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Why Apple Just Invested in Wind Turbines In China (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CNN Money:
Apple's latest deal in China doesn't have anything to do with smartphones. The tech giant is investing in the Chinese wind power industry, turning to the world's most populous country to help it achieve its goal of getting 100% of its energy from renewable sources. The iPhone maker struck a deal this week to buy a 30% stake in three subsidiaries of Goldwind, China's biggest wind-turbine manufacturer... it's Apple's largest clean energy project to date and the first of its kind in the wind power sector, Lisa Jackson, vice president of Apple's environment initiatives, told state-run newspaper China Daily...
Environmental group Greenpeace has warned that electronics manufacturing uses a lot of energy in China, drawing on the country's high number of polluting coal power stations. Apple's moves into renewable energy are an attempt to compensate for this... The new wind project will add 285 megawatts of clean energy to China's grid, which Apple says will offset some of the other sources used by its operations and those of its immediate suppliers Foxconn, Lens, Catcher and Solvay.
Environmental group Greenpeace has warned that electronics manufacturing uses a lot of energy in China, drawing on the country's high number of polluting coal power stations. Apple's moves into renewable energy are an attempt to compensate for this... The new wind project will add 285 megawatts of clean energy to China's grid, which Apple says will offset some of the other sources used by its operations and those of its immediate suppliers Foxconn, Lens, Catcher and Solvay.
The reason is simple. If apple brought the money home and invested it in turbines in the USA, it would have had to pay taxes on them.
The bad thing about this is that apple is allowed to invest its money abroad while evading taxes in the first place. Yes, the pentagon wastes a lot of money, but that's no reason for not paying taxes.
You can claim he's smart and does it legally. Well so is Apple.
Blame it on your loopholes and the Politicians that came up with them.
Apple has a shareholder responsibility to minimise taxes just like Donald have self interest to do so.
I remember when they made computers.
The concept of "offsetting" your bad behavior by purchasing carbon credits or investing in "green energy" is complete bullshit. It is the same concept that sociopaths use to justify their behavior. You can't buy your way to being good.
It's like Algore buying carbon indulgences than flying around the world in his two private jets.
This really isn't the same as investing and building renewable energy infrastructure means that you don't need to get your power from some other source that creates more pollution. While I agree that the idea of carbon offsets is pretty pointless, this isn't the same. I suppose you could argue that if someone else just buys the coal power that Apple stops using, it didn't really change anything, which is certainly a possibility, but still better than just building more coal plants.
Be it Google or Apple, it doesn't matter if these companies are "offsetting" anything or buying carbon credits and whatnot.
These are the companies that have enough money to directly build and invest on renewable power infrastructures to supply their own demands.
What's the point of them buying stakes on renewable energy companies if in the end their data centers and factories are still using unregulated coal power, usually in cities that desperately need to move away from those? It's a half assed way to make them look good.
It also creates a false equivalence... if this tendency catches up, we won't make the necessary changes to replace dirty energy sources with clean ones where it's most needed. You only pay for a bunch of clean sources that are away from where it's really needed, and help keep regular coal and oil sources where they have always been, usually to feed the industrial complexes in big cities with tons of vehicles that are all plenty polluting by themselves.
I mean, it sure is better than nothing, but still a half-assed way to go around it. Specially because it ends up delaying decisions, investment in R&D, and overall thinking on how to completely eliminate dirty sources.
Almost every time I see news about them, it has virtually nothing to do with their products. And when it does, it's usually about some insanely bad design decisions leading to premature device failure, or some other long running problem that they've been completely ignoring and only recently acknowledged on a limited basis because they were forced to by threat of a huge class action lawsuit.
So... What exactly does Apple do?
They don't make premium hardware anymore (charging premium prices isn't the same thing). They don't make computers anymore, they're more akin to disposable appliances. They have a dozen different handheld product lineups, none of which really do any one thing particularly well (anyone remember the 1990s after they booted out Jobs and started releasing the numbered series computers?). Their software is in tatters, the underlying core is rotting from the inside out and every year they just slap more shitty features on top of a seriously shaky foundation.
And yet, I continue to hear about shit like this, instead of things like "Hey, we're going to double down on making OS X a world class operating system and turn the server OS back into something enterprises can actually use... Oh yeah, one last thing, we're bringing back the XServe, and the classic Mac Pro design, and the Mac Mini with removable RAM sticks!"...
I'm confused. Are you suggesting that Apple manufacture their products without using electricity?
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
What they make is COURAGE. Never forget that.
The problem is that market forces apply here. Apple didn't prevent any coal from being fired, instead they just contributed to a smaller demand for coal and a larger demand for wind turbines. Obviously, if this causes wind turbines to be built this is a good thing, but the smaller demand for coal only means that coal is now cheaper. The only way to prevent fossil fuels from being blown into the air is to actually buy the exploitation rights and then chose to not extract. The moment it gets out of the earth and lighted up (whether by you or not), its bad for the climate, no matter how many wind turbines are next to it.
