Apple now runs on 100 percent renewable energy

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 79
    FranculesFrancules Posts: 122member
    This brings Joy to my life. Thank you apple team 🙂🖖✝️
    tallest skilminicoffee
  • Reply 22 of 79
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    Fun Fact: Wood burning is renewable too.  PR stunt.  
    tallest skilzroger73SpamSandwich
  • Reply 23 of 79
    brucemcbrucemc Posts: 1,541member
    Don't worry - neither the media - nor many of the posters on this site - will give Apple any "kudos" for this....(strains neck daily shaking head...).
    StrangeDaysjony0
  • Reply 24 of 79
    blastdoorblastdoor Posts: 3,258member
    ...for consideration:

    https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141111-solar-panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking/

    ...is it a long road still ahead, and a future we ultimately really want...?

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9L0pord5jE


    Solar panels address a first-order environmental issue -- climate change.  

    The issues raised here are second-order. 
    mattinozthttmay
  • Reply 25 of 79
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Good on them for doing this voluntarily and not because of misguided regulations.
    tallest skilmuthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 26 of 79
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member
    Apple could run exclusively on perpetually available distilled angel tears and it still wouldn’t be enough.  
    radarthekatpscooter63SpamSandwich
  • Reply 27 of 79
    sirlance99sirlance99 Posts: 1,293member
    dewme said:
    Very commendable. This is how leading by example is supposed to work.
    How can they be leading when other companies have already done this before them?
    zroger73
  • Reply 28 of 79
    boboliciousbobolicious Posts: 1,139member
    blastdoor said:
    ...for consideration:

    https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141111-solar-panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking/

    ...is it a long road still ahead, and a future we ultimately really want...?

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9L0pord5jE


    Solar panels address a first-order environmental issue -- climate change.  

    The issues raised here are second-order. 
    There are of course the questions of resource mining, extraction, fabrication, disposal...
    Can we make such panels in a world absent of fossil fuels?

    Renewable energy yes to a point... Sustainable design?

     ...and so what leads to 'second' order issues...?
    Do we consider the NIMBY realities of the tentacles of the decisions we market and make...?

    I might ask about (largely) discretionary choices such as food, travel, shelter, clothing, etc...
    Is one sacred cow https://e360.yale.edu/features/toward_sustainable_travel ?
    edited April 2018
  • Reply 29 of 79
    Good on them for doing this voluntarily and not because of misguided regulations.
    Yes good on Apple and Google (taking Gatorguy’s word on this), 2 out of approximately 6,000,000 companies in the USA. That means with 99.999967% of them going 100% renewable fossil fuels days are numbered. Free market unbridled capitalism coupled with corporate responsibility is working! Oh silly SpamSanwich that’s not how math works, my calculation was off, turns out only 0.00003333% are doing so without any “misguided” regulations. Surely the trend is just off to a slow start, much like Surface sales. 

