Apple recently struck a deal with Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology, known as the world's largest wind turbine maker, which will bring clean energy into the production processes and manufacturing plants of Apple's partner facilities in China (via South China Morning Post).
Specifically, Goldwind's wholly-owned subsidiary Beijing Tianrun New Energy Investment will transfer a 30 percent stake each in four project companies to Apple. The subsidiary of Goldwind is focused on the construction and operation of wind power farms and will likely assist Apple in providing clean energy to its many iPhone manufacturing facilities in the region, potentially including well-known assemblers Foxconn and Pegatron.
“Apple is committed to powering all of its facilities around the world with 100 per cent renewable energy, and is now working with its suppliers to power Apple’s product manufacturing with renewable energy,” Goldwind said.
The details of exactly which supplier, and how much money Apple will spend on the project, were left undisclosed. In the filing sent to the Hong Kong stock exchange yesterday by Goldwind, which revealed its partnership with Apple, it was also mentioned that each of the projects will be "cooperative joint ventures" that won't be consolidated solely in Goldwind's financial statements. Both Goldwind and Apple will have more of an equal presence, "since important matters will require unanimous approval by their directors."
Apple has always been a proponent of clean energy and general environmental friendliness, this year joining global renewable energy initiative RE100 and replacing its retail stores' plastic bags with paper bags made from 80 percent recycled materials. The cooperation with Goldwind is a new step in Apple's attempts to introduce clean energy into the manufacturing processes of its supplier partners, last year announcing the installation of 200 megawatts of solar projects in the northern, eastern and southern regions of China, as well as encouraging partners like Foxconn to be more energy efficient.
Top Rated Comments
The Chinese economy is bad, and Donal Trump promises to anger Beijing a lot with manufacturing and the Chinese already promised to take revenge on Apple.
[doublepost=1481202583][/doublepost]Personal Computers are always throw away items.
By the time a SSD fails, your computer is already obsolete.
And people can moan about their products being increasingly disposable - I know I do, for several reasons - but seriously, they are a company making products and devices... and it's better that they are made of highly recyclable materials for when they do eventually hit the (metaphoric or literal) scrapheap than be upgradable for another ... what... decade(?) and then hit the scrapheap, full of nasty junk. The planet doesn't care about another decade you got out of your Macbook. It cares (figuratively) more about polluting the air and water and ground, and about burning fossil fuels and altering the climate and causing more extreme weather.
I posted in another thread about how ludicrous I feel it is that in almost 2017 data roaming charges are still a thing - but even more ludicrous is how little energy we capture that is being given away for free, every single day. Put it this way, there are billions upon billions of dollars worth of energy being unutilised and ignored because we haven't had the will to tackle the eminently solvable problem of efficient capture. Even if you are in the camp of denying climate change, or humans being a significant cause in the direction of climate change in the last 100 years or so, why let all that lovely free energy from the wind, the sun, the moon, the earth itself go to waste? It's just silly.
TL;DR - Good for Apple, more please.
a) this fits right in with their corporate vision of sustainability and recycling, while
b) there's enormous, make that huge, potential for world-wide growth in that industry, and even more importantly,
c) at a time of potential stagnation with mature existing product lines, a welcome diversification that could pay relatively speedy dividends for the shareholders. (No lengthy, endless and mostly unfruitful negotiations with content creators/distributors for their TV ambitions, and no huge and massively expensive learning curve as almost certainly required for the now questionable 'project Titan').
If no one else, Apple has the resources to do this right and at mega-scale.
Next up: "Samsung partners with competing wind turbine maker for clean-energy projects".....