Apple and the environment

21

At the risk of being “political”, I would like to make all aware of the “green marketing” strategies that Apple and virtually ALL the Silicon Valley-based companies have been doing for years.

I have been interested in the debate around energy and climate for quite some time, and it’s sad to see how superficial the understanding of these topics almost always is.

Case in point, the claim that “Apple runs on 100% renewable energy”, which has been made for years, is blatantly false.

This post by Alex Epstein explains why Apple is committing fraud in reporting such data, and it’s worth noting that this was released back in November 2014, and make Tim Cook so upset that they spiked the article on Forbes, and forced Alex to mellow it quite a bit.

It is still quite a direct attack on policies that in more recent times have been aptly named “greenwashing”.

I surely don’t buy nor use Apple products because they are “green”. I do it because they make my life better. And most people do so too.

Happy to see the response that such an article might have with this audience. Happy reading!

https://medium.com/@alexepstein/apple-commits-energy-accounting-fraud-d53849063b0d

23

This encapsulates the complexity of Environmental and Sustainability issues perfectly. You could not pick a more perfect “Ah well actually” article. This is Laser focussed on showing the worst possible polarisation of all of the information available.

The upshot then puts off smaller businesses from even trying as they think well if Apple can’t do it why should I even bother.

Is the article factually incorrect- no - it’s accurate.

Is the article cynical and ignoring the global picture- yes- and I’m sure they were very smug when it went to print.

Do articles like this make it more or less likely we will see global sustainability improvements- Less- it’s a death of a thousand cuts.

It’s journalism at its self congratulatory worst.

My take:

In this article Apple (insert any company in the world) ends up being chastised for daring to try to improve the status quo because there is always some way it could have been done differently with a different set of trade-offs.

The simple fact is under global carbon credit agreements Apple (Any Co.) can buy their way to an offset position that they can legitimately claim the energy they use is clean (or renewable or any other combination of buzzwords very few people actually understand* this is the crux of the problem) because they genuinely pay over and above to ensure that they “grab out of the pot” the bragging rights to the renewable energy that feeds into the grid.

Did they actually get the electrons generated by the renewables- No almost certainly not. But they do pay for the privilege of being able to say they own the “good” inputs.

This is completely above board and helps fund MORE renewable technology & that means there is an ever growing pot of renewable energy generation- which on balance is still a good thing. You need to start doing it and investing in it for it to get better. The status quo is we carry on burning fossil fuels. Pssst- even if you ignore the damage they cause- you know they will eventually run out don’t ya? How stable and reliable will they be then???

The carbon credit scheme is where some people cry “Greenwashing”. I agree in part with that viewpoint as it’s not cut and dried. But I do wish that (rather than crying victory & immediately disappearing from the conversation to find their next victim) people would stick around and get involved with helping fix the problems they have helped to uncover. Everyone is a critic but very few people pick up the mantle to help solve the problem.

This problem is all compounded by the fact that globally/by country & then by regions within countries there is no one universally agreed approach to make sure that such renewable energy/carbon off-setting actually stacks up or is being done using the best available technique.

So IMHO you can’t hold any individual company accountable for government and global utility providers lack of cohesion. This is recognised and is why the global environmental conventions (United Nations COP 26 was the latest one) are desperately trying to get a handle on this.

Where the article implodes for me is suggesting this is equivalent to financial misreporting. There are very tight binding financial rules to work by that mean you are right or wrong in the financial arena. For sustainability it is the wild west without an agreed upon rule book. Some global targets have been agreed upon but not how to meet them. Everything is best endeavours. You can’t go to jail as a private company for trying your best for the environment so to suggest otherwise or put them as equivalents is rhetoric.

