“In a quest to be more green, Apple says it is investing in Chinese solar power,” Brandon Bailey reports for The Associated Press.
“The new solar project in China has a capacity of 40 megawatts, which is smaller than some projects Apple has announced in the United States. By comparison, Apple is spending $850 million for rights to nearly half the output of a 280-megawatt solar facility planned for construction south of Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters. That project will produce enough energy to power all of Apple’s California offices, a computer center and 52 retail stores,” Bailey reports. “Still, the Chinese project will produce more than the amount of energy consumed by Apple’s 19 corporate offices and 21 retail stores in China and Hong Kong.”
“That figure, however, doesn’t include substantial power consumption by contract manufacturers. With the new project in China, Apple is looking to improve its own operations first,” Bailey reports. “Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president for environmental initiatives declined to say how much Apple is investing in the Chinese project, which is being built in partnership with U.S. energy company SunPower and four Chinese firms.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: More good news for solar.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
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Apple buying 36,000 acres of private forestland to be sustainably harvested and used in Apple packaging – April 16, 2015
How Apple is making money off of its landmark $850 million solar deal – March 27, 2015
Apple’s $850 million solar plant investment rockets it to first place among U.S. corporations – February 12, 2015
Apple to build new solar farm, and some greens hate it – February 11, 2015
Tim Cook: Apple to build $850 million solar farm – February 10, 2015
Forget Solar, it has hardly made a dent and the earth will overheat long before Solar can save the day. There is no way Solar panels can power a Steel Mill or the Manhattan subway system. If you care about the future take a look at Thorium Nuclear Power. Yeah I know Fukushima, yada, yada. Thorium is not Uranium and is clean save and can’t melt down.
Check out:
http://www.ThoriumEnergyAlliance.org
And before you flame me about nuclear, get educated at:
Apple is wasting it’s money on Solar. For the same money they can power the whole city, not just their offices. Jeez!
How dare you say the word “nuclear”! Anything related to anything nuclear should be abolished.
You need to watch some of these Videos and get yourself educated. Not all Nuclear power is the same, just like not all Chemicals are the same. Making a statement like anything nuclear should be banned is like saying all Chemicals should be banned just because some chemicals are poisonous.
Believe it or not it suits the purpose of the oil companies for people like you to be so uninformed.
Oil companies love Solar because they know in years it hasn’t made a dent in their profit. They want people like you to demand more solar. Maybe in 3 years the total world Solar output will double and grow from 1% to 2% while the world demand for energy grows 30%.
Yup Oil companies want people like you to say “No Nukes” without being educated that there are alternate safe forms of safe nukes.
Watch the videos I posted and respond back. I think your opinion will be changed.
Although this is hard to say, but being pro-solar is being pro Oil Company.
It seems I was too weak in my sarcasm. If we abolished anything nuclear, we would have to abolish all atoms.
I am quite pleased that thorium is being examined as an energy source. I thought it was a poor choice for Clinton to kill the research into the next generation fast breeder reactor. It would have hugely reduced the amount of nuclear waste and made use of the abundant (and generally not useful) U-238 all the while using the laws of physics to prevent a meltdown, not technology and intervention. Thorium appears to hold a lot of promise if given the chance.
Thorium is definitely worthy of consideration. I believe that a diversified system of power generation is the right answer, and nuclear power is far better than coal. But solar power can and will provide a substantial percentage of the electrical power consumption of the U.S. in the coming decades. Solar power and wind power and wave power can run steel mills (if there are any left in the U.S. anymore). It is not all or nothing.
Going negative on solar is very silly, and of course makes me question your politics.
BUT: A good friend works closely with modern nuclear energy technology and one of the two most promising NON-dangerous nuclear systems is thorium. I agree!
However:
1) Progress implementing the new, clean and non-dangerous nuclear reactors has been deadly slow. Outrageously slow.
2) One reason why is the amount of current money invested in ye olde dirty and dangerous nuke energy systems. It’s typical stupid intransigence for the sake of someone’s love of $money$ over human survival, blahblahblah.
3) Then add in the fact that there’s no such thing as a thorium mine. My understanding is that thorium is, unlike most other ores, spread fairly evenly all over planet Earth. That means major messing mining all over the place, which no one wants. The most recent ‘hopeful’ place for thorium ‘mining’ is in Greenland. But that ‘hope’ depends upon the Arctic ice cap melting to the point where Greenland ground is economically accessible. That of course is hoping for something that is detrimental elsewhere in the world, such as Florida. Oops, sea level is rising…
4) Then throw in the remaining military industrial complex that wants traditional olde dirty nuke plants because they can be often be used to make plutonium, that wonderful element used in fission nuclear bombs. 😛 Never underestimate the effects of human paranoia and the desires of some to use war as a method for making more $money$.
China has a least ‘talked’ about setting up a thorium nuke plant. I haven’t checked on their progress during the past year.
I’m watching the video you linked right now, after my blab-fest above. It’s good to see them covering most of the points I listed.
