Apple put its big new headquarters in Cupertino, which doesn't have any housing available for all the people working there. Therefore, the majority will be forced to drive long distances to work, in dirty, CO2-heavy automobiles. Apple could have used its financial leverage - a third of Cupertino's tax revenue - to force the city to stop blocking all new housing construction, reducing commute distances. Alternatively, it could have placed its headquarters somewhere else - somewhere with either more housing, or enough density to support public transit, or a city council that isn't obsessed with enriching homeowners by making a housing shortage as bad as possible (or all three). Apple chose not to do either of those things, so all of those CO2 emissions are its responsibility.
Simply tell the city, you need to permit enough housing for all of the people working in this huge new office complex, or Apple will leave Cupertino. Apple is such a large company that they pay a major chunk of Cupertino's tax revenues, so they would have a lot of negotiating leverage.
Have you been to Cupertino? I wouldn't want to live there. And if I worked there, I wouldn't want to live within 1 mile of my office. Even if there were housing, many people would prefer to live elsewhere.
Apple also cannot threaten to leave the city every time they want something. How dystopian it would be to have a multibillion dollar company extorting City Hall like that.
Apple's core business is not environment protection, it's development of technology and applications for that tech.
That they're using the vehicle that is Apple to push for green energy is remarkable, putting pressure on the other giants. But this kind of expectation, that they should move away from the Mecka of tech devs. in order to push the envelope further would only lessen the net impact on their environmental work..
I'm not sure how frequent these stations are but from the overview of the size of the new Apple campus, it's not too easy finding a lot large enough to just drop it down where it's convenient. Not accounting for zoning laws etc.
There are or were offices at Sunnyvale Caltrain station. They also have shuttles that regularly service Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Diridon stations; the ride should only be 10-15 minutes. However, I do not think Caltrain has the capacity for tens of thousands of new commuters.
There's nothing "remarkable" about a company, especially a Bay Area-based consumer electronics company, saying they like green energy. Everyone says they like green energy, even the oil companies (https://www.total.com/en/commitment/environmental-issues-cha...). What would be "remarkable" is if they made significant changes to how they do business to, at least, avoid making the problem worse, and they are not doing that.
What does that even mean? Electricity is fungible. Suppose that ten megawatts of coal power and one megawatt of solar power goes into a power grid, and I draw 100 kilowatts out of that grid. I ask the power company to declare that my office is "powered by renewable energy". They can happily write me a piece of paper, saying that my 100 kilowatts of consumption "comes from" the one megawatt of solar input. But it doesn't change the amount of coal that gets burned, it's just moving numbers around.
Did you read the article? They're specifically investing in building solar farms and other renewable energy sources, as solar becomes more cost efficient it will push back on new developments of coal plants and other dirty energy sources.
This is not about the short term results, this is putting a strategical bet on clean power. And as you can see from Apple's other business, they're all about long term gains.
Total, the huge oil and gas company, also invests in renewable energy. They have a whole list of investments, one can read through them all on Crunchbase:
You don't seem to get it, they do not just say that "they like" green energy - the link tells us that they switched over to 100% renewable energy. Even in China and India!
What I'm saying is that it's due to their business success that they can afford to take this investment. The success that made it possible can't just be toyed around with to suit every idealist's short sighted agenda of "Do more!".
Are they disconnected from every power grid in the world, and using their own solar panels and windmills 100% for everything? Of course not. They're drawing from the same grids that have most of their electricity supplied by coal and oil and gas. It's just that the power companies arbitrarily declare that the watts they draw out "come from" the small fraction of solar that gets fed into the grid. See my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799265
That was not the point I was trying to make, some of the best developers in the world live in the San Jose area.
To build a new campus in the middle of nowhere and build housing there would never be a valid solution.
Maybe for a second campus, like they're planning. But that one is rumoured to be put in Austin where, you guessed it, the density of a skilled workforce is high.
Apple has free shuttles to pick people up. There are 4 large apartment buildings recently constructed near the new office. Most people don't work in Cupertino. Lastly, many people can telecommute if they want to.
Apple is not perfect, but the energy Tim puts in making this stuff happens is beyond marketing desire.
Caltrain has been encouraging shuttles for decades; you're saying that they're wrong? OK, let's cut Caltrain ridership by about 1/3 by ending shuttles, that'll improve things.
Caltrain is sloooowwww, need high speed high density public transit that doesn’t add to rush hour congestion. Each stop should have a massive high rise with grocery, entertainment, etc.
That is the plan for Caltrain, yes. Ending shuttles is not the way to get there. Electrification of Caltrain and relaxing zoning restrictions near Caltrain stations, plus keeping shuttles, is the way to get there.
To my knowledge, the shuttles all pick people up from San Francisco, which is a) a very long drive and therefore CO2-heavy even in buses, and b) has a huge housing shortage itself. So if workers commute from San Francisco to Cupertino, that creates an even larger gaps between the number of jobs in San Francisco and the number of housing units in San Francisco, forcing those who work in San Francisco to commute in from even farther away.
> if workers commute from San Francisco to Cupertino, that creates an even larger gaps between the number of jobs in San Francisco and the number of housing units in San Francisco
San Francisco's voters and politicians choose to restrict supply. An affordability crisis predictably ensued. Transmutating that into a burden on a non-SF company is incorrect, if still fascinating.
Apple has an entire department dedicated to incentivizing employees to use environmentally-friendly alternative commute methods: shuttles from the surrounding cities, shuttles within campus, bikes on campus, rental cars to lessen the need to own one, subsidies for public transportation, and for those who still drive, plentiful EV charging spots.
What you are saying is correct, with a few nuances:
- as other commenters have pointed out, many employees who live more than a short drive from the office use shuttles. Not as good as public transit civically, but comparable ecologically.
- the vast majority of Apple’s 140k or so employees work in Apple Stores. Your post remains correct, but it is a fairly small number of employees who are operating in the dysfunctional urban quagmire that is the Bay Area.
The site was originally an HP campus, so the office space was already there; they replaced 80% of the former parking lots and office buildings with green space—increasing CO2 absorption.
The new building also allows them to consolidate employees from many of the 100+ other properties they lease within Cupertino and Sunnyvale. This further reduces the need for intercampus transportation. Hopefully these newly unused office buildings can be converted into residential space (edit: but Apple does not own them, so it's not their choice).
You come off as severely misinformed in this whole thread. I would urge you to read the article and do some research on the questions you ask before asking them. The answers are not what you think they are in light of any actual context.
Hear hear! They could have used their money to create sky trains to extremely high density housing (high rises). Google and Facebook could do this as well. Win win for all. The fact that they don’t shows they really do not care.
That's great. Next, focus on making products that can be repaired and upgraded by end-users for an extended period of time. Electronics manufacturing is resource intensive (beyond just energy) and a significant source of pollution (beyond CO_2 emissions). Recycling electronics is also resource intensive and does produce waste. If Apple tried to extend the average useful life of its products by just a couple years it would make a big difference.
Having a kid is among the worst decisions a person can make for the environment. A childless person could smash iPads all they wanted and not make a dent in comparison.
Unless one of the kids you raise does something really great to improve the world. Not having kids to help the environment has no chance of working unless there is a world government that enforces the policy on everyone. This idea that not having children is a great good should be put rest. Raising children well is a lot of hard work and anyone who would do it well should be encouraged to have them.
> Unless one of the kids you raise does something really great to improve the world.
This is like saying “if he grows up to be a pro basketball player, he’ll be rich.” Should be pretty obvious that it’s an astronomical longshot at best.