    Seriously could we not have stopped at “good on them for doing this” without having to toss in the republican political sentiment. It a tech blog after all, not Fox News.
    roundaboutnow
  • Reply 30 of 79
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    linkman said:
    If you have a better solution, please speak up. 
    Nuclear power, both fission and fusion. The best thing about modern fission plants is that you can basically use the “waste” from the older plants as your new fuel, and the new outputs only have a half-life of a century or so. We will never advance as a civilization unless we use nuclear power. Period.
    Is your idea to just continue using things like coal and oil because they produce less CO2 than the "renewable" methods?
    CO2’s irrelevant. I care about not freezing to death in the winter when there’s no wind blowing, when the hydro sources are frozen over, and when the sun is mysteriously missing for half of the day.
    Apple has a fantastic green program that includes a few things not mentioned in the article. Apple's products usually use less electricity than the competition. Their packaging is ridiculously minimal. Their gift cards are plant-based, not plastic.
    I’m in full support of everything Apple has done regarding environmentalism and commend them for both their near utter lack of politicization of the topic and near utter lack of basing their efforts on proven false delusions. They’re a shining example of how corporate environmental responsibility should unfold. Hell, the government needs to make Apple’s example the minimum legal requirement.
    viclauyyc said:
    This is even better than an upgradable all new Mac Pro sell for $1500.
    Be real. The 2019 Mac Pro will start at $4,000. It’s not some stupid dell box gaming computer.
    Soli said:
    I think a statement about our sun dying in the next 5 billions is about as assinine as it gets when talking about making a smaller footprint on the environment today.
    It’s a matter of misunderstanding the scope of planning. Until we’re a Kardashev Type 1 civilization, we should be concerned only with producing as much power as the Earth will allow from as many sources as it offers. Once we get start getting into the 1.x classification, we need to start to worry about planning for energy production beyond the death of the Sun. After we’re a Type 2 civilization, we need to start thinking about the heat death of the Universe (even though we’ll only just be expanding through our galaxy then). Not to say we shouldn’t talk about these things early, of course. Even before the Wright brothers took their first flight, people were imagining ways we might travel to the Moon.
    Apple could run exclusively on perpetually available distilled angel tears and it still wouldn’t be enough.  
    Of course; they’d be called out for being too religious. :p 
    Free market unbridled capitalism coupled with corporate responsibility is working!
    Save the strawmen for PoliticalOutsider. “But that subforum is dele–” Yeah, that’s the joke. No Western nation has a free market, nor are they capitalistic. Your delusions to cover for the 70 years of constant failure of socialism aren’t going to fly much longer.
    Seriously could we not have stopped at “good on them for doing this” without having to toss in the republican political sentiment.
    The GOP doesn’t support the free market or unbridled capitalism. You ought to know your “enemies” before spouting off about them. Less embarrassing that way.
    edited April 2018 minisu1980pscooter63SpamSandwichcgWerksquadra 610
  • Reply 31 of 79
    I think it's great what Apple is doing, however green energy still impacts the environment in a negative way. Wind turbines kill a ton of birds each year. There needs to be more regulation so these wind farms can't continue to kill thousands of federally protected birds with impunity each year. 
    Birds are unfortunately killed by every form of electricity production, however, coal kills more birds, by far, than any other type: US News & World Report: https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/08/22/pecking-order-energys-toll-on-birds ThinkProgress: https://thinkprogress.org/chart-how-many-birds-are-killed-by-wind-solar-oil-and-coal-230d2a939bbb/
    edited April 2018 Solimuthuk_vanalingamkiltedgreen
  • Reply 32 of 79
    ... however, coal kills more birds, by far, than any other type...
    especially canaries!
    tallest skilradarthekatroundaboutnowminicoffee
  • Reply 33 of 79
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator
    Soli said:
    On the one hand I see this as an amazing milestone, but I also can’t help but wonder if there are caveats to this sort of press release. Can Apple do better outside of just, say, being able to add more anything over 100% of their renewable back to the grid to help reduce costs for others over time? How much more would they have to do to get Foxconn, Pegatron, Corning, LG, Samsung, and all their other major suppliers (for their specific component assembly) to get folded into this mix? How does this translate for all the ground and air transportation fuel expenditures, if that's even possible to convert in a reasonable manner? And does this only account for energy used by one facility once another facility is suppling power, or do they take into consider the resources needed into to create these renewable energy facilities?
    There’s even more to consider.  The energy used by its employees’ daily commutes, for example.  But Apple has made a significant start and won’t soon stop in their efforts.  

    One area where I think Apple deserves some credit in in making their products more compute efficient.  Control of the entire technology stack allows an iPhone, for example, to perform the same task as a competitor’s smartphone using less energy.  It’s the reason you see larger batteries in many Android phones but holding the same useful time between charges.  You use more energy from your wall outlet to recharge those other phones.  While it might not seem significant to most users, since its only a few watts per charge cycle, there are billions of such devices in use around the world, and so saving a few hundred milliwatts per device per charge would potentially offset the output of a number of power plants.  Apple thinks about such things.   
    SolipropodcgWerks
  • Reply 34 of 79
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    Soli said:
    On the one hand I see this as an amazing milestone, but I also can’t help but wonder if there are caveats to this sort of press release. Can Apple do better outside of just, say, being able to add more anything over 100% of their renewable back to the grid to help reduce costs for others over time? How much more would they have to do to get Foxconn, Pegatron, Corning, LG, Samsung, and all their other major suppliers (for their specific component assembly) to get folded into this mix? How does this translate for all the ground and air transportation fuel expenditures, if that's even possible to convert in a reasonable manner? And does this only account for energy used by one facility once another facility is suppling power, or do they take into consider the resources needed into to create these renewable energy facilities?
    There’s even more to consider.  The energy used by its employees’ daily commutes, for example.  But Apple has made a significant start and won’t soon stop in their efforts.  