I am glad you watched the Video. I realize there are all kinds of agenda’s and major Oil companies are against Thorium. But unfortunately, the earth is heating up and we are running out of time. I am no fan of Bill Gates but in this particular case I agree with most of his points. He also has a great ted talks about the future of Nuclear.
He is not a Thorium Advocate but he is investing in a technology that burns the nuclear waste from existing reactors and produces vast amounts of power and cleans up our existing waste.
Whether you believe in Gate’s approach, or the Thorium approach this is a very good educational video:
Thanks for pointing out the second useful and safe nuclear reactor system, burning nuclear waste. If Gates is supporting it, that’s fine with me. Maybe he can save his soul after all. 😉
Oh, and I really have no politics here. Neither party is truly doing anything about helping to stop climate change.
I am a strong believe in Global Warming, and I am worried about the future for my kids.
I am in favor of Solar power and Wind, etc, but I also know that Solar is not enough. The world demand is growing faster than Solar panels can come online.
The only solution I can see is Thorium. Gates has some good ideas as well. Also Lockheed Martin has a breakthrough in Fusion.
The world demand is growing faster than Solar panels can come online.
Actually, I watched a documentary about Hawaii where it is the other way around. Their citizens are installing solar panels faster than their electrical utility can figure out how to get them online. They’ve had people waiting 2 frickin’ years to be able to turn on their solar panel systems and have them feed into the grid. Meanwhile, home owners who invested in the solar panels are paying interest on their loan purchase with nothing no corresponding savings or income. Totally lunatic. (I personally would have invested in home batteries to store the excess electricity for evening use and turn the solar panels on anyway! But that’s apparently not obvious or affordable for many people there).
*shocked* Right at the start of the video of Gates’ TED talk, there’s a quick GE ad:
Innovative thinking brought to you by GE. Imagination at work. 💥🔫
This is sleazy, nasty old GE who knew their nuclear reactors were dangerously designed back in the 1960s. This is GE who built the Fukushima nuclear plants that blew out and continue to spew radioactive waste into the air and water to this day. Fscking General Electric, one of the worst companies in the USA, attempting to spin themselves into the nuclear energy business yet again. No thank you! Go the hell away! Go bankrupt or something! 😛 /rant
Yeah, but look at all the taxes GE pays from their ginormous profits. Oh right, almost none. Sigh.
Well, there has been some blatant propagandizing of their tax payments in recent years. But yes, they end up being a poster child for tax dodging corporations, pointing out the plentiful and ‘ginormous’ loopholes in the idiotic, revolting, rat’s nest of the US tax system. One way or another, this ends up as corporate welfare and it’s nauseating.
:-Q*****
For what it’s worth, my thoughts while watching Bill Gate’s presentation on alternatives to carbon fuels:
– The primitive battery problem: Hydrogen storage can potentially be the solution, short or long term. The only worry is storing it safely. No more Hindenburgs please.
– Carbon sequestration is a joke. As soon as CO2 hits water, especially ground water, it goes into equilibrium with carbonic acid. Acidifying the ground is an extremely poor idea. We already have too many sink holes, etc.
– R&D on alternative energy sources is being held back by the carbon energy oligarchy. This goes directly into the cesspool of politics.
– What a great microphone Bill Gates had on! It’s effective and impossible to see from the audience.
– As ever, Bill Gates wasn’t presenting anything new. It’s stuff he learned about like the rest of us. But he’s effective as a speaker, celebrity, purveyor of this information to those who don’t already know it. That’s a good thing.
– There are already working designs for the uranium-238 and nuclear waste burning reactors. We just need to building them, right now. Here is one such reactor (not from fscking GE):
Hitachi developing reactor that burns nuclear waste
What’s the point of trying to pick a fight between nuclear and solar?
Nuclear energy has many advantages, but it’s not perfect or the answer the to all energy problems. It requires very complicated engineering that is extremely dangerous if done incorrectly or with hubris. It produces poisonous wastes that nobody wants in their backyard. It has an extremely negative public perception scorched into the public mind through events in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyle, and Fukushima. While manageable, these are not small or insignificant problems.
The current limitations with solar panels – how to gathering it more efficiently, and where to store all that energy for cloudy days – these are solvable problems. Solar energy is there, for the taking, whether we choose to utilize it well or (ridiculously) try to deny its inherent value.
The sun keeps bombarding the Earth with excessive, free, useful energy, regardless of how well our civilization utilizes it. This plentiful free energy is the entire reason why Earth is habitable for life. It’s the source of the biological energy keeps you and every other living thing alive. It’s even the source of heat energy in the “earth will overheat” problem you alluded to.
Nuclear energy has enormously potential, if it can overcome its problems, through engineering design, safety, and oversight. With any luck safe nuclear energy will increasingly fulfill our energy needs – right next to solar.
The new solar project in China has a capacity of 40 megawatts
Kind of tiny. But knowing China, putting a toe into the water before diving in makes major sense.