Is Apple (any co.) wrong for trying to do their best in the interim until global agreements are in place? No, not in my opinion. If everyone waits for everyone else to get it right first you enter a world of paralysis where the planet dies as we all smugly watch on knowing at least we didn’t suffer a snarky bit of journalistic “Well Actually’ism”.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk :joy:

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24

I didn’t read the article yet though I may. That’s from 2014. 8 years ago. Whatever details it may have reported on, it’s an 8 year old article. Since then Apple has made solid, verifiable, documented efforts in the past 8 years on how it conducts itself in this area. I think it’s pretty clear that the efforts they are making in 2022 are genuine efforts become sustainable and to show that it’s possible so that others might do the same. Surely they can do more in this area but I’m satisfied that there efforts thus far are meaningful and that their progress has been substantial. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the same.

25

It is an “interesting” article, that proves again, that those who argument against clean power are forced to do so with a lot of false statements and the bent of the truth to a maximum extend.
Ebstein is a lobbyist for fossil energy, and he is doing, what ever is needed, to do his job.
And he is also within this article far away from being truthful with his readers.
He is e.g claiming:

There is not one modern economy in the world that is powered by solar and wind, because they are inferior, unreliable sources of energy. You may have heard that Germany has proven that solar and wind are viable sources of energy. In fact, it’s proven that they aren’t. In a given week in Germany, the world leader in solar and number three in wind, their solar panels and windmills may generate less than 5% of needed electricity. Thus, Germany can’t and doesn’t rely on solar and wind.

So while it might be true, that Germany was in 2014 on only 5% of Energy from Solar and Wind. Today in fact the renewable energy has reached more than 40% of the total electrical energy in Germany, and it is raising.
Furthermore, no-one in Germany claimed, that Germany would be on 100% Renewable Energy already in 2014.
The term he used “you might heard that” is a typical claim today also used by TFG and his Fans.
It means nothing else but: “I made this here up, but I’m not telling it open, and if you don’t “heard” about it yet, it is not because I made this up, but because you are not well informed.”

Renewable Energy is in fact a reliable source of Energy, also for a large Industrial Nation like Germany.
And that is in fact 100% proven.
The Problem lays not within the production, you just need enough power cells on the houses, and enough windmills in the country, and enough other sources for renewable energy, to produce the needed amount of energy.
The Problem is to have the energy on hand, at the time it is needed. And this problem could be, and will be, solved with more and larger ways to store the energy in between.
Therefore, also the claim, that Apple has made a false statement, is just not true, but skips an important part of the story.
Apple is producing enough energy, to balance their needs with that. And they just are using the mentioned power grid, to “store” this energy. If they feed the needed amount of energy into this power grid, they can get the same amount out of it later, without “using” a single Wh from nuclear or fossil energy productions.
And if at some point, more companies who are on this particular power grid, are doing the same, the amount of energy produced by fossil or nuclear power is vanishing more and more.
Yes, there are problems in that case with the time the energy might be produced by wind and sun, but this could be handled with storage systems like large battery-farms, hydrogen, pumped storage power plants and so on.

So the article is, in fact, not worth the time to read, because he has a lot of false and incomplete statements, and the only reason it was written is, a lobbyist is doing his job, not to inform the public about real facts…

26

Don’t want to pick on you @Ulli, but this is the most recent of a number of posts that have veered into political discussion.

I leave it to our moderators to take any action or no action at all, as they see fit.

Just want to state that this (political discussion) is NOT why I come to Mac Power Users forum. Thank you. :slightly_smiling_face:

27

That is true. Until the base load problem is solved renewable energy will be a goal, not a complete solution. And we will need to rely on natural gas, hydroelectric, and nuclear, etc. to keep the lights on when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

But I’m pretty sure Apple doesn’t have the solution, and I know I don’t.

28

You mentioned that early on in the discussion, the first response in fact. And I respect that. But I will reiterate, that I don’t think this has to be a political discussion and I hope it does not get closed down because I think there are other ways to discuss the topic. It can be taken in a political direction as many other topics can. But it can also be approached and discussed from an interesting technical perspective as well as figure into the discussion of cost regarding Apple devices and services.

