Why Apple Just Invested in Wind Turbines In China (cnn.com) 124
An anonymous reader quotes CNN Money:
Apple's latest deal in China doesn't have anything to do with smartphones. The tech giant is investing in the Chinese wind power industry, turning to the world's most populous country to help it achieve its goal of getting 100% of its energy from renewable sources. The iPhone maker struck a deal this week to buy a 30% stake in three subsidiaries of Goldwind, China's biggest wind-turbine manufacturer... it's Apple's largest clean energy project to date and the first of its kind in the wind power sector, Lisa Jackson, vice president of Apple's environment initiatives, told state-run newspaper China Daily...
Environmental group Greenpeace has warned that electronics manufacturing uses a lot of energy in China, drawing on the country's high number of polluting coal power stations. Apple's moves into renewable energy are an attempt to compensate for this... The new wind project will add 285 megawatts of clean energy to China's grid, which Apple says will offset some of the other sources used by its operations and those of its immediate suppliers Foxconn, Lens, Catcher and Solvay.
Environmental group Greenpeace has warned that electronics manufacturing uses a lot of energy in China, drawing on the country's high number of polluting coal power stations. Apple's moves into renewable energy are an attempt to compensate for this... The new wind project will add 285 megawatts of clean energy to China's grid, which Apple says will offset some of the other sources used by its operations and those of its immediate suppliers Foxconn, Lens, Catcher and Solvay.
Because "bad" taxes (Score:1, Troll)
The reason is simple. If apple brought the money home and invested it in turbines in the USA, it would have had to pay taxes on them.
The bad thing about this is that apple is allowed to invest its money abroad while evading taxes in the first place. Yes, the pentagon wastes a lot of money, but that's no reason for not paying taxes.
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The bad thing about this is that apple is allowed to invest its money abroad while evading taxes in the first place.
They are not "evading" taxes. What they are doing is perfectly legal. What is idiotic is that the US government thinks it should have the right to tax income made by selling products manufactured in China to Chinese consumers. No other country on earth tries to collect taxes on extraterritorial transactions. America needs to fix its tax laws.
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No other country on earth tries to collect taxes on extraterritorial transactions.
Not true. A lot of countries tax business income from entities that are registered within its borders.
If a business is headquartered in, let's say Dublin, then Ireland gets to collect taxes on any income (profit, depending on the local laws) on the worldwide income of that business.
This is what is happening a lot, and this is how companies keep their taxes low. They create legal entities in tax-friendly companies, and divert income there.
The U.S. does not tax businesses for income out of foreign entit
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and divert income there.
So it's not actually world-wide income, but Irish income. Otherwise "divert" has no meaning. Sure, it's a game, but a game with rules.
The U.S. does not tax businesses for income out of foreign entities. It does tax natural persons, citizens and lawful permanent residents, on their worldwide income.
Note that there's no diverting world-wide income to the US. It's a different beast.
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You make it sound like the windmill would be connected directly to the pacemaker.
Also, I don't think you understand the concept of "average".
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Hydro ramps well, within limits, you can't routinely sends walls of water down most rivers, you also don't want to strand all the fish in a river by slowing flow too fast. Ramping over transmission lines has issues related to system stability, it's not undoable, but has hard limits.
Most ramping (unless in a very wet mountainous region) is done with combustion turbines burning natural gas.
Re:Because "bad" taxes (Score:5, Funny)
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Whatever.
Your ranting is vacuous.
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That Windows PC that is the source of your epic frustration is probably also made in China. At lease Apple imposes build standards on its offshore manufacturing elves.
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I'm guessing that you're not an expat?
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By definition: Evading is against the law.
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1. Tax Evasion has an actual legal meaning, and it isn't "they're using legal loopholes to not discover the length, width, and breadth of the fiduciary shaft."
2. How can Apple "buy" laws that predate their existence by several decades?
Mergers & Acquisitions (Score:2)
Now, if we had the political will to actually make them pay their fair share tow
Re: Because "bad" taxes (Score:2)
It's a marketing move. And a commitment to China over US. Yes, Apple knows they contributed a huge amount to China and Asia, and now that Asians can afford iPhone's that's they only growth hope with no other new product to dell than a watch that very few people care about. If Apple could avoid paying any tax in the US they would. If the US didn't command a huge amiunt of revenue and was where they started they'd have moved somewhere else already. I am also not sure why people expect companies to behave any
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Are you under the impression that environmentalists think that everyone should stop flying, driving, heating and cooling their homes, etc? Yes, you may find some radicals that believe things like that, but that is not a mainstream position. The mainstream positions are that consumption efficiencies need to be improved and production impacts need to be reduced.
