Apple investment in Chinese wind farms providing 134 megawatts to grid

AppleInsider

The first three wind farms funded in part by the Apple-sponsored China Clean Energy Fund are online, and generating power for the Chinese grid.

The first recipients of the China Clean Energy Fund are a trio of wind farms. A pair are developed by the Concord New Energy Group Limited, with each farm generating 48 megawatts (MW). A 38 MW farm in bordering Hubei province developed by Fenghua Energy Investment rounds out the initial investment.

"To see these projects completed and already supplying clean energy to the grid is really exciting," said Apple's Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson. "We are proud that suppliers participating in the fund share our commitment to supporting innovative energy solutions, cutting emissions and fighting climate change."

Apple says that 44 suppliers in 16 countries have committed to using 100 percent clean energy to power Apple production. Apple and its suppliers will generate more than 4 gigawatts of clean energy worldwide by 2020, which the company says will cover one-third of the electricity needed for Apple's global manufacturers and suppliers.

The China Clean Energy Fund was launched in 2018, and connects suppliers with renewable energy projects. Apple and 10 of its suppliers in China will invest nearly $300 million by 2022 to develop projects totaling 1 gigawatt of renewable energy.

"We're excited to support developers like Concord and Fenghua," said Yuyu Peng, director of DWS Group which manages the China Clean Energy Fund. "The projects in Hunan and Hubei provide so many positive results. They not only support China's renewable energy goals, but also introduce our fund partners to diverse clean energy projects."

Joining Apple in the investment are Catcher Technology, Compal Electronics, Corning Incorporated, Golden Arrow, Jabil, Luxshare-ICT, Pegatron, Solway, Sunway Communication and Wistron. How much each party is contributing is still not known, but at inception, the fund had $300 million in it.

In early 2018, Apple announced its entire global operation, from corporate buildings to retail stores, are powered by 100 percent renewable sources. The company has built out a vast network of clean energy partners, and has invested in its own private assets like solar farms and fuel cell arrays that power its headquarters and data centers.

buckkalu

Wind farms don’t provide “clean energy”.  The amount of materials and fossil fuels required to make the three blades and base is enormous.  900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic.  Then there is the devastating effect the number of birds, bats and other insects killed by the blades.  Also the long term health effects of living within a miles of the turbine.  Oh and what happens when the wind is not blowing????

Give me a break

talexy

buckkalu said:

Wind farms don’t provide “clean energy”.  The amount of materials and fossil fuels required to make the three blades and base is enormous.  900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic.  Then there is the devastating effect the number of birds, bats and other insects killed by the blades.  Also the long term health effects of living within a miles of the turbine.  Oh and what happens when the wind is not blowing????

Give me a break

Please provide further information for your number-dropping.

mobird

Wind farms are interesting to observe as we drive through Kansas on our way to Colorado and then on our return trips home. We have observed the complete evolution of wind farms across Kansas and Colorado for years. Unfortunately, the number of times that the turbines sit idle while making these trips (numerous) and includes all different seasons of the year just doesn't make much sense to this observer...

The land owners are probably the ones that have the most to gain. It is also interesting to see a oil/gas pumpjack operating at the same sight for 20+ years non stop.

Also, not a fan of the impact solar panels and wind turbines have on the landscape.

avon b7

buckkalu said:

Wind farms don’t provide “clean energy”.  The amount of materials and fossil fuels required to make the three blades and base is enormous.  900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic.  Then there is the devastating effect the number of birds, bats and other insects killed by the blades.  Also the long term health effects of living within a miles of the turbine.  Oh and what happens when the wind is not blowing????

Give me a break

I think that's a bit of an extreme take on 'clean' in the context most people will take it. I agree that they are a menace to wildlife and this is now becoming an issue in the public eye. Perhaps someone will come up with a solution for that issue but power lines and cars also kill wildlife

We still have a way to go but these are steps that have to be taken and if Apple (and big business in general) is investing in contaminating less it can only be good.

