“Apple just agreed to back two large solar farms in China. It’s the biggest deal of its kind for a U.S. company operating in China,” Tom Randall reports for Bloomberg. “For China, the deal is only a beginning.”
“China has been installing more renewable-power capacity than fossil fuels for several years, a gap that’s growing. In 2015, China will install 15 gigawatts to 18 gw of solar power alone, double the solar deployment in the U.S., according to an analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF),” Randall reports. “In the next 15 years, China is on track to have more low-carbon electricity than the entire capacity of the U.S. power grid. ‘Think of what their grid will look like in 2030,’ Michael Liebreich, founder of BNEF, said at the organization’s annual summit last week in New York. ‘A very competitive advantage.'”
Randall reports, “Many U.S. tech giants — not just Apple — have been criticized for outsourcing their pollution, says Justin Wu, head of Asia research for BNEF. Apple is ‘hitting back at that whole line of arguments,’ he says. ‘This is the beginning of something. Manufacturing in China is going to get greened.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is likely good direction, since in many cities and industrial areas of China right now, breathing clean air is a fantasy.