Its not like with vegetarians where not eating meat means less animals are raised for food processing. The owner of the fossil fuels still wants to get rid of them, and in many parts of the world people use poop for fire making, I'm sure they'd love to buy coal instead, if it just wasn't so expensive (from their perspective).
Are you under the impression that environmentalists think that everyone should stop flying, driving, heating and cooling their homes, etc? Yes, you may find some radicals that believe things like that, but that is not a mainstream position. The mainstream positions are that consumption efficiencies need to be improved and production impacts need to be reduced.
Now, if your argument is that you think that it's unfair that there's such an economic wealth disparity that some people like Al Gore own private planes while many Americans can't afford a car, that so much of the world's production (and thus environmental impact) goes toward servicing the wealthy and so little toward the poor and middle class, and you think that government officials need to be voting for policies to minimize wealth inequality rather than huge tax breaks for the wealthy that give them an even larger share of the total environmental impact on the planet, then I have only one thing to say to that: "Welcome to the Democratic Party!"
But if you're of the impression that the concept of environmentalism is the same thing as reducing income inequality (and thus consumption inequality), you're sadly mistaken. Mainstream environmentalism is built around across the board improvements - things that effect everyone, not just specific groups.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
We should be using *all* available energy sources.
When the cost of power spiked in north CA six years ago, I ripped out my two electric furnaces and replaced then with coal stoves (one heat, one combo heat/cook stove). You know what?? They're not dirty, not sooty, and provide a higher quality of heat for a **MUCH** lower price than electricity. Consider me a coal convert. IMHO, more people should be considering coal for heating and cooking needs. **Much** cheaper than electricity in this particular market. If you're in CA though, you have to get the stove from somewhere like Idaho because of environmental reasons and the shipping can be steep (you'll recover it in after the first season you use the stove).
Perpetual motion is quackery, but we use it every day with solar, geothermal, wind and hydroelectric sources. I'll grant you that "perpetual" doesn't really apply when applied to sources of energy that come from a giant ball of gas undergoing fusion, since it isn't technically perpetual. Nonetheless, it is free energy on a human scale. Let's support investing in collecting and using such free energy sources because it makes life better for all of us. I know Apple isn't without its faults, but each time humanity invests in this sort of thing, it also improves our lot as a whole.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
As long as the cost of avoiding it "legally" or not saves money over paying it, the tax will ALWAYS be avoided. NO level of tax to those who do not want to pay tax (IMO why bother: it's still more money you get than you had by earning less, and the benefits come back to you too, unless you avoid being in the country entirely), so proclaiming some taxation a "bad tax" is pointless at best, meaningless, and, at worst, destructive.
It's not as simple as that. If you can force the value of coal down, then less will be extracted because some pits will not be economically viable. Ultimately, a new equilibrium will develop, which probably involves less coal being burned.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Apple has a ton of money
Apples stuff is made in China
Greenhouse gas emmissions are a global problem
And Trump doesn't beieve in global warming, so why invest in the US?
To put it another way, this whole line reminds me of the same thing with charity. You have a person with money who supports a charitable cause, and they give a lot of money to it, and someone responds, "..but you still have possessions X, Y, and Z! if you really supported the charity you'd donate more!". But it's a line of attack that the person donating to charity can never win: no matter how much they give, they can still be attacked for owning things, unless they donate to the point that they're homeless in the streets scrounging for food from trash cans.
If the argument was that Al Gore had a particularly high level of environmental impact relative to his wealth and other factors worthy of consideration (his job, where he lives, etc), then that would absolutely be grounds for charges of hypocrisy. But otherwise what you're really complaining about is wealth inequality, and doing the unwinnable argument, "If Person X really cared about Issue Y, then they'd give even more than they currently do!" - regardless of what that level of giving is.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
... renewable energy is the future and Apple has more cash than God.
It's a sound investment and a way for Apple to diversify.
However, it's also a red flag.
Apple is not investing in R&D and cannot buy a Steve Jobs replacement.
When companies step away from their core competency, it forms a bubble that pops down the road.
As they implode, they sell off all the non-core assets and concentrate on the original business model -- often too late to save itself.
I give you Mobil Oil Corporation.
I worked for them back in the mid-late 80s and they went into real estate, insurance; bought Montgomery Ward, built Reston, Va. from scratch, and all kinds of other non-petrochemical endeavors.
By the very late 90s, they kicked us all out of the IT departments, world-wide, and went super nova, casting off all the extra bullshit.
Exxon picked them up for a song.
Others: HP, Yahoo!, provide examples, as well.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I agree with that, but it makes life for green energies much harder when they have to compare to extraction costs directly. And there are many fossil resources which are very cheap to extract. So yeah, maybe cheaper engergy prices will make oil fracking not possible economically, but saudi arabia will be able to sell their oil for a long time to come.