I would just suggest that if this or any other topic seems too political to you perhaps you could just avoid it. Sometimes lines get blurry or tread into areas.

To others in the thread, I would just ask that, to avoid politics, perhaps we focus as much as possible on technical aspects or the other ways such conversation can happen. For me, as I think I mentioned above in another comment, we often discuss the cost of purchases, devices, iCloud services, etc. I think this kind of topic can also figure into cost and evaluation.

29

On the technical side of things, I just listened to a discussion or watched a video (I forget, perhaps youtube) a discussion of how these issues might be handled in the future. One possibility would be “Air” batteries and “water” batteries. Those are both already in use. The gist being that water/liquids/air can be moved around and used at different times. A bit fuzzy on it as I meant to rewatch for some of the details. But I think the gist would be that when there is excess energy solar/wind from a particular facility, water/liquids can be pumped up to a location and used at night for production using gravity/generators. In some cases this is already being done with certain facilities and has been for awhile with dams that have the optimal conditions for this. The Air batteries are expected to come online but are still experimental. Benefit of air batteries as that they can be drilled and located anywhere as they are created rather than relying upon naturally occurring geography.

In any case, it would seem that going forward we will be exploring new and different solutions and that many of these sources can be used together to complement one another.

30

So, if you don’t want to “pick on me” why are you doing!?
And in fact, it is not a political discussion at all.
The only ones, who “made it political”, are those who deny the existence of the problem on first hand, and the possible solutions, and don’t want to see the solution for a world wide problem discussed or published somewhere!
It is rather a discussion about technical solutions, and the way science work.
And in this particular thread it is about how the company that produced the technical equipment (or at least some of it) for (I think) a vast majority of us, is reacting to this problem.

31

I agree with you, that we have to rely on the non-renewable energy for some more years, and some states like France e.g. are even building new types of nuclear power plants in the future, but it is foreseeable, that we will have solutions to end the use of fossil energy within the next 2-3 decades in countries who want to find a solution, and can afford it.
Pumped storage power plants are in use in Europe for more than 100 years, and the technique is improving, and there will be a lot of new places, to use that kind of technic to store energy for the night, bad weather or what ever. An other technic that is currently improving a lot is the production of hydrogen, even with systems working directly within the households, so you can use the hydrogen for the heating of the house and to produce warm water, to drive with your car, or to produce electrical energy again during the night or while there is bad weather or something like that.
The solutions are there already, it is mostly a problem of the rather high cost for these systems currently.
But this will also improve significantly with the time, as the technology improves, the production becomes cheaper, and the produced numbers are going higher.
I´m using a solar roof since ten years now, with almost three times the energy produced, that we need for ourself, so it is also a nice extra-money, and it is “green energy” as I can keep on this cells, even with decrease of productivity over the time, for around another 40 years, if I want.
I currently use a wood-heater in my house, and I plan to convert to a hydrogen system within the next 5 years, to become completely independent from external sources.
So yes, it could be done, if someone want, already today.

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32

Great answer, @AJXN, thanks for your contribution to this fascinating topic and discussion, one that is not political in nature, but has become so because it turns out that politics has a knack to put their fingers anywhere they want, and wreck people’s lives…

that “certainly not” is correct. Their electrons mostly come from fossil fuels, which to date are still providing 80% or more of the primary energy for pretty much any country across the globe.

It’s not Apple paying for that “privilege”. It’s us, the users, thru inflated prices, and it’s the taxpayers, as many of these schemes rely on “public” money, which really means taxpayers dollars.

what makes you say that “we will run out of fossil fuels”? The more we need, the more we look for, the more we find.

The US is now the biggest producer of FF worldwide, and a ban on export was removed a few years ago, and export of LNG (liquified natural gas) is booming worldwide, and the US has captured a great deal of market share due to a relatively unregulated market.