Whether a child is raised well or not has nothing to do with their effect on the environment. Simply existing in the modern world clearly has a huge cost.
Overall net positive environmental impact over the generations I guess would be a better way of stating it. A culture that believes in not breeding (for any reason) will not last very long.
> Overall net positive environmental impact over the generations I guess would be a better way of stating it.
Multiple generations just multiplies the negative impact- it doesn't reverse it. At some point (which we may discover sooner rather than later) humanity's impact will be beyond repair.
Yes. The environmental cost of a person is huge. People don’t like hearing it but there’s no amount of electric cars, recycling, etc. that can undo the damage of having a kid.
Yes. Just less delusional about the impact my choices have than most people. It's fine to choose to have a kid. But don't fool yourself into thinking you're making a responsible choice when it comes to the environmental impact of doing so.
I just don't know where you get off telling people they shouldn't have kids. Maybe you're just immature, I don't know, but there's nothing to be gained from it.
I specifically said, "It's fine to choose to have a kid."
My point is that if a person is concerned about the environment and the toll humanity is taking on it, recognize the affect your personal choice is having.
Would you judge someone who said they were environmentally conscious but lived in a McMansion and drove a hummer? I don't see why having kids is any different.
Not only is this true -- I've twice used iPhones for 4 years before replacing them, with full software updates the entire time -- there are also plenty of 3rd parties who can repair things like cracked screens and tired batteries.
For software updates, it's hard to imagine that any other phone, tablet, or laptop can compare. For example, I'm typing this on a "late 2012" mac mini, which is running the latest OS X.
Not true, and not really a good comparison because the Android world is enormous with all levels of models (super cheap up to premium). In fact there are projects out there to repurpose these old devices that wouldn't even be possible under the heavy control of a different platform. You can find lots of projects. One interesting one I saw recently was using old Android phones to detect illegal lumber cutting. There also some cool DIY home security projects that make use of older phones. Another that comes to mind is a crypto currency mining setup. You can also use the phones as routers or firewalls for your home. Anecdotally I still have and use an old tablet from 2011 that my kids play on.
Add another six months to the S4's release date and you get iPhone 5S, which has the latest version of iOS and every security update that Apple has to offer.
Congrats, you're a pretty rare user. You don't have to google for very long to discover a large number of people complaining about forced Windows 10 updates. The equivalent situation for OS X is that almost everyone updates.
This is especially visible on phones. Twice I've had a 4 year iPhone, twice it ran the latest software. There are very few Android phones for which this is true.
> Why would a "less tech savvy" person have a gaming PC?
Kids. Adults buy kids new hardware to play latest games, and older stuff that is replaced is good enough for them.
> That's not what a gaming PC is for…
Repurposing old hardware for new uses is what being eco friendly is about.
> i7-960 is the processor from the Mac Pro.
No, it's a processor you would go and buy off shelf (hard to imagine, I know) and use in a decent gaming PC in that time, that happens to also be in a mac pro.
>The "newest Macbook Air" hasn't been substantially updated in around three to four years.
It's for June 2017 model, latest that was on Wikipedia. Is there a newer one which is twice as fast?
>The processor you've selected is from an ultraportable laptop
I wanted to state that for quite some time people don't actually need better hardware for web browsing or watching movies. This is a response to claim that 2010 PC users with Windows 10 being so rare, and that Mac mini from 2012 still having updates making it something special.
>Nexus 6P is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Google. No other Android phone is going to get updates as long as it does.
iPhone is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Apple. No other iOS phone is going to exist...
> Kids. Adults buy kids new hardware to play latest games, and older stuff that is replaced is good enough for them.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. You mention that adults are buying their children new hardware, but you're also talking about 6-7 year old gaming PCs? Not quite sure what you mean.
> Repurposing old hardware for new uses is what being eco friendly is about.
Yeah, but these are gaming PCs. They're terribly impractical for casual use. They're bulky and hot and noisy, with terrible battery life and a large power consumption.
> It's for June 2017 model, latest that was on Wikipedia. Is there a newer one which is twice as fast?
It's the "latest" in the sense that they bumped the clock speed of the process slightly and kept the Broadwell-era CPU in 2017; otherwise it's all parts from 2015 or before. Even the MacBook from today is faster, and MacBook Pro, while not "twice as fast", is around 1 1/2 times faster or so.
> This is a response to claim that 2010 PC users with Windows 10 being so rare, and that Mac mini from 2012 still having updates making it something special.
You know, I've never seen anyone still using a PC from 2010. Macs from 2010 aren't that uncommon though; I know at least a handful of people who use the non-Retina MacBook Pros from like 2009 every day.
> iPhone is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Apple. No other iOS phone is going to exist...
Yes, that's my point. You buy an iPhone because it's a high end phone that Apple's dedicated to support for years. With Android it's hit-or-miss. Sometimes you hit Google and get updates for two or three years. Sometimes you get Samsung and wait six months to get a two-year old version of Android from your carrier. You buy an iPhone and you are instantly guaranteed updates straight from Apple, immediately and regularly, for the next five years. And that's any iPhone, from iPhone X to iPhone SE.
>I don't understand what you're trying to say here. You mention that adults are buying their children new hardware, but you're also talking about 6-7 year old gaming PCs? Not quite sure what you mean.
You buy a new PC, what happens to old one? It doesn't magically disappear.
>Yeah, but these are gaming PCs. They're terribly impractical for casual use. They're bulky and hot and noisy, with terrible battery life and a large power consumption.
I'm talking about desktops, not laptops. They're not noisy and hot unless you run them at 100%, which you don't do when not gaming. You could also remove GPU and save some power, but I rarely see people doing this.
> You know, I've never seen anyone still using a PC from 2010. Macs from 2010 aren't that uncommon though; I know at least a handful of people who use the non-Retina MacBook Pros from like 2009 every day
This is why i stated 'where I live'. Macs aren't common here (there's a trend for last 3-4 years for MacBooks, but still low market share), and in 2010 they were almost nonexistent.
This is why there aren't much of old ones around.
Everyone had a PC though, and it can be seen that they can handle new versions of Windows as well if not better than macs can handle new OSX.
> Even the MacBook from today is faster, and MacBook Pro, while not "twice as fast", is around 1 1/2 times faster or so.
Yes, but did you see people owning Airs complain about slugishness? For same reason they don't on 2x faster, 7 year old machine.
> With Android it's hit-or-miss.
With Android you have choice. You pay premium for a pixel and updates, or go cheap and don't get those.
There's also Android One initiative, which gives phones updates straight from google.
Yes, harder for uneducated guesses, but you can still stay good knowing only that Google = longer life.
Apple products have the most thriving second hand market out of perhaps any electronics manufacturer today. Their product resale value and reliability alone make them a far better option with regard to the environment than almost anything else.
The products have extremely long usage cycles relative to the industry standard. It's such that they've integrated the environmental impact deep into their product design and business.
You can argue that this is simply a byproduct, but they've talked a lot about it over the years that it's pretty deliberate.
>> The products have extremely long usage cycles relative to the industry standard.
I don't see this trend at all in my environment. Actually quite contrary. Some, who love Apple products, always upgrade really soon. I've got an Sony smartphone for 6 years. Regarding tablets, my parents, sisters, parents in law have an Android tablet, Surface and iPad and independent of the brand they all have theirs for years and don't plan to upgrade soon.
So, this is a myth common to premium products. Probably part of the marketing strategy (same for cars, kitchen gear, etc.).
The use cycle doesn't have to be by the same person. If the iPhone they are ditching is sold to a person who would otherwise buy a new phone, the net production of phones is the same.