Now, if your argument is that you think that it's unfair that there's such an economic wealth disparity that some people like Al Gore own private pl
Re:Doesn't work that way (Score:5, Insightful)
To put it another way, this whole line reminds me of the same thing with charity. You have a person with money who supports a charitable cause, and they give a lot of money to it, and someone responds, "..but you still have possessions X, Y, and Z! if you really supported the charity you'd donate more!". But it's a line of attack that the person donating to charity can never win: no matter how much they give, they can still be attacked for owning things, unless they donate to the point that they're homeless in the streets scrounging for food from trash cans.
If the argument was that Al Gore had a particularly high level of environmental impact relative to his wealth and other factors worthy of consideration (his job, where he lives, etc), then that would absolutely be grounds for charges of hypocrisy. But otherwise what you're really complaining about is wealth inequality, and doing the unwinnable argument, "If Person X really cared about Issue Y, then they'd give even more than they currently do!" - regardless of what that level of giving is.
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Nobody cares that Bush's house uses more energy than Gore's. Because Bush isn't a self righteous hypocrite but Gore is.
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The problem is that market forces apply here. Apple didn't prevent any coal from being fired, instead they just contributed to a smaller demand for coal and a larger demand for wind turbines. Obviously, if this causes wind turbines to be built this is a good thing, but the smaller demand for coal only means that coal is now cheaper. The only way to prevent fossil fuels from being blown into the air is to actually buy the exploitation rights and then chose to not extract. The moment it gets out of the earth
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I agree with that, but it makes life for green energies much harder when they have to compare to extraction costs directly. And there are many fossil resources which are very cheap to extract. So yeah, maybe cheaper engergy prices will make oil fracking not possible economically, but saudi arabia will be able to sell their oil for a long time to come.
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There is only so much electrical load. By definition, if a larger percentage of the grid's load comes from wind / solar, then less is coming from coal.
It's not like load goes up magically when you add a source of generation - that load was already there and you were in a state of overload, or you now have added capacity.
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I'm confused. Are you suggesting that Apple manufacture their products without using electricity?
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the perfect article that unites Apple-haters and climate deniers with making China great again! :)
The next step in climate talks will be import tariffs on rogue nations such as my own (Australia) that do not have a credible emissions reduction program.
Declaring their electricity 'green' a decade before the Europeans impose an import tax on goods manufactured from 'dirty' power makes sense fiscally and helps them stay ahead of their competitors.
Regardless of what people may think about Apple's business pract
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The concept of "offsetting" your bad behavior by purchasing carbon credits or investing in "green energy" is complete bullshit. It is the same concept that sociopaths use to justify their behavior. You can't buy your way to being good.
You know how to lose weight? By exercising. Even if you weigh 500 lbs and can only barely walk around the block once, by doing that pathetically inadequate one-block walk that you set up the conditions so that next week you can walk around the block twice, and next month you can walk several miles. Next year maybe you weigh only 300 lbs and can jog, and the year after that you've dropped to 180 lbs and can run a marathon.
Similarly, neither Apple nor any other industrial giant is going to be able to trans
Re: Your new president doesn't pay taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.
No, if you disagree, then you support facts. And, for that matter, if you support democracy (aka, the person who gets the most votes wins). The US is, however, not a democracy - at least when it comes to electing the president. Which is why Trump will be president.
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To be strictly correct, the election hasn't yet taken place. No one has voted for Trump.
The actual vote takes place around December 19.
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Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.
No, The American People voted to elect Trump, under a set of rules laid out by The American Government.
If The American People wanted the rules to be different, they would have used their precious Democratic Powers to change how they elect their presidents.
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You clearly don't understand the electoral college. The people do not elect the president, period. It doesn't matter what it says on the ballot, you are voting for electors.
The pledged delegate system only came about as a side effect of the emergence of parties, and is completely extra-constitutional. Nobody designed the system we have today or "set out the rule", they just evolved piecewise.
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Trump's victory has no legitimacy now. He called for Russia to hack Clinton's email, they did and it handed him the win. Putin made Trump his bitch, weak and illegitimate.
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To be fair, there is a delicious irony in hearing the CIA complain about a foreign power interfering to install a right wing government in a different country ;)
Ghosts of the Cold War sometimes come back to bite you.
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Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.
No, if you disagree, then you support facts. And, for that matter, if you support democracy (aka, the person who gets the most votes wins). The US is, however, not a democracy - at least when it comes to electing the president. Which is why Trump will be president.
The US isn't a democracy either when it comes to congressional elections given how heavily gerrymandered the congressional district are gerrymandering [wikipedia.org] and the ongoing efforts of the GOP to ensure that voters who are not likely to vote for the GOP are prevented from voting in the first place [wikipedia.org].
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"The US isn't a democracy either"
Correct. The USA has never been a "democracy" but a constitutional republic.
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"Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million."
Latest numbers are 65.74 million Clinton; 62.90 million Trump which puts her less than 200k behind Obama 2008 and Trumplethinskin is 2 million ahead of Romney.
I had no idea it takes so long to get a full count of votes in a presidential election.
