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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.
I remember when they made computers.
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.
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.
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
Coal is burned for electrical generation where no other practical method is available, particularly in China... so if you're talking about Foxconn you are spot on.
If you are not, you are under-appreciative of the positive impact even lip service to the environment brings when a corporate giant such as this makes a commitment to renewables.
If we could just get the next gen Nuclear plants implemented...
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.
No, if you disagree, then you support facts. And, for that matter, if you support democracy (aka, the person who gets the most votes wins). The US is, however, not a democracy - at least when it comes to electing the president. Which is why Trump will be president.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
I think you're confused. They're not buying "carbon credits". They're literally putting money into the manufacture of wind turbines. More wind turbines will exist because of this. 285MW nameplate more. Wherein does the problem lie?
And what do you think that the additional produced turbines will do - lie around on a factory floor? They'll be installed and generating power on the grid. Who cares where?
And more to the point, you don't just get power from a single power plant. You're connected to a grid which moves power among numerous plants. In particular, on the Chinese grid there's a number of HVDC and HVAC lines that bring power from the sparsely populated interior (wind, hydro, etc) to the densely populated coast. Directly reducing the need for power generation infrastructure on the coast, even though the wind / hydro / etc hardware isn't located on the coast.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
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?
The anti-renewable energy crowd don't understand this critical point: electricity is fungible. If they reduce demand for dirty power, it really doesn't matter which coal-powered generator shuts down.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
To be strictly correct, the election hasn't yet taken place. No one has voted for Trump.
The actual vote takes place around December 19.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
To be strictly correct, there is no "the" election. There are two presidential elections. The first election (November 9) has taken place. The second election (December 19), as you say, hasn't yet taken place.
you are wicked close
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
Coincidence?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
it really doesn't matter which coal-powered generator shuts down.
Well, it does a little depending what you are downwind of, but yeah. Though it may be a more effective suppressor to coal in some markets than in others depending on the price of coal in that market.
Someone had to do it.
You're hilarious, China is currently building 52 GW of coal plants (79 plants) in other countries, this 256 MW of wind farm is a gnats fart in a hurricane and doesn't matter. Typical renewable energy crowd here, into symbolism over substance, can't understand math nor magnitudes of energy.
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...
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.
You're right, Apple is not putting up wind farms in the US. They're putting up (mostly) solar farms
This means Apple will now be able to sell renewable power it does not need but it owns or has under contract — note that 93% of Apple facilities worldwide run on renewable electricity.
According to the FERC filing, Apple holds positions in these solar properties:
67.5 MW of facilities in North Carolina
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.
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.
Of course one wind farm is small in comparison to the total investment in old technologies, idiot. It's not a useful comparison. What if I compared one coal plant against the total investments in renewable energy?
In reality, China is making huge investments in renewable energy.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It's probably because they will profit somehow with this AND get to pretend they're good guys.
But apple haters are gonna keep on hating no matter what.
That is the real story.
Some people hate Apple more than they hate those in government.
Yet Apple paid more tax in the USA than any other company. Even that is not enough. They want a special Apple tax rate of 150%.
Make America Great === Donald ruling by Tweet. Fuck Congress and the Senate and the States, Tweets tell the mass unwashed what their 'Dear Leader' wants of them directly.
{Donald has obviously read 1984 several times and in well on his way to making it a reality. Hillary will be the first into Room 101}
I had to Google. At one time, I was pretty up to date on NASCAR, but that was ages ago.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.
No, The American People voted to elect Trump, under a set of rules laid out by The American Government.
If The American People wanted the rules to be different, they would have used their precious Democratic Powers to change how they elect their presidents.
Trump's victory has no legitimacy now. He called for Russia to hack Clinton's email, they did and it handed him the win. Putin made Trump his bitch, weak and illegitimate.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.
No, if you disagree, then you support facts. And, for that matter, if you support democracy (aka, the person who gets the most votes wins). The US is, however, not a democracy - at least when it comes to electing the president. Which is why Trump will be president.
The US isn't a democracy either when it comes to congressional elections given how heavily gerrymandered the congressional district are gerrymandering and the ongoing efforts of the GOP to ensure that voters who are not likely to vote for the GOP are prevented from voting in the first place.
> Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.
a) You European fuck, you clearly don't know much about American elections and their rules. b) Back in 2000, Gore won the popular vote. A popular vote "loss" is meaningless.