Historically, solar panels have also contained environmental hazards but we are now discovering better, cheaper materials to make them.

mjtomlin

buckkalu said:

Wind farms don’t provide “clean energy”.  The amount of materials and fossil fuels required to make the three blades and base is enormous.  900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic.  Then there is the devastating effect the number of birds, bats and other insects killed by the blades.  Also the long term health effects of living within a miles of the turbine.  Oh and what happens when the wind is not blowing????

Give me a break

Give us a break! This is the most used and single worst argument made by people against clean energy. Everything mentioned can be applied to harvesting fossil fuels as well, and it can lead to much more devastating damages to the environment; oil spills, coal mine fires, strip mining, etc.

The statistics for birds and bats and other insects is not devastating.

And there are no proven long-term health affects of being near an electric generator... people have worked around them for 100 years. Hell, anyone who drives a car sits right behind one.

rob53

This is the type of success story more media outlets need to cover because it shows cooperation between a US company and a foreign government to start reducing to use of fossil fuels that contaminate our world. As for the renewable energy haters, so far everything takes fossil fuel created energy to manufacture things BUT one of these days that dirty energy source will be replaced with clean energy sources. Apple is a prime example of a company working to minimize the amount of dirty energy sources, replacing them with clean energy sources. Once more companies contribute to the amount of clean energy the amount of dirty energy will be reduced significantly.

As for birds being hit by rotor blades, I could easily count a dozen birds killing themselves by flying into my house windows every year. I imagine there are a lot more birds and animals killed by other human structures and vehicles than by wind turbine blades.

cia

This is a good thing.

gatorguy

rob53 said:

This is the type of success story more media outlets need to cover because it shows cooperation between a US company and a foreign government to start reducing to use of fossil fuels that contaminate our world. 

...but they don't become known without PR efforts. Media doesn't seen all that interested.

Just a week ago another US company made the largest corporate purchase of renewable energy in history:
A 1,600-megawatt (MW) package of solar power agreements including 18 new energy deals and spanning three continents.  That's 12 times larger than this Chinese story. 

It was also all new projects they're investing in, injecting new capital and development into the market.
Was anyone here aware of it? Probably not.

Some companies are good at PR and others are not. Fortunately companies often make these efforts not for the PR praise but that it's just the right thing to do. Apple is one of those, but not the only one. 

donjuan

What happened to the mountain of dead birds the windmills killed? The Chinese probably ate them.

normang

There are a number of studies that show that unless you plan to bury the earth in Wind Farms and solar panels, you will never achieve 100% renewable energy, even if you did cover the earth .. its a fantasy.. Who wants to live on a planet covered in ugly wind farms and solar arrays. Not to mention, the cost to wild life that some people in their obsession with renewables want to blow off. Currently deployed systems are providing single digit percentages of actual power for the planet. I know its hard to believe, because so many people have been lied to by the media about this issue and they think the planet is going to be dead soon, which has been said by many on the left for like 30-40 years now, none, not a single prediction these people have made about anything has been accurate, but people still glom onto it.. Course Apple can do this all they want, spend millions of dollars on this tech, much of which has already been pointed out, sits idle when he wind does not blow, or the sun does not shine, because there are no good means of storing energy for later in the huge amounts needed to replace the wind and the sun when not shining or blowing, and sits idle because they fail or sit idle for whatever other reasons they obviously sit there day after day not running, I've seen his all over, wherever these Wind farms are, many of them are idle, doing nothing.. Some appear to be running, but are they really doing anything other than spinning for good looks. Sure it may help a little in some places, but it is not the optimal solution.

spice-boy

China is so lucky I wish we had wind in North America.

spice-boy

normang said:

There are a number of studies that show that unless you plan to bury the earth in Wind Farms and solar panels, you will never achieve 100% renewable energy, even if you did cover the earth .. its a fantasy.. Who wants to live on a planet covered in ugly wind farms and solar arrays. Not to mention, the cost to wild life that some people in their obsession with renewables want to blow off. Currently deployed systems are providing single digit percentages of actual power for the planet. I know its hard to believe, because so many people have been lied to by the media about this issue and they think the planet is going to be dead soon, which has been said by many on the left for like 30-40 years now, none, not a single prediction these people have made about anything has been accurate, but people still glom onto it.. Course Apple can do this all they want, spend millions of dollars on this tech, much of which has already been pointed out, sits idle when he wind does not blow, or the sun does not shine, because there are no good means of storing energy for later in the huge amounts needed to replace the wind and the sun when not shining or blowing, and sits idle because they fail or sit idle for whatever other reasons they obviously sit there day after day not running, I've seen his all over, wherever these Wind farms are, many of them are idle, doing nothing.. Some appear to be running, but are they really doing anything other than spinning for good looks. Sure it may help a little in some places, but it is not the optimal solution.

There is no 100% solution to our energy needs so why dismiss a system which can reduce our dependency on fossil fuels even 10%. 

spice-boy

donjuan said:

What happened to the mountain of dead birds the windmills killed? The Chinese probably ate them.

Birds are being killed off in the USA on par with the rest of the world and wind power is not even a thing here. It's environmental reasons such as pollution and loss of habitat that killing our birds

normang

spice-boy said:

There is no 100% solution to our energy needs so why dismiss a system which can reduce our dependency on fossil fuels even 10%. 

If you want to reduce usage/dependance of fossil fuels, nuclear power is the answer.. not solar, not wind. A small reactor could replace a slew of panels and turbines easily..

tmay

normang said:

There are a number of studies that show that unless you plan to bury the earth in Wind Farms and solar panels, you will never achieve 100% renewable energy, even if you did cover the earth .. its a fantasy.. Who wants to live on a planet covered in ugly wind farms and solar arrays. Not to mention, the cost to wild life that some people in their obsession with renewables want to blow off. Currently deployed systems are providing single digit percentages of actual power for the planet. I know its hard to believe, because so many people have been lied to by the media about this issue and they think the planet is going to be dead soon, which has been said by many on the left for like 30-40 years now, none, not a single prediction these people have made about anything has been accurate, but people still glom onto it.. Course Apple can do this all they want, spend millions of dollars on this tech, much of which has already been pointed out, sits idle when he wind does not blow, or the sun does not shine, because there are no good means of storing energy for later in the huge amounts needed to replace the wind and the sun when not shining or blowing, and sits idle because they fail or sit idle for whatever other reasons they obviously sit there day after day not running, I've seen his all over, wherever these Wind farms are, many of them are idle, doing nothing.. Some appear to be running, but are they really doing anything other than spinning for good looks. Sure it may help a little in some places, but it is not the optimal solution.

"There are number of studies that show the unless you plan to bury the earth in Wind Farms and solar panels, you will never achieve 100% renewable energy",

 ...studies which you evidently can't link too.

"Given the U.S. consumes about 4 petawatts of electricity per year, we'd need about 13,600,000 acres or 21,250 square miles of solar panels to meet the total electricity requirements of the United States for a year.Jul 6, 2018"

Consider my home state of Nevada at 110,567 square miles, and assuming all of those solar panels are in Nevada, and considering that the U.S. Government already controls 84% of the State, it wouldn't be out of the question to actually do that. Of course, that isn't base power, so you would need energy storage capability, and you would need to greatly improve the grid, which should happen anyway, and that certainly doesn't include any other source of renewable power, including wind and hydroelectric.

The point is that you are completely full of shit.

Here'a link from about 10 years ago that provide additional data on what it would require to provide the worlds power in solar;

https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127

"Compare it to the Saharan Desert:

The Saharan Desert is 9,064,958 square kilometers, or 18 times the total required area to fuel the world.