    One area where I think Apple deserves some credit in in making their products more compute efficient.  Control of the entire technology stack allows an iPhone, for example, to perform the same task as a competitor’s smartphone using less energy.  It’s the reason you see larger batteries in many Android phones but holding the same useful time between charges.  You use more energy from your wall outlet to recharge those other phones.  While it might not seem significant to most users, since its only a few watts per charge cycle, there are billions of such devices in use around the world, and so saving a few hundred milliwatts per device per charge would potentially offset the output of a number of power plants.  Apple thinks about such things.   
    I know this is a extremely unfavorable idea, but I wish that Apple would remove the PSU for a variety of reasons that would reduce waste. I'm not saying not to offer it as an option for a purchase. Even as we move into inductive charging solutions this becomes even more of a benefit as those are 3rd-party solutions. I won't go into the half-dozen benefits to Apple and the environment again as I've stated numerous times over the last several years.
  • Reply 35 of 79
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator

    Soli said:
    So does this mean that every Apple facility generates its own power or that the total sum of all power generated by Apple is enough to run all their facilities and the excess renewable power is re-distributed onto the grid?
    The latter, which means that (I think) London Apple Stores aren't going to have solar panels on the roof, but that their NV solar farm sends more back to the grid, which probably isn't getting registered by the UK, but maybe they are using wind turbines in the countryside so that each country is 100% renewable for the power it's using. Lots of potential avenues for calculation this which will undoubtedly lead to more questions, but still a remarkable achievement in its own right.
    It doesn’t necssarily mean Apple generates all its own power.  It can also mean Apple sources its power from utilities that generate power from clean and renewable sources.  I recall living in the Boston area a decade ago that I had a choice on my power bill which of several sources I wanted to sign up with.  My power still came from the local generator company, but they had in place agreements with many others to essentially pool their output so that customers could support renewable projects across the country.  There’s a name for this sort of arrangement, I just forget what it’s called.  If enough customers demande$ their power come from renewable sources, that’s where the money would flow and more such generation would be built out.  
    Solimuthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 36 of 79
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member

    Soli said:
    So does this mean that every Apple facility generates its own power or that the total sum of all power generated by Apple is enough to run all their facilities and the excess renewable power is re-distributed onto the grid?
    The latter, which means that (I think) London Apple Stores aren't going to have solar panels on the roof, but that their NV solar farm sends more back to the grid, which probably isn't getting registered by the UK, but maybe they are using wind turbines in the countryside so that each country is 100% renewable for the power it's using. Lots of potential avenues for calculation this which will undoubtedly lead to more questions, but still a remarkable achievement in its own right.
    It doesn’t necssarily mean Apple generates all its own power.  It can also mean Apple sources its power from utilities that generate power from clean and renewable sources.  I recall living in the Boston area a decade ago that I had a choice on my power bill which of several sources I wanted to sign up with.  My power still came from the local generator company, but they had in place agreements with many others to essentially pool their output so that customers could support renewable projects across the country.  There’s a name for this sort of arrangement, I just forget what it’s called.  If enough customers demande$ their power come from renewable sources, that’s where the money would flow and more such generation would be built out.  
    I've been informed from someone in the Reno area that NV Energy has been notorious for making claims about their having renewable energy that were proven false. I know Apple tries to keep material, component and assembly vendors honest, but who knows if they're also applying that to NV Energy for their data center power or other energy sources at this time.

    edit: I wasn't able to get a link from my source, but this may be what they were talking about.

    edited April 2018
  • Reply 37 of 79
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator
    sflocal said:
    zroger73 said:
    "Earth's resources won't last forever."

    Well, neither will humans or Apple or our sun no matter how much "renewable energy" we use.

    How much CO2 was produced and will continue to be produced to manufacture and maintain those solar panels, batteries, fuel cells, wind-powered generators? Mmmhmm. Exactly.