My 2014 RMBP is still the best laptop I have ever owned and everything before that was a Thinkpad, one of them a real IBM one. User-serviceability is overrated in general. You can still replace the battery in a MacBook, it just isn't easy. Mine is 4 years old and gets heavy daily usage and the battery is still acceptable although it is showing signs of age. I will probably look at getting it replaced next year.
My iPhone 6s is starting to act up, especially when cold but I haven't replaced the battery in that yet. I'll probably get that done this summer when the phone gets to the point it can't go a full day without a charge.
I don't care about the supposed technological superiority of a cellphone. I just want it to work. Apple seems to put more effort in to privacy and security and I like their business model more than Google's. I prefer to be a customer instead of a product.
> My 2014 RMBP is still the best laptop I have ever owned
And my desktop PC is better. What's the point of this?
You can't upgrade anything on a new MBP, and every computer i had so far had at least a RAM upgrade in it's life.
With Macbook, you just have to throw it away, which isn't too eco friendly, is it?
> I don't care about the supposed technological superiority of a cellphone.
Why don't you buy a Nokia 8100 then? It just works :)
While I'm no Apple fan, I've replaced the charging port on my brother's 4S, and I can tell you that the "non replaceable" claim is overstated. It may not be as easy as a Nokia, but anyone with YouTube and a steady hand should be able to do it.
> People will often buy a 3 year old iPhone instead of technically superior new Android phone for some price, just to have this brand.
Not necessarily. Using one specific data point, I can also claim to make this argument invalid. The three year old iPhone will certainly, and surely, run the latest iOS, whereas the new Android phone (priced the same as a three year old used iPhone) is highly likely to have an OS that's already a year or two older and will never get updates in the future, putting the user at a much higher risk. So which is better?
Yup. My old iPhone 4S, 6, iPad 2, iPad Mini and Macbook (Late 2008) are all still in daily use by other members of the family. That's almost 10 years of laptops, 7 years of phones and tablets still in circulation.
> Next, focus on making products that can be repaired and upgraded by end-users for an extended period of time.
Not sure if I want them to spend resources and make products more expensive just so I can repair my 10 year old iPhone myself. I have no desire spending time repairing an old phone that isnt usable already anyway due to its aged hardware.
I seem to recall a statement from Apple recently that if you return an iDevice to an Apple Store when you're done with it, it is torn apart and 100% of it gets recycled.
Not sure if that only applies to recent devices, or everything it's ever sold.
Here in Europe, strip-clearing forests and turning it into wood-pellets and burning those counts as 'renewable energy'. Our own shortsighted minister for the environment acknowledged that this is absurd, but he continuous to allow it (actually, the government does it itself by strip-clearing all trees from roadsides) to meet EU committed 'renewable energy targets' and avoid an EU fine.
As much as people like to hate on Apple and all the other stuff they do wrong, this is how its going to have to continue if we still want to be living on earth in 50 years. Companies like Apple have massive global influence, and if what they want is some free marketing and press in return for investing in renewables, that is a price I will gladly pay. Governments and companies are the only real force large enough to enact the kind of change that needs to happen, and if what they want in return is good press than that is fine by me.
I share your respect for corporations that help make the world a better place but I want to pick at the tone of your comment. It implies that businesses can’t do good for good’s sake, that there has to be some greedy motive behind every action. What if the leaders at Apple are actually good people and they’re honest when they say they want te leave the Earth a better place?
Then it'd go down in the history books as the first time a large public company had done so. We all run on Capitalism, meaning we've picked the generation and acquisition of Capital to be the one metric we've decided as a society to optimise for. This is why it's so important for governments to legislate carbon requirements, because that's the designed escape hatch for capitalism causing people to doing stuff which is very bad for society by optimising for capital.
> What if the leaders at Apple are actually good people and they’re honest when they say they want te leave the Earth a better place?
There's a concept called first mover disadvantage where for example a well intentioned CEO can push for a positive action by the company like reducing pollution, improving worker welfare. These nearly always incur a cost and push down shareholder value in the short term.
Furthermore if your competitors aren't making the same moves they're gaining in the short term over you.
A CEO like that is not going to last very long and most CEOs don't have the kind of power to tell shareholders to settle down.
That's what makes Apple's approach here pretty unique. Now if they'd only refresh their Mac lineup a little more often that'd be something...
> There's a concept called first mover disadvantage
A failed concept that has been proven wrong again and again. At this point it's a cliché coming out of people who got MBA's from bad schools.
>if your competitors aren't making the same moves they're gaining in the short term over you
This assumes your target market doesn't differentiate between your product and competitor's products on anything other than price. Apple, and others, have repeatedly proven this wrong.
> most CEOs don't have the kind of power to tell shareholders to settle down
Tim Cook is already on record saying that Apple is committed to doing what it sees as the right thing, and the investors can pound sand if they're not on board.
There are a number of other very large companies that are also run this way. The notion of a corporate board that only listens to its shareholders is a gross oversimplification and not based in a thorough study of modern business.
Even if that's all true, there are still other incentives that aren't going away that can have a tremendous influence (fiduciary obligations to shareholders, for example). Which is just to say that there are some significant structural aspects at play here.
Businesses don't have this type of intentionality in my opinion. They're like forces of nature (with smaller lifespans) primarily acting in the economic realm. Even non-profits must manage input and output economically correctly in order to survive.
True forces of nature are like a graph. Companies are like trees with a root. There is some control in targeting the root but the end result is similar to the graph in that it can't be predicted. Thus good/bad must be taken as is without looking too much into the intentionality.
A focus on intentionality may actually create "bad" because it rewards focus on the packaging over the content. CEOs may just be the main story teller to manage the packaging of the company as an individual (vs PR branch which is faceless/just-a-job)
Jevons paradox -- as it applies to energy -- is that efficiency gives us more and better ways to make money wasting energy.
From a humanitarian and ecological standpoint we want civilization to be using as much electricity as possible. If only we could make lots of energy with very little carbon we might be able to get rich mining BTC and keep drinking cheap coffee ;)
> ...this is how its going to have to continue if we still want to be living on earth in 50 years
Climate change is a cluster-f-bomb that will evolve into blatant seriousness over tens of decades. It won't directly ruin civilization, either, so if we avoid any major wars based on scarcity or refugee crises we're likely just looking at a major remodeling of humanities day-to-day and some intense population events moreso than annihilation.
From that perspective, I'm gonna say "kiiiiiiiinda".
It's not like what Apple is doing is _bad_, but let's get real: they're stating above the fold that their green investments are no solution for their massive 24/7 computing needs. They're investing in fungable offsets, but the underlying energy production is still carbon intensive. Their approach doesn't cover their own needs, and can't scale to any industrially challenging or civilization-scale needs. We want to transition a lot of industry over to clean electrical processes that require more energy and we want to lift a few Billion out of poverty, too...
If we look at total energy usage on this planet and future demands we see that funging some minor percentage of electricity production (not energy!), is just moving around some lipstick on a pig and making sure the brand is "eco friendly"...
Fundamentally we need to be looking at technologies that eliminate the need for the coal plant to keep the datacenter open, the peaker gas plants that handle bursty loads, and for burning oil to get the workers/supplies in and out of the building. We don't need electrical tech that's "green" on top of existing infrastructure, we need green tech that displaces and eliminates existing energy infrastructure.
Bluntly, if you care about that 50 year picture: the answer is fission, with a vague and slight possibility of fusion (maybe).
As this article [1] explains, Apple does not (and cannot) actually run on 100% renewable energy globally, as any of its stores/premises/facilities that are connected to local municipal power grids will use whatever power generation method is used on that grid, and that is still likely to be fossil fuel in most locations.