By another measure, “the unpopulated area of the Sahara desert is over 9 million km², which if covered with solar panels would provide 630 terawatts total power. The Earth’s current energy consumption rate is around 13.5 TW at any given moment (including oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric).” This measure arrives at a multiplier of 46 times the area needed and shows that my numbers are very conservative."

"If you want to reduce usage/dependance of fossil fuels, nuclear power is the answer.. not solar, not wind. A small reactor could replace a slew of panels and turbines easily.." 

As for nuclear power, its problem is that it can't compete on price with renewables when you consider the lifecycle costs which includes building and decommissioning the power plant. The promise of nuclear power being "too cheap to meter" was fantasy, and given the amount of time required to build a nuclear power plant, and the upfront cost, it just isn't an attractive solution anymore.

It doesn't look like nuclear power is "easy".

spice-boy

mobird said:

Wind farms are interesting to observe as we drive through Kansas on our way to Colorado and then on our return trips home. We have observed the complete evolution of wind farms across Kansas and Colorado for years. Unfortunately, the number of times that the turbines sit idle while making these trips (numerous) and includes all different seasons of the year just doesn't make much sense to this observer...

The land owners are probably the ones that have the most to gain. It is also interesting to see a oil/gas pumpjack operating at the same sight for 20+ years non stop.

Also, not a fan of the impact solar panels and wind turbines have on the landscape.

Would you prefer seeing the impact of burning fossil fuels in our skies? 

spice-boy

normang said:

spice-boy said:

There is no 100% solution to our energy needs so why dismiss a system which can reduce our dependency on fossil fuels even 10%. 

If you want to reduce usage/dependance of fossil fuels, nuclear power is the answer.. not solar, not wind. A small reactor could replace a slew of panels and turbines easily..

Okay nuclear power is the answer now can we build a plant next to your home? People are building homes this past decade using thermal exchange in water or earth combined with solar panels and can sell back excess energy back to power companies. For decades those who have made billions in oil have blocked laws and backed political campaigns to make sure the cash kept rolling in at the cost of our air, land and water. For a website that attracts a lot of people interested in technology a majority here appear to be science deniers. 

cwingrav

buckkalu said:

Then there is the devastating effect the number of birds, bats and other insects killed by the blades.

Greatly over-hyped. I feel for the animals hit, but they're better off in a world with clean energy given the ACTUAL low numbers.

The number of birds killed by turbines is fairly insignificant to existing sources:

• windmills          (10k-500k)
• cars                  (60,000k-80,000k)
  
• pesticides        (~70,000k)
• power lines      (130,000k-174,000k)
• other sources: cars (hundreds of million, windows, coms towers, etc) 

Here's a link which provides references as well to its sources: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm

mobird

spice-boy said:

donjuan said:

What happened to the mountain of dead birds the windmills killed? The Chinese probably ate them.

Birds are being killed off in the USA on par with the rest of the world and wind power is not even a thing here. It's environmental reasons such as pollution and loss of habitat that killing our birds

Loss of habitat occurs when acres upon acres are cleared for the installation of solar farms.

Loss of habitat occurs when you have construction crews driving over hundreds/thousands of acres of land for a few years as the installation of the wind farms occurs.

And this loss of habitat is not limited to only birds.

spice-boy

mobird said:

spice-boy said:

donjuan said:

What happened to the mountain of dead birds the windmills killed? The Chinese probably ate them.

Birds are being killed off in the USA on par with the rest of the world and wind power is not even a thing here. It's environmental reasons such as pollution and loss of habitat that killing our birds

Loss of habitat occurs when acres upon acres are cleared for the installation of solar farms.

Loss of habitat occurs when you have construction crews driving over hundreds/thousands of acres of land for a few years as the installation of the wind farms occurs.

And this loss of habitat is not limited to only birds.

Oh Brother!! Seriously? Urban and suburban sprawl, strip mining, industrial farming, erase bird, fish and pollenating insect habitats, Stop being ridiculous. Science deniers are out today.