    It's a nice PR move.
    This comment is just asinine. Just because there isn’t an infinite amount of a resource does not mean one should squander away the supply that exists. Conserving limited resources (to the extent possible) is the only sensical longer term viewpoint. It would like saying we only have 90 day of rations and are marooned on a desert island. Your view is, well since we don’t have infinite rations we might as well eat them all today. Makes zero sense.

    The amount of limited resources consumed to allow for the collection of, a more or less, infinite source of power, while not neglible, is clearly the most prudent use for said resources as it produces more than it consumes. 

    Is it a fair assumption you hail from generations of coal miners who refused to move on/relocate when the modern world rendered them obsolete.

    As for Apple this is fantastic news. It is quite impressive given their size and geographic footprint. I’m curious how many other companies have achieved this.
    I don't think he was being asinine.  The reality is just about all resources that humanity requires to support it's society is running on borrowed time.  We'd need an earth seven times larger if we were to mine all the resources to convert every car on the planet to electric.  The amount of resources - and toxicity - to create solar panels to me almost negates the positive contributions they make.  We're getting better, we're getting clearer, but in the end with an ever-growing world population straining resources even more... something is going to give.
    Fatalism is not a strategy.  Just because Apple isn’t doing something about population growth or searching out six more Earths doesn’t imply we should just throw up our hands.  The original commenter appealed to the extreme, an absurd comment about the sun not lasting forever.  Such statements don’t further the discussion.   
    edited April 2018 Solimuthuk_vanalingamkiltedgreenSpamSandwichroundaboutnowjony0
  • Reply 38 of 79
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    I think it's great what Apple is doing, however green energy still impacts the environment in a negative way. Wind turbines kill a ton of birds each year. There needs to be more regulation so these wind farms can't continue to kill thousands of federally protected birds with impunity each year. 
    I don't disagree that we can make wind turbines better for the environment, but let's keep things in perspective. Without getting into any partisan politics, we now have someone running the EPA that is literally against any environmental protections, which is absurd in every conceivable way.

    ...is a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda…

    I wish that was a joke.
    muthuk_vanalingamminisu1980propodroundaboutnow
  • Reply 39 of 79
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,299member
    sflocal said:
    zroger73 said:
    "Earth's resources won't last forever."

    Well, neither will humans or Apple or our sun no matter how much "renewable energy" we use.

    How much CO2 was produced and will continue to be produced to manufacture and maintain those solar panels, batteries, fuel cells, wind-powered generators? Mmmhmm. Exactly.

    It's a nice PR move.
    This comment is just asinine. Just because there isn’t an infinite amount of a resource does not mean one should squander away the supply that exists. Conserving limited resources (to the extent possible) is the only sensical longer term viewpoint. It would like saying we only have 90 day of rations and are marooned on a desert island. Your view is, well since we don’t have infinite rations we might as well eat them all today. Makes zero sense.

    The amount of limited resources consumed to allow for the collection of, a more or less, infinite source of power, while not neglible, is clearly the most prudent use for said resources as it produces more than it consumes. 

    Is it a fair assumption you hail from generations of coal miners who refused to move on/relocate when the modern world rendered them obsolete.

    As for Apple this is fantastic news. It is quite impressive given their size and geographic footprint. I’m curious how many other companies have achieved this.
    I don't think he was being asinine.  The reality is just about all resources that humanity requires to support it's society is running on borrowed time.  We'd need an earth seven times larger if we were to mine all the resources to convert every car on the planet to electric.  The amount of resources - and toxicity - to create solar panels to me almost negates the positive contributions they make.  We're getting better, we're getting clearer, but in the end with an ever-growing world population straining resources even more... something is going to give.
    1 Car share car takes about 7 off the road. Add self driving cars that move themselves where needed to that mix I could see that double or tripling.  Add small self driving buses and other mass transit ideas taking more cars off the road. Have nice density smaller cities with high speed links so people don't need cars as much anyway. There is no need to replace every car currently sold to date. Some of them will even need to stay bio-fuel most likely. That is before you consider recycling resources other improvements in tech.
  • Reply 40 of 79
    I do appreciate all the environmental experts and scientists chiming in here. 
    baconstangminicoffeemacxpressjony0
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