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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.

14 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Doesn't work that way by Rei · · Score: 2

    I'm confused. Are you suggesting that Apple manufacture their products without using electricity?

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    Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
  2. Re:Because "bad" taxes by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The bad thing about this is that apple is allowed to invest its money abroad while evading taxes in the first place.

    They are not "evading" taxes. What they are doing is perfectly legal. What is idiotic is that the US government thinks it should have the right to tax income made by selling products manufactured in China to Chinese consumers. No other country on earth tries to collect taxes on extraterritorial transactions. America needs to fix its tax laws.

  3. Re: Your new president doesn't pay taxes by Rei · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And don't claim you didn't vote for Trump. The American ppl did.

    Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.

    If you disagree then you either don't believe in democracy

    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.

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    Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
  4. Re:Because "bad" taxes by sabri · · Score: 4, Funny

    Have a snickers.

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    I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
  5. Re:Because "bad" taxes by sabri · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No other country on earth tries to collect taxes on extraterritorial transactions.

    Not true. A lot of countries tax business income from entities that are registered within its borders.

    If a business is headquartered in, let's say Dublin, then Ireland gets to collect taxes on any income (profit, depending on the local laws) on the worldwide income of that business.

    This is what is happening a lot, and this is how companies keep their taxes low. They create legal entities in tax-friendly companies, and divert income there.

    The U.S. does not tax businesses for income out of foreign entities. It does tax natural persons, citizens and lawful permanent residents, on their worldwide income.

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    I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
  6. Re:Half assed... by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    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?

    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.

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    Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
  7. Re:Doesn't work that way by whoever57 · · Score: 2

    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.

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    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  8. Re:Half assed... by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They'll be installed and generating power on the grid. Who cares where?

    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!
  9. Re:Doesn't work that way by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  10. Think about it by ozduo · · Score: 2, Funny

    A business thats full of hot air should invest in wind turbines. Whee lots more spin!!!!!

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  11. Re:I'm an "all the above guy" by skids · · Score: 2

    Using electricity for resistive heating is like using vintage wine to marinate. Electricity is kinetic-quaity energy... heat is just heat. Which is why air conditioners and heat pumps can move more "watts" of heat around than they use in watts of electricity.

    So it's no surprise that just about anything was cheaper than that.

  12. Re:electricity by kybred · · Score: 4, Informative

    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:

    • 20 MW Ft. Churchill solar farm in Lyon County, Nevada,
    • 50 MW Bonnybrooke solar facility under construction in Pinal County, Arizona
    • Two behind-the-meter generating plants totaling 18 MW on its California campus.
    • A long-term firm power purchase agreement with First Solar for 130 MW from a California solar farm under construction
      67.5 MW of facilities in North Carolina
  13. Re:Half assed... by whoever57 · · Score: 2

    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.

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    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  14. Re: Your new president doesn't pay taxes by Rei · · Score: 2

    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.

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    Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.