T-Mobile Commits To 100 Percent Renewable Electricity By 2021 (cnbc.com)

T-Mobile said on Monday that it will move to 100 percent renewable electricity by the year 2021. It had also "finalized a contract for wind power from the Solomon Forks Wind Project in Kansas," reports CNBC. "Power generation there is due to begin at the beginning of 2019, and will supplement the energy T-Mobile receives from the Red Dirt Wind Power Project in Oklahoma." From the report: John Legere, T-Mobile's president and CEO, said moving to renewable energy was the right thing to do and smart business. "We expect to cut T-Mobile's energy costs by around $100 million in the next 15 years thanks to this move," he added. T-Mobile has also joined the RE100, a group of global businesses committed to renewable power. Other members of the RE100 include Apple, Facebook and Google.

Comments

This is a wise choice, with a mix of renewables

[WillAffleckUW]

Wind, solar, and other renewable energy has a lower cost than old-school fossil fuels, and allows them to build grid resilience. Wind combined with either battery or compressed air storage allows you to achieve full reliability even during extreme weather events.

Given the distributed nature of their business, this allows them to drop costs and compete with other higher cost providers.

Re:This is a wise choice, with a mix of renewables

[jwhyche]

These are stories I like to read about. Trump may be trying to save a dying coal industry but I just don't see it happening. What I see happening, just as I hoped would happen, is companies realizing that being Green is a asset. I believe they are seeing the same things I'm seeing. An that is more people with money to spend are starting to think about where the shit they are buying comes from.

This is a good thing.

Just to say fossil fuels days are numbered. The fat lady isn't on the stage yet but she is defiantly in the opera house if not warming up back stage.

Publicity Stunt that has zero net effect

[Solandri]

Nuclear plants are typically run at max capacity, and renewables can't willfully increase the amount of electricity they generate. So any excess electricity generation has to come from fossil fuels. So buying electricity from a renewable plant doesn't change the total amount of renewable energy generated. If this wind farm was going to sell all the electricity it produced even if T-Mobile didn't buy any of it, then there's been no net change in the amount of fossil fuels consumed to generate electricity. All T-Mobile has done is cause a bunch of people who would've bought electricity from this wind farm, to buy electricity from a coal or gas plant instead.

Before

• 100 MWh generated by fossil fuels
• 20 MWh generated by wind farm
• T-Mobile consumes 10 MWh of fossil fuel electricity, everyone else consumes 90 MWh of fossil fuel electricity
• Everyone else consumes 20 MWh of wind electricity.

After:

• 100 MWh generated by fossil fuels
• 20 MWh generated by wind farm
• T-Mobile consumes 10 MWh of wind electricity, everyone else consumes 10 MWh of wind electricity.
• Everyone else consumes 100 MWh of fossil fuel electricity.

No net change in fossil fuel consumption. Assuming your energy consumption remains the same, to cause a real reduction in fossil fuel use, you have to use renewable energy which otherwise wasn't going to be generated e.g. If T-Mobile decided to install new wind turbines on property they owned, that would result in:

• 90 MWh generated by fossil fuels
• 20 MWh generated by wind farm, 10 MWh generated by T-Mobile's wind turbines
• T-Mobile consumes 10 MWh of wind electricity, everyone else consumes 20 MWh of wind electricity
• Eveyrone else consumes 90 MWh of fossil fuel electricity

That's a net 10 MWh of fossil fuel electricity consumption. Real changes in renewable energy use comes from adding renewable generation. Not from buying your electricity from a renewable source that was going to sell it all whether or not you bought form them. Likewise, charging your EV with solar panels on your house doesn't reduce the amount of electricity generated by fossil fuels. It only reduces it if the only reason you installed the panels was because you got the EV (that is, if you hadn't gotten the EV you wouldn't have installed the panels). If you were going to install the panels anyway, all you've done is shift solar electricity that was going to be used to your house, to be used your EV instead.

For the same reason, it's important to realize that energy conservation has the same impact regardless of whether you live in an area which gets most of its electricity from renewables or from fossil fuels. The entire electrical grid interconnected. Electricity generated by renewables that is not used locally is transmitted to other areas, where it causes a reduction in the amount of energy that needs to be generated by fossil fuel plants