But they purchase Renewable Energy Certificates to offset their use of non-renewable energy, so they can make the claim that their net consumption of non-renewable electricity is negative.
This is weird. So if I run a wind farm that generates 1 MW(...h? why is this an energy unit and not power? but whatever...) and I use all of that electricity myself, I can also sell 1 REC to someone else so that they claim they run on green electricity. Which means that now either (a) I have to legally claim I run on dirty electricity (which is a lie on its face and make no sense???) or (b) we both claim we run on green power, double-dipping and screwing up the accounting of greenness.
Am I misunderstanding something? How does this work?
No that's how it works. That's also the reason why Norway, despite only using hydro, has only 40-50% renewable energy in some statistics. They sell green energy certificates to consumers abroad (e.g. in Germany). Officially, Norwegians then use coal power whereas in reality it's all hydro power. There isn't even enough transmission capacity to the south to get that kind of exchange physically.
Wow! And I just realized there seems to be another loophole: that means (say) a company like Apple could start a separate power company in Norway based on hydro power, have that company completely waste 100% of the energy it produce there, and yet "buy" the equivalent REC in another jurisdiction where they run on coal and suddenly get to 100% "green" power... potentially even making more money in tax credits, if there are any, all while consuming more and more dirty power without actually helping anybody shift to renewable energy. Right?
Yes in theory, but noone would like to just waste energy like that. If they instead sold it they would not be allowed to sell it as green energy.
I think the important point here is to make sure the energy you buy is certified green (or whatever the proper term is, in Sweden we call it urspungsmärkt) the way Apple does. If everyone did there would be no demand for coal power any more.
If everyone did there would be no demand for coal power any more.
That's not possible, because for Apple to buy these credits, someone else has to buy the green energy as if it was non-green. You can't have credits for everyone unless the whole energy being sold is actually green, not just green on paper.
I don't see the loophole there. That just sounds like wasting energy and also buying credits. What is the advantage of that over doing something sensible with the energy instead?
The loophole is not that the second company is wasting the energy. (Like you said, it could even try to profit from it, e.g. by [as someone else mentioned] mining Bitcoin or doing something else that's "unclean" -- that only makes the loophole worse.) Rather, it's the fact that it's a secondary company getting paid by the primary company so that the latter can claim it runs on green energy when it doesn't. And both can profit in the process.
That isn't a loophole, that is how the system is supposed to work. The right to claim you run on green energy is something you can sell. This means that:
1. Actually running on green energy is a competitive advantage.
2. The cost is borne by companies who want to be able to claim they are running on green energy.
This allows companies that want to be ethical to subsidize the cost of green energy even if they can't literally run on green energy due to logistic issues.
What would be the point of this "loophole"? This is pittance money for All the big companies, Apple, MSFT, Google etc. I don't think most consumers even care about whatever marketing buzz this might generate.
This is a net positive whichever way you spin it. Pollution doesn't understand state or country boundaries.
Although in the grand scheme of things this is probably a good idea and a net positive, it is still kind of absurd when you look at the individuals.
Take Norway for example, it was said earlier that they officially run on only about 40% green energy. However in actual reality they run closer to 100% on green energy and everyone there knows it.
Then a coal power factory somewhere can buy the Norwegian credits and claim to be 100% green and sell that.
It's no wonder many people don't like this scheme.
But as you say and I agree, it is probably a net positive.
"Net positive" unless there are more drastic measures companies decide not to take because they feel like they're already doing something/doing their part. I see a real danger in doing too little only because you feel like you're doing enough.
> Then a coal power factory somewhere can buy the Norwegian credits and claim to be 100% green and sell that. It's no wonder many people don't like this scheme.
No this is not happening anywhere, where are you coming with this kind of things?
Coal company producing only coal-generated power don't buy green credits.
If 100GW renewal energy is produced, who or how it is being used is irrelevant, because the alternative would be 100GW energy generated through non-renewable resources. I don't in which version of reality is that a bad thing, regardless of who buys whatever REC credit.
I think it comes down to giving them credit for funding the construction of massive clean energy projects, even if they don't exclusively use the electricity from that project themselves.
Look at Microsoft. They just funded a deal to build out an absolutely massive solar farm in Virginia.
They do have facilities in state that will only need a fraction of that power to be 100% green, and the excess will be pumped into the local Virginia power grid and used by consumers there.
Basically, Microsoft is saying that they funded the project to generate excess green energy in one place to offset the dirty energy they consume in areas where there is no local green power option available.
100% renewable energy by purchasing and funding renewable energy is an outstanding acheivement.
Is there another statistic for measuring how many KWhr or MWhr are sourced directly from renewable energy sources (or, more logically, 'directly' from batteries + hemp supercapacitors between use and generation)?
Exactly. It is not a loophole assuming we have stable and steady use of electricity. I.e before bitcoin.
Apple funded or has lots of JV across the world, producing renewable energy. It is only a matter of time before they force /help their supplier in doing so as well.
My guess is in five years time Apple product will be net zero non-renewable electricity from transport to manufacturing.
The effort to convince the companies in it's supply chain to follow suit has already begun.
>Though the 100% figure covers only Apple’s own operations–not those of of the suppliers and contract manufacturers which do much of the work of bringing its ideas to life–it’s also convinced 23 companies in its supply chain to sign a pledge to get to 100% renewable energy for the portion of their business relating to Apple products.
That would be an incredibly expensive loophole just for a claim. Also, at least in the States, I believe you have to actually feed the energy into the local grid in order to qualify for REC, not just merely produce it.
Regarding units: power plant outputs are given in power units (e.g. watt, or megawatt, horsepower, etc.) because these are innately normalised to some unit of time (watt is a Joule per second). If you stated an output of 1 MWh, I would immediately ask "how long did it take to produce that?". I tiny solar cell that powers your calculator could generate 1 MWh eventually, but the problem is that it would take a very long time, so stating its output in power units gives you a better idea of its capability.
Fun fact: some horses are capable of about 10 horsepower.
> ...so stating its output in power units gives you a better idea of its capability.
I think you misunderstood, because that was entirely my point—I was saying I don't get why they talk about MWh rather than MW when it makes more sense to talk about power rather than energy. [1]
Power generators connected into a grid, pool their production and then consumers draw from that pool. A consumer can't claim "My electrons came only from "green" sources". Ones electrons came from the nearest sources. What a consumer can do, is pay a producer connected to the grid, to supply "green" energy matching the consumer's draw from the pool.
It's like balancing a checkbook. When you act as a producer, your windfarm puts 1MW into the pool. Logistically, you have to buy it back to claim you consume green power, otherwise you run on the grid's energy mix.
(This is broad strokes, and may vary depending on your location.)
In Germany there's been quite a lot of debate around this and the more serious green energy providers try to compensate this by saying that they'll have a certain share of their power come from new installations of renewable energy.
This may seem counterintuitive at first, but it makes sense: Ultimately what you care about is not which share of the currently installed electricity you pay for, but how the money you pay shapes the future energy marked.
The tech giants all pursue this strategy now. They build out renewable energy projects near their datacenters, put solar panels on the roof of their buildings and purchase renewable energy offsets for everything else.
> Apple says that when it purchases REQs, “we require that they are Green-e Energy certified and come from the same power grid—and preferably the same state — as the Apple facility they support.”
So "whatever power generation method is used on that grid" does actually have to include an equivalent amount of renewable energy, although it presumably also includes fossil fuels.