If the argument was that Al Gore had a particularly high level of environmental impact relative to his wealth and other factors worthy of consideration (his job, where he lives, etc), then that would absolutely be grounds for charges of hypocrisy.
They already tried that, with their campaign about houses. It was making the rounds a few years ago, but is now shockingly obsolete.
They don't even like hearing that Bush moved to a new house, or that if Al Gore wants, he could pay for dozens of homes to be improved to save more energy than shutting down his house.
A business thats full of hot air should invest in wind turbines. Whee lots more spin!!!!!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Electricity generated in China isn't used in America. The distance is too far for the charge to make it around the globe.
The story is a lie.
Apple is investing in Chinese wind farms and doing absolutely nothing to mitigate its local carbon footprint.
My bet is they won't be putting up a local wind farm to actually use renewable energy.
Cause that would require investing In America - instead of china.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
the perfect article that unites Apple-haters and climate deniers with making China great again! :)
The next step in climate talks will be import tariffs on rogue nations such as my own (Australia) that do not have a credible emissions reduction program.
Declaring their electricity 'green' a decade before the Europeans impose an import tax on goods manufactured from 'dirty' power makes sense fiscally and helps them stay ahead of their competitors.
Regardless of what people may think about Apple's business practices otherwise...
The concept of "offsetting" your bad behavior by purchasing carbon credits or investing in "green energy" is complete bullshit. It is the same concept that sociopaths use to justify their behavior. You can't buy your way to being good.
You know how to lose weight? By exercising. Even if you weigh 500 lbs and can only barely walk around the block once, by doing that pathetically inadequate one-block walk that you set up the conditions so that next week you can walk around the block twice, and next month you can walk several miles. Next year maybe you weigh only 300 lbs and can jog, and the year after that you've dropped to 180 lbs and can run a marathon.
Similarly, neither Apple nor any other industrial giant is going to be able to transition to 100% clean energy on day one. But they can start the transition, one small step at a time, and someday they'll get there, judgmental naysayers notwithstanding.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
yeah, those market forces making you use more electricity when someone builds a wind turbine. maybe for the shock therapy you had to make you an idiot. yes idiot - apple did the definition of preventing more coal being burned. I know you think they burn coal to make the electricity for spinning the big propeller, but here, I'll explain it to the idiot: coal makes electricity. turbine makes electricity. we use same amount electricity and we don't know what makes it. if turbine makes more, coal need make less.
got it now you stupid fucking moron?
when surveyed that's what CEOs were planning on spending the money on once the incoming administration removes those taxes. That means layoffs, and lots of 'em, because that's what you do after a M&A spree. It also means less competition. Meaning price hikes. I suppose there'll be a little investment, in automation. That's what Carrier's gonna do with about half the money they're getting paid to keep those jobs around....
Now, if we had the political will to actually make them pay their fair share towards a decent civilization I'd be all for it. But I don't think that's gonna happen. So we block the money from coming back into the country where it'll just get used for bad things.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is Apple looking for the next opportunity to make money. This is not only about saving the planet. Anyway, it's still a great move.
It's probably because they will profit somehow with this AND get to pretend they're good guys.
And I read it as "Why Apple Just Invented Wind Turbines In China" and was looking forward to the usual /. diatribes...
> They are not "evading" taxes. What they are doing is perfectly legal.
If you get to buy your laws, everything becomes eventually legal.
the answer is: "dont by electronics from a company run by a faggot"
Basically, China continues to put in more new coal plants (35-50 GW / year) than they put in AE (20-30 GW / year).
They should stop ALL new coal plants and start closing them, esp. the old ones. BUT, they are counting on these to power their EVs, which is what they are pushing more.
now, this may look like Apple is helping, but they are not. China will continue to build out NEW coal plants that exceed the AE. As such, prices for electricity will go down and their investment will be worthless.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nobody cares that Bush's house uses more energy than Gore's. Because Bush isn't a self righteous hypocrite but Gore is.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This looks like an incidental investment. Nothing to do with their core competencies and all about stuffing excess cash because they run out of ideas for using it productively.
So if they use X megawatts from a power grid to manufacture things, and invest 30% into a wind farm that is going to produce 3(X) megawatts of power... we should be admonishing them?
You are a fucking tool.
There is only so much electrical load. By definition, if a larger percentage of the grid's load comes from wind / solar, then less is coming from coal.
It's not like load goes up magically when you add a source of generation - that load was already there and you were in a state of overload, or you now have added capacity.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It's like Algore buying carbon indulgences than flying around the world in his two private jets.
He doesn't even own one plane, let alone two. And while we're at it: His "oceanfront mansion" is 2 miles from the shore and 500 feet above.