Over 110 of Apple’s manufacturing partners are moving to renewable energy
apple.com
apple.com
> ... by 2030
Interesting "move", but not necessarily hard to make. Solar is already the cheapest form of power generation (discounting any need for energy storage), and it's "just" 2021. Easy to guess that by 2030, this mandate by Apple will be mostly useless.
For now, though, they can monetize some good PR "karma" by showing the world that they're "powering ahead".
I often thank fate that I don't need to work in a PR department. I would hate this level of BS too much.
control (storage)
density
Unless we can solve these it is going to be hard to run energy systems without significant amount of base power plants (likely nuclear)
Density doesn't make sense to me as a long-term objection, either. Unlike other power generation technologies, solar installation cost scales relatively linearly with power generation. Nobody runs backyard coal plants, but rooftop solar is viable. There is plenty of room for solar panels!
An average energy load graph begs to differ. Solar is great for peak demand. Unless you can make cars to be able to charge at once at peak it is not going to work.
>> Density doesn't make sense to me
So how much % of land would you sacrifice for solar? And how often do you think we have to redo the work?
Why bother? We all know where solar is imperfect. We all know where nuclear is imperfect. Coal, NatGas, hydro, stored mass, geothermal, wave action, donkey trains. We get it.
And clearly, if solar would not fit the application, another choice will be made. But also clearly, solar fits a lot of applications.
I do not think that we know it. The current political climate if heavily favouring "renewables" while ditching nuclear entirely. This is happening partially because of misinformation and fear mongering. I think it would be great if people could understand at the very least the basics of energy systems. I was able to convince several people to get out of the 100% solar / wind is the future mindset. It is not and it is very dangerous to gamble with these things. Once we reach a 30-40% "renewables" (the name should be uncontrollable / unreliable really) the grid either needs a serious amount of buffer (battery or gas turbines) or it becomes unstable and blackouts are going to be the norm. Once you are in that situation it takes decades the build reliable energy sources. Since politics is a 4-5 years game with zero accountability it does not matter who will decide to commit to renewables 100%. The impact is going to stay with us for a long time. It would be great if we could avoid it.
>> But also clearly, solar fits a lot of applications.
Yes. As a home user solution with a batter pack in your basement it is kind of neat. Taking it more seriously than this is problematic.
Public confusion about energy is normal and irrelevant. If public funds are spent via tax abatements etc to encourage solar builds, this is fine. No serious energy producer is going to be confused about where any given technology excels.
But that's not at all what this discussion is about. Apple cannot build nuclear or hydro. Apple can build solar, which >> coal/petro.
I get the sense that you're rooting for the nuclear team. OK, but that's not an option here.
If Apple doesn't build solar, then Apple is waiting for market forces to deliver unto it a better option, which is clearly not happening. So what would you have Apple do?
> As a home user solution with a batter pack in your basement it is kind of neat.
And this is dismissive. Apple has built over a GW of generation capacity, plus fuel cell storage. 100% of their global operations are powered renewably. That's a lot of houses.
It is not the least-expensive solution today, but building at scale is an appropriate way to push the technology forward. I don't see this as something a reasonable person would criticize.
Apple made a huge bet on solar early (2012) -- way before it was cool at data center scale.
They converted all of their global ops to 100% solar in 2018.
They're now pulling their suppliers into the fold.
In what way is this not good and noteworthy?
Keep in mind that their suppliers are often energy-hungry, subject to foreign laws, and not 100% aligned with Tim Cook's California vision. Also note that converting to an alternate power source is generally not less-expensive than continuing to use the same power source you already have. So Apple's pressure is effecting legitimate change.
Your criticism seems to boil down to: "Apple saw the trendlines early, spent heavily to get there before everyone else, and is now putting pressure on partners to improve their own operations...all for the bragging rights!". This would be a very shallow take, IMO.
https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-solar-would-it-take-t...
Oil rigs may have a small physical footprint by themselves, but they generally have pads cleared off for them and then fields can have multiple pads and access paths. See:
https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x750_crop_center-cent...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-16/the-permi...
Also I live in Austin, and while some windmills froze early because the power company didn't pay for weatherizing, they were the fastest to fix and managed to excel over nuclear, gas, and coal at production. All of them failed because private power companies didn't want to pay to weatherize, but in areas where wind is really reliable it's a rare thing - a reliable, clean energy source like hydro can be.
It's for those reasons that I really am pro-windmill. We really need mixed sources of reliable clean energy sources if we care about future generations of humans, wind is a great one.