I think the important thing is that they're paying green-energy prices for electricity even if it is more expensive. That encourages development of more power sources, and also decreases demand for fossil-fuel-based electricity.
I don’t understand how purchasing these indulgences allow someone to claim anything about themselves. It’s like me drinking a 6 pack of beer then claiming I dont drink, since I also paid for someone’s Alcoholics Anonymous treatment.
Sure, but if there was a public interest in reducing the total number of drinkers, your paying for treatment would be a legitimate negation of your habit.
If drinking beer only had a negative effect on society based on how much beer we collectively drank and you drank beer only when you paid someone else to drink that much less beer, then the analogy would fit and yes, you would indeed not be contributing on net to the drinking problem such as it were.
Then they should say that. “Our net energy impact is 100% clean, after considering the other clean energy projects we subsidize to offset our non-clean facilities.” Rather than “Our global facilities are powered with 100 percent clean energy” which is false if it can be shown that some of their facilities are powered by non-clean energy.
>But they purchase Renewable Energy Certificates to offset
>their use of non-renewable energy, so they can make the
>claim that their net consumption of non-renewable
> electricity is negative.
Yes, or than can get a (or create ;)) a power consumption plan. I mean in Germany there are various plans like they exist for telecommunication providers. Of course the power is in part nuclear, from coal etc. but as you say the net consumption can be 0. Greenpeace Energy has as far as I know the most progressive interpretation of that as they make sure new power plants are built.
> ECCO Leather, the first soft goods supplier to commit to 100 percent clean energy for its Apple production
Animal product and clean energy? That’s an oxymoron. Animal agriculture is one of the most inefficient systems there is and a major contributor to climate change.
I’d hope the next step is to make a statement by doing without leather, if Apple is indeed trying to set forward thinking and progressive trends.
Yeah, that completely destroys anything good Apple has done to get to this result. Nothing matters if they have one supplier of a product that might not be that green. /s
It’s sad that the most upvoted comment has to be as always the contrarian picking the tiniest detail to diminish a laudable achievement.
Animal agriculture is the single biggest contributor to climate change.[0]
It seems to me that you are the one trying to diminish what the OP was trying to say by calling them a "contrarian" and describing it as the "tiniest detail".
1) you are making assumptions. I never indicated that it diminished their (impressive) achievement. Only that they have more to do to actually be 100% renewable.
2) I i was only at the top because my comment was brand new when you opened the thread.
3) it’s not a tiny detail. Animal agriculture is worse than the entire transportation industry combined.
4) even if I am being a contrarian, it is better than sarcasm and logical fallacies.
3) True that. I'm a vegetarian because of that, but I pretend to be a rational one. Th leather industry is mostly responsible for chemical pollution, though. You don't need to farm animals to make pouches and phone covers. It's not like Apple signed a contract with a cattle farm or something. I would consider that impact negligible, although I'm all for a ban on factory farming any day.
it says agriculture is 24% and transportation is 14%
confusing.
And UC Davis is one of the top agriculture schools in the world (I grew up near there) so its in their interest to support the ag industry since that is where a lot of funding comes from, so I'd take that with a grain of salt.
Like most things, it is not always black and white:
Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (24% of 2010 global greenhouse gas emissions): Greenhouse gas emissions from this sector come mostly from agriculture (cultivation of crops and livestock) and deforestation. This estimate does not include the CO2 that ecosystems remove from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon in biomass, dead organic matter, and soils, which offset approximately 20% of emissions from this sector.[2]
Note these are Global stats, while my link is US only, and was focused on CO2.
edit: and it doesn't seem that any of these statistics contradict each other, but it all depends on if we are talking about global stats, US only stats, all GHG emissions, or just CO2.
> 1) you are making assumptions. I never indicated that it diminished their (impressive) achievement. Only that they have more to do to actually be 100% renewable.
I'll step out on a limb here and say that ECCO doesn't raise animals strictly for their products, but sources leather from animals that have been used for additional purposes.
> Animal product and clean energy? That’s an oxymoron.
Not when you realize that clean energy refers only to the production and consumption of electricity and has nothing whatsoever to do with supplies or with animals of any kind, unless you are using electricity produced by cows running in a circle.
What percentage of energy that is used to create Apple products is renewable?
I’m glad they are running their facilities with renewables but I’m guessing that is only a few percent of the total energy used to create and transport all Apple products.
In other news, iPhone is so overpriced and we are all so dumb to buy it, that they are now wondering what to do with the money. Also, the other phone companies are so pathetic/evil that they can't compete even with this...
Full disclosure, I am also using an iPhone
As expected, the "100%" claim breaks down when it comes to the manufacturing, which mostly relies on suppliers. They say they have "commitments" from 23 suppliers but I'm sure there's more than that and the ones they do mention mostly seem to be the ones manufacturing raw materials (leather, plastics, etc) rather than parts (looking at you, Foxconn).
EDIT: Of course it's still quite an accomplishment but it should be clear that this does not translate to "Apple products are environmentally friendly" in any way (not even energy-wise).
Besides it means they don't have a culture for it at all, they just pay for it. That's a very different way to do it, with vastly different consequences.
One of them is how it influence internal decisions now and in the future. Another one is how it influence employees and their social circle.
But the most important thing is the total removal of the feeling of responsibility: it becomes an economic metrics. One of the things it means is the total lack of incentive to actually have results as long as it looks like you do have results, and so no checks will be ever done that the "commited" suppliers will actually do things correctly, and not just fake it.
I agree with your edit: it's a good start, and a good thing. At the very least it makes the promotion of a good value. But it's not the end of the effort as they promote it. It's barely the beginning.
I mostly added the edit because I think this is (at least in part) a marketing move designed to make consumers feel good about buying Apple products because they're "green" -- which they're decidedly not.
This isn't Apples problem, it's industrial, but: "green" and "battery" are almost as hard to reconcile as "green" and "massive global shipping logistics".
Props to Apple for making movement here, but real-world and feel-good are often far removed from one another...
I don't know the status of other electronics manufacturers/designers/assemblers but I find it a bit harsh on Apple. They're not bioengineers, but they talked about green standards for long, their campus is said to be solar powered.. I don't expect a nation wide walk for Apple but so many critics..
> "Apple currently has 25 operational renewable energy projects around the world, totalling 626 megawatts of generation capacity"
Damn impressive.
Also, it's nice to see an article about renewables that uses megawatts almost exclusively, instead of ridiculous 'megawatt-hours per year'. They slipped up twice at the end, but mostly good.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] threadApple also cannot threaten to leave the city every time they want something. How dystopian it would be to have a multibillion dollar company extorting City Hall like that.
Hey now, what's wrong with Cupertino :(
"Obviously" they would have to make this decision in the early 90s?
Apple's core business is not environment protection, it's development of technology and applications for that tech.
That they're using the vehicle that is Apple to push for green energy is remarkable, putting pressure on the other giants. But this kind of expectation, that they should move away from the Mecka of tech devs. in order to push the envelope further would only lessen the net impact on their environmental work..
See: what Google is doing in SJ.
This is not about the short term results, this is putting a strategical bet on clean power. And as you can see from Apple's other business, they're all about long term gains.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/total-energy-venture...
Does that mean Total is a "green company"? Of course not.
What does the main article say again?
What I'm saying is that it's due to their business success that they can afford to take this investment. The success that made it possible can't just be toyed around with to suit every idealist's short sighted agenda of "Do more!".
In the past you know, big industrial companies built large-scale residential areas for workers, it's not an utopia.
To build a new campus in the middle of nowhere and build housing there would never be a valid solution.