You don't have to be an American to understand that in a democracy the guy/gal with the most votes wins and that whatever your 'electoral college' is it's not democracy if it allows the runner up to win the election. Oh, and try to come up with some more imaginative profanity.
You clearly don't understand the electoral college. The people do not elect the president, period. It doesn't matter what it says on the ballot, you are voting for electors.
The pledged delegate system only came about as a side effect of the emergence of parties, and is completely extra-constitutional. Nobody designed the system we have today or "set out the rule", they just evolved piecewise.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
To be fair, there is a delicious irony in hearing the CIA complain about a foreign power interfering to install a right wing government in a different country ;)
Ghosts of the Cold War sometimes come back to bite you.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Of course this is against a backdrop of massive energy consumption increases, which makes moving away from coal extremely difficult.
China has epic pollution problems based on its dependency on low-grade coal. How bad is it? They're sending their kids to school in surgical masks, which unfortunately do almost nothing. Can you imagine that happening here?
Recent research, however, shows that while China's coal consumption has continued to increase, it has decreased as a fraction of total energy production. They aren't ready to solve their pollution problems, but they're at least trying to reduce the rate at which the problems get worse. They're trying to *shift* their coal use away from cities like Beijing.
Anyone who favors reviving coal jobs in the US should look at the air pollution problems in Beijing, or the Killer "Fog" that blanketed London in 1952. Not that that is likely to happen here; short of an attempt to actually promote coal use over natural gas coal won't be able to compete.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
"Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million."
Latest numbers are 65.74 million Clinton; 62.90 million Trump which puts her less than 200k behind Obama 2008 and Trumplethinskin is 2 million ahead of Romney.
I had no idea it takes so long to get a full count of votes in a presidential election.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
> Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.
a) You European fuck, you clearly don't know much about American elections and their rules.
b) Back in 2000, Gore won the popular vote. A popular vote "loss" is meaningless.
You don't have to be an American to understand that in a democracy the guy/gal with the most votes wins and that whatever your 'electoral college' is it's not democracy if it allows the runner up to win the election. Oh, and try to come up with some more imaginative profanity.
Under the rules, it's possible for *neither* candidate to become president. The electoral college could decide to vote for someone who didn't even campaign.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"The US isn't a democracy either"
Correct. The USA has never been a "democracy" but a constitutional republic.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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'
You underestimate how broken China is.
China has problems with days long traffic jams of single rear axle trucks hauling coal. Because powerful people own the obsolete coal plants near the cities, transmission lines from the coal producing regions are not being allowed to be constructed. Eventually they will build them, but not until the sons/daughters of central committee members make more money (and the power transmission companies fall into their hands).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Oh, I'm not underestimating how broken China is, not by a long shot. I'm just going by what the data says, which is that coal is declining, albeit slightly, as a share of energy there even as energy demand climbs. Just because it's broken doesn't mean they aren't trying.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The point is China is massively rolling out old tech in other countries, a little bit of renewables doesn't matter. You are the idiot thinking it means anything.
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.
No, but it's a pretty good statistic to trot out any time the person's candidate of choice doesn't win. It's called moving the goalposts.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Apple is not investing in R&D
Oh, for crying out loud. Apple spend $2.57 billion in R&D last quarter - almost 15 times as much as 10 years before when they were still working on the iPhone.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
You do get what happened, right?
Ten years before, they were not the power player they were post-iPhone.
Now they are speeding forward in a backwards direction.
Buying non-core shit is not R&D.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Buying non-core shit is not R&D.
Spending $2.5B on R&D is fucking R&D.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
This isn't fucking R&D..
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 little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
This isn't fucking R&D..
This is you or at least what you are fucking
What the hell makes you think the price of "buying a 30% stake in three subsidiaries of Goldwind, China's biggest wind-turbine manufacturer" would in any way or form be counted in Apple's R&D budget?
In case you already forgot your original claim to which I responded:
Apple is not investing in R&D
To which I replied the number Apple cites in their quarterly report, which is way higher than zero.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
What the hell makes you think the price of "buying a 30% stake in three subsidiaries of Goldwind, China's biggest wind-turbine manufacturer" would in any way or form be counted in Apple's R&D budget?
You made my point, didn't you?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
What the hell makes you think the price of "buying a 30% stake in three subsidiaries of Goldwind, China's biggest wind-turbine manufacturer" would in any way or form be counted in Apple's R&D budget?
You made my point, didn't you?
You have no point. And you probably can't read.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
And you probably can't read.
Because you can.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.