renewable, but takes a long time. Solar power is not renewable. Once the sun has spent its fuel there can be no more.
That's what they mean by "renewable energy source".
That's why Apple products are so expensive!
PS: I wonder how renewable the energy burned to drive the truck that deliver products to their retail stores is.
It's just a marketing.
Renewable power bought from a utility company is a zero-sum game--only one party gets to use it, and everyone else gets stuck with whatever's left. So until they are actually generating all that power themselves, the claim is just chest thumping. No real benefit to the environment.
It also says "needs." But the needs don't come from energy sources - the needs come from all the servers, etc, they're running. -1 Pedantic.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Did they indeed ignore it? I was assuming manufacturing is part of their power needs. Do you have a link showing it's excluded?
Sure: the one from the article.
And for all of Appleâ(TM)s corporate facilities worldwide, weâ(TM)re at 75 percent
The 75% figure doesn't include manufacturing, or Apple stores, or energy costs used shipping iDevices from China. It only refers to "corporate facilities," whatever that means.
It's fairly clear that it doesn't include manufacturing - which is contracted out anyway, remember, so it's not like Apple owns any factories - and it doesn't include retail. And since we're only talking buildings, it clearly doesn't cover energy spent shipping from China, let alone to Apple stores.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Why so much Apple hate here? Yes, they have shitloads of cash. Yes, they make the most of a capitalist system. I couldn't care less if Apple went bankrupt tomorrow. I'm just asking, WHY SO MUCH HATRED? This company actually invests in renewable energy - how many other fortune 200 companies are doing this? It seems like this is just more of the same old attitude - "It's a money making entity! Kill it!"
Where is moderation: -1 False?
"Corporate facilities" means the 20 some odd buildings in Cupertino (and the surrounding areas) that makes up Apple (excluding retail), as well as the the satellite facilities in Austin, Paris, and Vancouver (and smaller ones elsewhere). It also includes the data centers.
"Twenty percent comes from the energy generated by the white-hot hatred of Slashdot users!"
Dark Reflection
Right, that's why you would buy Samsung. Now with even more child labour and more denied cancer deaths, right ? You are a moron of epic proportions if you think child labour is an Apple specific problem and/or all other manufacturers are holy. Quite the opposite. Foxconn conditions within the Apple section are bad, but still among the best in china. The wages in Shanghai(china) are far above those in Taiwan.
You mean the child slave labour that Apple actually works hard to not use, unlike every other tech company?
It's already clear that they conveniently left out all manufacturing/storage facilities, as if subcontracting made them not responsible. And of course, they don't use conflict minerals, their workers work 8-hour shifts in comfy offices ... you get the idea.
They left it out because those places are beyond their control. I suppose Apple could go to another contract manufacturer, maybe one that Dell or HP uses. Oh wait, it's the same one. There are not a lot of choices when it comes to this kind of manufacturing. Finding one that is green is not likely.
Suppose you want to go green. You can do all you can use renewable energy at your home. What about your work place? Is your company green? What about the facilities they rent? What about they supermarket you use, the dry cleaners, etc? Do you have kids and is their school green? Is your car/bus/subway green? Unless you own 100% of every aspect of your life that uses energy, you have to accept that some places will use fossil fuels as energy.
Apple is converting the facilities that they control as much as they can. You can criticize them for things out of their control or you can applaud them for doing what they can.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
These places are not under Apple's control unless they buy the facilities outright then convert them. Dell and HP have the same problem too if they were to convert to green energy. Dell and HP don't own Foxconn that manufacturers their goods. They don't own stores like BestBuy that sell their wares.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Much like the term 'All-Natural', Renewable doesn't mean much.
The term causes the mind to think of things like 'Solar, Wind, Water, Geothermal', but the reality is that Renewable also means: "BioDiesel, Wood, Ethanol, Methane"
My point is, that there are many polluting, but renewable sources. I don't mean to imply that making sure our energy supply is sustainable is a bad thing, not at all, but just a reminder to keep an eye out for the marketing angle companies use when they use the term 'Renewable'.