Maybe for a second campus, like they're planning. But that one is rumoured to be put in Austin where, you guessed it, the density of a skilled workforce is high.
Apple is not perfect, but the energy Tim puts in making this stuff happens is beyond marketing desire.
San Francisco's voters and politicians choose to restrict supply. An affordability crisis predictably ensued. Transmutating that into a burden on a non-SF company is incorrect, if still fascinating.
Your knowledge, and many of your arguments in this thread, are wrong.
- as other commenters have pointed out, many employees who live more than a short drive from the office use shuttles. Not as good as public transit civically, but comparable ecologically.
- the vast majority of Apple’s 140k or so employees work in Apple Stores. Your post remains correct, but it is a fairly small number of employees who are operating in the dysfunctional urban quagmire that is the Bay Area.
The new building also allows them to consolidate employees from many of the 100+ other properties they lease within Cupertino and Sunnyvale. This further reduces the need for intercampus transportation. Hopefully these newly unused office buildings can be converted into residential space (edit: but Apple does not own them, so it's not their choice).
This is like saying “if he grows up to be a pro basketball player, he’ll be rich.” Should be pretty obvious that it’s an astronomical longshot at best.
Whether a child is raised well or not has nothing to do with their effect on the environment. Simply existing in the modern world clearly has a huge cost.
Multiple generations just multiplies the negative impact- it doesn't reverse it. At some point (which we may discover sooner rather than later) humanity's impact will be beyond repair.
I just don't know where you get off telling people they shouldn't have kids. Maybe you're just immature, I don't know, but there's nothing to be gained from it.
My point is that if a person is concerned about the environment and the toll humanity is taking on it, recognize the affect your personal choice is having.
Thanks for your blessing. It's everything else you said )moreso the way in which you said it) that's wrong.
I can’t handle this level of edginess.
Please quote me in full during your ad hominem attacks.
How is being ignorant of or willfully ignoring the consequences of one's action not delusional?
If you get a galaxy S4 now, it's not the fastest, but perfectly usable phone.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/ios-11-on-the-iphone...
Same thing happened to iPhone 4 a while ago, it was literally killed by iOS 7.
I'd rather not update in this case.
Also, google is sending security patches for older versions of Android. Latest one for S5 is from beginning of 2018.
This is especially visible on phones. Twice I've had a 4 year iPhone, twice it ran the latest software. There are very few Android phones for which this is true.
They are fast enough to do web browsing and media consumption.
i5-5350u from newest Macbook Air is actually way slower than 9 year old i7-960, and it's sufficient for most people.
Four year old Nexus 6P has latest system version. Android One phones will have it too.
Time to live was a big difference in favor of Apple few years ago, but it's getting way better for Android phones now.
> Where I live it's pretty common to have a 6-7 year old gaming PC with SSD, and RAM upgrade among less tech savvy people.
Why would a "less tech savvy" person have a gaming PC?
> They are fast enough to do web browsing and media consumption.
That's not what a gaming PC is for…
> i5-5350u from newest Macbook Air is actually way slower than 9 year old i7-960, and it's sufficient for most people.
1. i7-960 is the processor from the Mac Pro. i5-5350u is from an ultraportable laptop.
2. The "newest Macbook Air" hasn't been substantially updated in around three to four years.
> Four year old Nexus 6P has latest system version
There's many things wrong with this statement, so let me break it down.
1. Nexus 6P came out in September 2015, so it's not even three years old yet.
2. Nexus 6P will not be getting the Android P update, which is currently in beta.
3. Nexus 6P is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Google. No other Android phone is going to get updates as long as it does.
4. iPhone 6, which came out in 2014, will most likely be getting the update for iOS 12.
Kids. Adults buy kids new hardware to play latest games, and older stuff that is replaced is good enough for them.
> That's not what a gaming PC is for…
Repurposing old hardware for new uses is what being eco friendly is about.
> i7-960 is the processor from the Mac Pro.
No, it's a processor you would go and buy off shelf (hard to imagine, I know) and use in a decent gaming PC in that time, that happens to also be in a mac pro.
>The "newest Macbook Air" hasn't been substantially updated in around three to four years.
It's for June 2017 model, latest that was on Wikipedia. Is there a newer one which is twice as fast?
>The processor you've selected is from an ultraportable laptop
I wanted to state that for quite some time people don't actually need better hardware for web browsing or watching movies. This is a response to claim that 2010 PC users with Windows 10 being so rare, and that Mac mini from 2012 still having updates making it something special.
>Nexus 6P is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Google. No other Android phone is going to get updates as long as it does.
iPhone is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Apple. No other iOS phone is going to exist...
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. You mention that adults are buying their children new hardware, but you're also talking about 6-7 year old gaming PCs? Not quite sure what you mean.
> Repurposing old hardware for new uses is what being eco friendly is about.
Yeah, but these are gaming PCs. They're terribly impractical for casual use. They're bulky and hot and noisy, with terrible battery life and a large power consumption.
> It's for June 2017 model, latest that was on Wikipedia. Is there a newer one which is twice as fast?
It's the "latest" in the sense that they bumped the clock speed of the process slightly and kept the Broadwell-era CPU in 2017; otherwise it's all parts from 2015 or before. Even the MacBook from today is faster, and MacBook Pro, while not "twice as fast", is around 1 1/2 times faster or so.
> This is a response to claim that 2010 PC users with Windows 10 being so rare, and that Mac mini from 2012 still having updates making it something special.
You know, I've never seen anyone still using a PC from 2010. Macs from 2010 aren't that uncommon though; I know at least a handful of people who use the non-Retina MacBook Pros from like 2009 every day.
> iPhone is the high-end flagship phone literally backed by Apple. No other iOS phone is going to exist...
Yes, that's my point. You buy an iPhone because it's a high end phone that Apple's dedicated to support for years. With Android it's hit-or-miss. Sometimes you hit Google and get updates for two or three years. Sometimes you get Samsung and wait six months to get a two-year old version of Android from your carrier. You buy an iPhone and you are instantly guaranteed updates straight from Apple, immediately and regularly, for the next five years. And that's any iPhone, from iPhone X to iPhone SE.
You buy a new PC, what happens to old one? It doesn't magically disappear.
>Yeah, but these are gaming PCs. They're terribly impractical for casual use. They're bulky and hot and noisy, with terrible battery life and a large power consumption.
I'm talking about desktops, not laptops. They're not noisy and hot unless you run them at 100%, which you don't do when not gaming. You could also remove GPU and save some power, but I rarely see people doing this.
> You know, I've never seen anyone still using a PC from 2010. Macs from 2010 aren't that uncommon though; I know at least a handful of people who use the non-Retina MacBook Pros from like 2009 every day
This is why i stated 'where I live'. Macs aren't common here (there's a trend for last 3-4 years for MacBooks, but still low market share), and in 2010 they were almost nonexistent. This is why there aren't much of old ones around.
Everyone had a PC though, and it can be seen that they can handle new versions of Windows as well if not better than macs can handle new OSX.
> Even the MacBook from today is faster, and MacBook Pro, while not "twice as fast", is around 1 1/2 times faster or so.
Yes, but did you see people owning Airs complain about slugishness? For same reason they don't on 2x faster, 7 year old machine.
> With Android it's hit-or-miss.
With Android you have choice. You pay premium for a pixel and updates, or go cheap and don't get those. There's also Android One initiative, which gives phones updates straight from google. Yes, harder for uneducated guesses, but you can still stay good knowing only that Google = longer life.
With iOS there's only one choice.
The products have extremely long usage cycles relative to the industry standard. It's such that they've integrated the environmental impact deep into their product design and business.