And no one is denying the damages coming from the use of FF. But pretty much everyone is denying the advantages provided by burning FF. There are very very few who do so, one being Alex Epstein.

I disagree. Reporting things this way, while considered “legal”, is very misleading and impossible to understand. And you see it because most people really believe that Apple really runs their business on “renewable energy” like wind and solar, which I much rather refer to as “green unreliables”.

Here’s the untold news: Apple DOES NOT run on 100% “renewable energy”.

what kind of “global agreement” are you referring to specifically?

And no, Apple isn’t doing “their best”. They are just pandering to the political class in power, and bowing to the ESG consensus, which is becoming a real issue for many business today.

Loved your all-encompassing answer! While there many things on which I’d say you are misled by the “consensus on how to think”, you have made very cogent points, for which I thank you! :pray:t2:

Bye, Luca

33

no, not much has changed really.

The green certificates were a scam back then, and are still a scam today.

No business can be “sustainable”, by the way. None.

L

34

can you point to specific false statements in the article?

wrong. Alex Epstein is a philosopher, and has studied the domain of energy and climate for the past 15+ years, because he understood how fundamental energy is for human beings.

He doesn’t lobby for oil companies.

and the amount of coal and natural gas being burnt in your country is also growing, precisely because you are putting unreliable energy on the grid, and you need reliable energy to balance the nefarious effects of solar and wind energy on the grid.

That’s why you are burning more coal and gas today. That’s why the amount of CO2 spewed in the atmosphere in Germany is so high, giving that Germany has also decided to shut down their nuclear power plants in Bavaria, because of a tsunami in Japan… :man_facepalming:t2:

I would be interested in knowing how you can prove you are able to run a hospital on a windless night in the middle of the winter.

it’s much worse than that. You need wind, which is not always there, and sun, which is also not always there.

You cannot have a reliable grid if you base your generation only on green unreliables.

That’s why Germany burns A LOT of coal, biomass and natural gas:

Bye, Luca

35

The IPCC now says “limiting warming to around 1.5°C (2.7°F) requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030; at the same time, methane would also need to be reduced by about a third.”

However, “In a room behind the plenary hall at COP26 in Glasgow, the four biggest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet sat in a circle on Saturday evening and brokered a last minute deal to weaken a global pact to phase out coal power.”

A few years ago I watched a documentary named “The New Fire”. Some scientists think we already have the technology needed to wean the world off fossil fuel. It’s a little dated, but it makes you wonder if we are doing everything we can. Because if the climate scientists are right it’s time to start building sea walls.

https://www.ipcc.ch/2022/04/04/ipcc-ar6-wgiii-pressrelease/

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36

I appreciate that. Yet I don’t really see how this is “politics” per se. It might be off topic, but not political.

Still, it’s about energy, and since the energy industry is the industry that powers every other industry, I think it’s quite a relevant and important topic to discuss.

I would dare to say that you could also skip reading threads that you don’t like to read, instead of calling on the moderators for their actions.

You have free will, use it! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Bye, Luca

37

You know where fossil fuel is coming from, or how it was “produced” by nature?
So, even if this process is continuing, it will takes 100.000’s or even million years, to reproduce the fossil fuel, that is burnt up today, if this will even ever be the case again.
So the fossil fuel, we burned within around 200years is just gone, and there is no quick replacement on that.
The fossil fuel will last for a max. of around 50 more years (numbers from 2019 you can find easily with Aunt Google), with the current amount of consumption.
But a further problem to that, as there are a lot of states around the world, who are right now in the industrial development, the amount of consumption could increase dramatically within the next decade or two, and than the fossil fuel reserve will be empty even much quicker.
And there might be still unused reservoirs somewhere, but the damage to the nature will be massiv, if they are used, or there is even no technology available, to use them without exploding cost, that makes them unusable at all.

39

I think this one has strayed pretty far afield from the topic of Apple and the environment.

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