People hear 'clean, green, healthy, responsible' when a company says they are renewable, but the honest truth is that a company could be powered by 100% Renewable Sources by burning pine trees in a 100 year old 30% efficiency furnace.
A previous company of mine recently converted their entire energy supply to renewable sources, generation was performed on site. The source was sawdust from the local saw mills. (However, it was actually a good move, because their system was actually a new high efficiency process they wanted to showcase, and by purchasing from the local sawmills, they helped support the community in a very direct fashion)
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
And for all of Apple's corporate facilities worldwide, we're at 75 percent
So their office buildings? What about the factories where all their products are made? You know... where probobly 99.9% of the power they use is consumed?
My fireplace is now powered by 100% renewable resources! I challenge the rest of the world to meet my same goals!
If you care to actually read up http://www.apple.com/environment/our-footprint/
One should also take into account the useful life of the products they manufacture, with sealed-in batteries and throw-away design, along with their own marketing effort to out-fashion their own devices after only two years.
Using terajoules of the cleanest energy to produce stuff that will end up in the trash faster than you can say "planned obsolescence" is still waste.
I'll applaud when they reverse the flow and encourage people to keep their computers longer through cheap support plans and openness.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
The 75% figure doesn't include manufacturing, or Apple stores
It doesn't include most manufacturing, because that is mostly third party companies. But why would you say it doesn't include Apple Stores? Of course it does.
Because "corporate space" does not include "retail space".
I knew when I saw the title of this, Apple was going to get flamed here by slashdotters no matter what. I was not let down. It's hard for me to understand why good news is turned into bad news on this site so often based solely on a brand name. Is it not respectable that a company with a huge global presence would be striving to be more efficient with the energy they use, and succeeding? Would there be this much flaming going on if it were Google, or IBM, or Samsung?
I do work for many IBM data-centers across the country. Apple use's IBM's products for their datacenters, and I know these servers and storage racks are not power sippers. I find it astounding that they could run one of them (much less all of them) on purely renewable energy. An entire large datacenter of IBM equipment running off solar power and fuel cells is truly a feat I'd love to see in person.
"That'll never compile."
I have little or no influence on my employer's, my local supermarket's or their landlords' decisions on energy consumption. But Apple has enough clout on their suppliers to have them build dedicated plants. Apple can surely push Foxconn for (realistic) green energy policies, and hopefully did so.
Of course office buildings are easier to make green/carbon-neutral than manufacturing plants (in an industrial park you use whatever source of power is available), and that's the gist of the half-truth: When they say "our power" it's not just what they own, but what they control and benefit from.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Really though, what do they mean? I did not see where they define what they consider renewable.
Apple's definition of renewable is Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Sadly, there are lots of reasons why renewable sources won't solve our energy needs. Tom Murphy, a physics prof at UCSD, has a great blog http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-matrix/ where he works out the details. This was covered a while ago here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/08/02/2315207/limits-on-growth-of-energy-use-and-economies
What I'm pointing out is that Apple puts forward a green image that is at best inaccurate and at worst misleading, but anyway:
Clout is not infinite - if Apple pushes Foxconn to be greener, Foxconn will charge more money.
Yup, it's about the bottom line - beyond a certain point (e.g. efficient usage of materials), green cuts into margins. It's not unreasonable to think that Apple subcontracts what it can to China for more reasons than cheap labor.
In that context why don't you find a greener job, or bike to a farmer's market? It's much easier to underestimate the cost of a sacrifice that you ask someone else to make than than a sacrifice you make yourself. The reason for this is that you're aware of the details involved for yourself, but view Apple from far away where everything is rounded and shiny.
Greener markets: check (farmers drive all the way from other states). Greener jobs: none in my line of work. There are not even many recycling containers in this country since things went downhill. Plus some products are certainly out of our control (green electronics?). I sacrifice what I can - not throwing away what I can mend or repurpose, print only what I must, CCFL, etc.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Simple... They're not talking about the exact electrons used being shoved down a wire in a renewable energy based generator. They're saying "we use xW of energy in total, we personally generate 0.75xW of renewable energy".