You can argue that this is simply a byproduct, but they've talked a lot about it over the years that it's pretty deliberate.
I think the big N still has it going.
I don't see this trend at all in my environment. Actually quite contrary. Some, who love Apple products, always upgrade really soon. I've got an Sony smartphone for 6 years. Regarding tablets, my parents, sisters, parents in law have an Android tablet, Surface and iPad and independent of the brand they all have theirs for years and don't plan to upgrade soon.
So, this is a myth common to premium products. Probably part of the marketing strategy (same for cars, kitchen gear, etc.).
Or non upgradeable pcs?
Or making you dispose your perfectly good screen, when your iMac gets old?
Resale value is high due too really good marketing and brand recognition combined with high prices.
People will often buy a 3 year old iPhone instead of technically superior new Android phone for some price, just to have this brand.
My iPhone 6s is starting to act up, especially when cold but I haven't replaced the battery in that yet. I'll probably get that done this summer when the phone gets to the point it can't go a full day without a charge.
I don't care about the supposed technological superiority of a cellphone. I just want it to work. Apple seems to put more effort in to privacy and security and I like their business model more than Google's. I prefer to be a customer instead of a product.
And my desktop PC is better. What's the point of this?
You can't upgrade anything on a new MBP, and every computer i had so far had at least a RAM upgrade in it's life. With Macbook, you just have to throw it away, which isn't too eco friendly, is it?
> I don't care about the supposed technological superiority of a cellphone.
Why don't you buy a Nokia 8100 then? It just works :)
Which means that your old iPhone goes to someone else rather than the landfill…
> People will often buy a 3 year old iPhone instead of technically superior new Android phone for some price, just to have this brand.
Technically superior in what way?
Your Android phone will too, you will just be paid less for it.
> Technically superior in what way?
Bigger screen with better resolution,
better camera,
faster UI,
NFC,
wireless charging,
USB-C with fastcharge,
longer battery life,
expandable storage,
and most important, possibility to install a decent web browser instead of having to rely on app for every website you visit :)
On the other side, every other phone on the market at the time had a battery cover and toolless replacement was possible.
It got a bit harder with iPhone 5 though, since screws now secure front panel, not back to the chassis.
Not necessarily. Using one specific data point, I can also claim to make this argument invalid. The three year old iPhone will certainly, and surely, run the latest iOS, whereas the new Android phone (priced the same as a three year old used iPhone) is highly likely to have an OS that's already a year or two older and will never get updates in the future, putting the user at a much higher risk. So which is better?
Both new are priced in the range of used 6.
Both run latest Android and will have updates for 3-4 years, since they both have non vendor modified Android.
Not sure if I want them to spend resources and make products more expensive just so I can repair my 10 year old iPhone myself. I have no desire spending time repairing an old phone that isnt usable already anyway due to its aged hardware.
Not sure if that only applies to recent devices, or everything it's ever sold.
Edit: the title is 100% misleading and HN is not a board for corporate propaganda.
There's a concept called first mover disadvantage where for example a well intentioned CEO can push for a positive action by the company like reducing pollution, improving worker welfare. These nearly always incur a cost and push down shareholder value in the short term.
Furthermore if your competitors aren't making the same moves they're gaining in the short term over you.
A CEO like that is not going to last very long and most CEOs don't have the kind of power to tell shareholders to settle down.
That's what makes Apple's approach here pretty unique. Now if they'd only refresh their Mac lineup a little more often that'd be something...
A failed concept that has been proven wrong again and again. At this point it's a cliché coming out of people who got MBA's from bad schools.
>if your competitors aren't making the same moves they're gaining in the short term over you
This assumes your target market doesn't differentiate between your product and competitor's products on anything other than price. Apple, and others, have repeatedly proven this wrong.
> most CEOs don't have the kind of power to tell shareholders to settle down
Tim Cook is already on record saying that Apple is committed to doing what it sees as the right thing, and the investors can pound sand if they're not on board.
There are a number of other very large companies that are also run this way. The notion of a corporate board that only listens to its shareholders is a gross oversimplification and not based in a thorough study of modern business.
True forces of nature are like a graph. Companies are like trees with a root. There is some control in targeting the root but the end result is similar to the graph in that it can't be predicted. Thus good/bad must be taken as is without looking too much into the intentionality.
A focus on intentionality may actually create "bad" because it rewards focus on the packaging over the content. CEOs may just be the main story teller to manage the packaging of the company as an individual (vs PR branch which is faceless/just-a-job)
From a humanitarian and ecological standpoint we want civilization to be using as much electricity as possible. If only we could make lots of energy with very little carbon we might be able to get rich mining BTC and keep drinking cheap coffee ;)
Climate change is a cluster-f-bomb that will evolve into blatant seriousness over tens of decades. It won't directly ruin civilization, either, so if we avoid any major wars based on scarcity or refugee crises we're likely just looking at a major remodeling of humanities day-to-day and some intense population events moreso than annihilation.
From that perspective, I'm gonna say "kiiiiiiiinda".
It's not like what Apple is doing is _bad_, but let's get real: they're stating above the fold that their green investments are no solution for their massive 24/7 computing needs. They're investing in fungable offsets, but the underlying energy production is still carbon intensive. Their approach doesn't cover their own needs, and can't scale to any industrially challenging or civilization-scale needs. We want to transition a lot of industry over to clean electrical processes that require more energy and we want to lift a few Billion out of poverty, too...
If we look at total energy usage on this planet and future demands we see that funging some minor percentage of electricity production (not energy!), is just moving around some lipstick on a pig and making sure the brand is "eco friendly"...
Fundamentally we need to be looking at technologies that eliminate the need for the coal plant to keep the datacenter open, the peaker gas plants that handle bursty loads, and for burning oil to get the workers/supplies in and out of the building. We don't need electrical tech that's "green" on top of existing infrastructure, we need green tech that displaces and eliminates existing energy infrastructure.
Bluntly, if you care about that 50 year picture: the answer is fission, with a vague and slight possibility of fusion (maybe).
But they purchase Renewable Energy Certificates to offset their use of non-renewable energy, so they can make the claim that their net consumption of non-renewable electricity is negative.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/9/17216656/apple-renewable-e...
Am I misunderstanding something? How does this work?
I think the important point here is to make sure the energy you buy is certified green (or whatever the proper term is, in Sweden we call it urspungsmärkt) the way Apple does. If everyone did there would be no demand for coal power any more.
That's not possible, because for Apple to buy these credits, someone else has to buy the green energy as if it was non-green. You can't have credits for everyone unless the whole energy being sold is actually green, not just green on paper.
1. Actually running on green energy is a competitive advantage.
2. The cost is borne by companies who want to be able to claim they are running on green energy.
This allows companies that want to be ethical to subsidize the cost of green energy even if they can't literally run on green energy due to logistic issues.
This is a net positive whichever way you spin it. Pollution doesn't understand state or country boundaries.
Take Norway for example, it was said earlier that they officially run on only about 40% green energy. However in actual reality they run closer to 100% on green energy and everyone there knows it. Then a coal power factory somewhere can buy the Norwegian credits and claim to be 100% green and sell that. It's no wonder many people don't like this scheme.
But as you say and I agree, it is probably a net positive.
No this is not happening anywhere, where are you coming with this kind of things?
Coal company producing only coal-generated power don't buy green credits.
If 100GW renewal energy is produced, who or how it is being used is irrelevant, because the alternative would be 100GW energy generated through non-renewable resources. I don't in which version of reality is that a bad thing, regardless of who buys whatever REC credit.
Look at Microsoft. They just funded a deal to build out an absolutely massive solar farm in Virginia.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/03/21/new-sol...
They do have facilities in state that will only need a fraction of that power to be 100% green, and the excess will be pumped into the local Virginia power grid and used by consumers there.
Basically, Microsoft is saying that they funded the project to generate excess green energy in one place to offset the dirty energy they consume in areas where there is no local green power option available.
Is there another statistic for measuring how many KWhr or MWhr are sourced directly from renewable energy sources (or, more logically, 'directly' from batteries + hemp supercapacitors between use and generation)?
Apple funded or has lots of JV across the world, producing renewable energy. It is only a matter of time before they force /help their supplier in doing so as well.
My guess is in five years time Apple product will be net zero non-renewable electricity from transport to manufacturing.
>Though the 100% figure covers only Apple’s own operations–not those of of the suppliers and contract manufacturers which do much of the work of bringing its ideas to life–it’s also convinced 23 companies in its supply chain to sign a pledge to get to 100% renewable energy for the portion of their business relating to Apple products.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40554151/how-apple-got-to-100-re...
Fun fact: some horses are capable of about 10 horsepower.
I think you misunderstood, because that was entirely my point—I was saying I don't get why they talk about MWh rather than MW when it makes more sense to talk about power rather than energy. [1]
[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/11/9/9696820/renewable-energy-certi...
That's the difference. You CAN'T claim it's green power after you sold the certificate. Even if it's literally directly connected to your house.
Imagine it like a portal in your electric cable.
It's like balancing a checkbook. When you act as a producer, your windfarm puts 1MW into the pool. Logistically, you have to buy it back to claim you consume green power, otherwise you run on the grid's energy mix.
(This is broad strokes, and may vary depending on your location.)
In Germany there's been quite a lot of debate around this and the more serious green energy providers try to compensate this by saying that they'll have a certain share of their power come from new installations of renewable energy.
This may seem counterintuitive at first, but it makes sense: Ultimately what you care about is not which share of the currently installed electricity you pay for, but how the money you pay shapes the future energy marked.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/10/apple-building-171-a...
The tech giants all pursue this strategy now. They build out renewable energy projects near their datacenters, put solar panels on the roof of their buildings and purchase renewable energy offsets for everything else.
For instance, Google.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/04/google-wind-solar-offset...
Microsoft is on the same path.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/03/21/new-sol...
https://www.aboutamazon.com/sustainability
> Apple says that when it purchases REQs, “we require that they are Green-e Energy certified and come from the same power grid—and preferably the same state — as the Apple facility they support.”
So "whatever power generation method is used on that grid" does actually have to include an equivalent amount of renewable energy, although it presumably also includes fossil fuels.
>their use of non-renewable energy, so they can make the
>claim that their net consumption of non-renewable
> electricity is negative.
Yes, or than can get a (or create ;)) a power consumption plan. I mean in Germany there are various plans like they exist for telecommunication providers. Of course the power is in part nuclear, from coal etc. but as you say the net consumption can be 0. Greenpeace Energy has as far as I know the most progressive interpretation of that as they make sure new power plants are built.
Animal product and clean energy? That’s an oxymoron. Animal agriculture is one of the most inefficient systems there is and a major contributor to climate change.
I’d hope the next step is to make a statement by doing without leather, if Apple is indeed trying to set forward thinking and progressive trends.
It’s sad that the most upvoted comment has to be as always the contrarian picking the tiniest detail to diminish a laudable achievement.
It seems to me that you are the one trying to diminish what the OP was trying to say by calling them a "contrarian" and describing it as the "tiniest detail".
[0]http://www.animalagricultureclimatechange.org/animal-agricul...
2) I i was only at the top because my comment was brand new when you opened the thread.
3) it’s not a tiny detail. Animal agriculture is worse than the entire transportation industry combined.
4) even if I am being a contrarian, it is better than sarcasm and logical fallacies.
2) Ok, whatever
3) True that. I'm a vegetarian because of that, but I pretend to be a rational one. Th leather industry is mostly responsible for chemical pollution, though. You don't need to farm animals to make pouches and phone covers. It's not like Apple signed a contract with a cattle farm or something. I would consider that impact negligible, although I'm all for a ban on factory farming any day.
4) Contrarianism is exhausting.
Let's base arguments on facts please.
US Greenhouse Emissions (specifically CO2) sources:
Agriculture: 9% of emissions.[0][1] (4.2% according to UCDavis[2])
Transportation: 27% of emissions.[0][1][2]
[0]https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
[1]http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/farm/hsus-fact-shee...
[2]http://www.caes.ucdavis.edu/news/articles/2016/04/livestock-...
And here is a report from the UN's FAO; it's not a comparison to other GHG sources, but it's good data nonetheless: http://www.fao.org/docrep/019/i3671e/i3671e.pdf
it says agriculture is 24% and transportation is 14%
confusing.
And UC Davis is one of the top agriculture schools in the world (I grew up near there) so its in their interest to support the ag industry since that is where a lot of funding comes from, so I'd take that with a grain of salt.
Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (24% of 2010 global greenhouse gas emissions): Greenhouse gas emissions from this sector come mostly from agriculture (cultivation of crops and livestock) and deforestation. This estimate does not include the CO2 that ecosystems remove from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon in biomass, dead organic matter, and soils, which offset approximately 20% of emissions from this sector.[2]
Note these are Global stats, while my link is US only, and was focused on CO2.
edit: and it doesn't seem that any of these statistics contradict each other, but it all depends on if we are talking about global stats, US only stats, all GHG emissions, or just CO2.
Cattle are completely renewable by any standard.
Not when you realize that clean energy refers only to the production and consumption of electricity and has nothing whatsoever to do with supplies or with animals of any kind, unless you are using electricity produced by cows running in a circle.
I’m glad they are running their facilities with renewables but I’m guessing that is only a few percent of the total energy used to create and transport all Apple products.
Edit: To the people who will downvote me because I "hate" the environment, go read this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799199
EDIT: Of course it's still quite an accomplishment but it should be clear that this does not translate to "Apple products are environmentally friendly" in any way (not even energy-wise).
One of them is how it influence internal decisions now and in the future. Another one is how it influence employees and their social circle.
But the most important thing is the total removal of the feeling of responsibility: it becomes an economic metrics. One of the things it means is the total lack of incentive to actually have results as long as it looks like you do have results, and so no checks will be ever done that the "commited" suppliers will actually do things correctly, and not just fake it.
I agree with your edit: it's a good start, and a good thing. At the very least it makes the promotion of a good value. But it's not the end of the effort as they promote it. It's barely the beginning.
Props to Apple for making movement here, but real-world and feel-good are often far removed from one another...
Damn impressive.
Also, it's nice to see an article about renewables that uses megawatts almost exclusively, instead of ridiculous 'megawatt-hours per year'. They slipped up twice at the end, but mostly good.
https://dqbasmyouzti2.cloudfront.net/assets/content/cache/ma...
Before moving to Google they had a lot less. Here is 2016.
https://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/articl...
So went from #14 to #4 and would guess that was because of Google?
BTW, Apple is really much better at PR then Google.
1: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/data-center-faqs/apple-da...
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/26/17053496/apple-google-clo... Apple confirms it now uses Google Cloud for iCloud services - The ...
But the key is Google uses a lot more renewables then MS or Amazon . Just Google does not market like Apple.
https://dqbasmyouzti2.cloudfront.net/assets/content/cache/ma...
https://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/articl...
Then now
https://dqbasmyouzti2.cloudfront.net/assets/content/cache/ma...
So went from about #14 or to #4.