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> Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.
a) You European fuck, you clearly don't know much about American elections and their rules. b) Back in 2000, Gore won the popular vote. A popular vote "loss" is meaningless.
You don't have to be an American to understand that in a democracy the guy/gal with the most votes wins and that whatever your 'electoral college' is it's not democracy if it allows the runner up to win the election. Oh, and try to come up with some more imaginative profanity.
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> Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.
a) You European fuck, you clearly don't know much about American elections and their rules.
b) Back in 2000, Gore won the popular vote. A popular vote "loss" is meaningless.
You don't have to be an American to understand that in a democracy the guy/gal with the most votes wins and that whatever your 'electoral college' is it's not democracy if it allows the runner up to win the election. Oh, and try to come up with some more imaginative profanity.
Under the rules, it's possible for *neither* candidate to become president. The electoral college could decide to vote for someone who didn't even campaign.
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No, but it's a pretty good statistic to trot out any time the person's candidate of choice doesn't win. It's called moving the goalposts.
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I had to Google. At one time, I was pretty up to date on NASCAR, but that was ages ago.
...doesn't have anything to do with smartphones (Score:1)
I remember when they made computers.
Half assed... (Score:1)
Be it Google or Apple, it doesn't matter if these companies are "offsetting" anything or buying carbon credits and whatnot.
These are the companies that have enough money to directly build and invest on renewable power infrastructures to supply their own demands.
What's the point of them buying stakes on renewable energy companies if in the end their data centers and factories are still using unregulated coal power, usually in cities that desperately need to move away from those? It's a half assed way to make
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What's the point of them buying stakes on renewable energy companies if in the end their data centers and factories are still using unregulated coal power
Coal is burned for electrical generation where no other practical method is available, particularly in China... so if you're talking about Foxconn you are spot on.
If you are not, you are under-appreciative of the positive impact even lip service to the environment brings when a corporate giant such as this makes a commitment to renewables.
If we could just get the next gen Nuclear plants implemented...
Re:Half assed... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're confused. They're not buying "carbon credits". They're literally putting money into the manufacture of wind turbines. More wind turbines will exist because of this. 285MW nameplate more. Wherein does the problem lie?
And what do you think that the additional produced turbines will do - lie around on a factory floor? They'll be installed and generating power on the grid. Who cares where?
And more to the point, you don't just get power from a single power plant. You're connected to a grid which moves power among numerous plants. In particular, on the Chinese grid there's a number of HVDC and HVAC lines that bring power from the sparsely populated interior (wind, hydro, etc) to the densely populated coast. Directly reducing the need for power generation infrastructure on the coast, even though the wind / hydro / etc hardware isn't located on the coast.
Re:Half assed... (Score:5, Insightful)
The anti-renewable energy crowd don't understand this critical point: electricity is fungible. If they reduce demand for dirty power, it really doesn't matter which coal-powered generator shuts down.
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it really doesn't matter which coal-powered generator shuts down.
Well, it does a little depending what you are downwind of, but yeah. Though it may be a more effective suppressor to coal in some markets than in others depending on the price of coal in that market.
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You're hilarious, China is currently building 52 GW of coal plants (79 plants) in other countries, this 256 MW of wind farm is a gnats fart in a hurricane and doesn't matter. Typical renewable energy crowd here, into symbolism over substance, can't understand math nor magnitudes of energy.
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Of course one wind farm is small in comparison to the total investment in old technologies, idiot. It's not a useful comparison. What if I compared one coal plant against the total investments in renewable energy?
In reality, China is making huge investments in renewable energy. [publicfina...tional.org]
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Of course this is against a backdrop of massive energy consumption increases, which makes moving away from coal extremely difficult.
China has epic pollution problems based on its dependency on low-grade coal. How bad is it? They're sending their kids to school in surgical masks, which unfortunately do almost nothing. Can you imagine that happening here?
Recent research, however, shows that while China's coal consumption has continued to increase, it has decreased as a fraction of total energy production.
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You underestimate how broken China is.
China has problems with days long traffic jams of single rear axle trucks hauling coal. Because powerful people own the obsolete coal plants near the cities, transmission lines from the coal producing regions are not being allowed to be constructed. Eventually they will build them, but not until the sons/daughters of central committee members make more money (and the power transmission companies fall into their hands).
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Oh, I'm not underestimating how broken China is, not by a long shot. I'm just going by what the data says, which is that coal is declining, albeit slightly, as a share of energy there even as energy demand climbs. Just because it's broken doesn't mean they aren't trying.
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The point is China is massively rolling out old tech in other countries, a little bit of renewables doesn't matter. You are the idiot thinking it means anything.
What the fuck is this company anymore? (Score:1)
Almost every time I see news about them, it has virtually nothing to do with their products. And when it does, it's usually about some insanely bad design decisions leading to premature device failure, or some other long running problem that they've been completely ignoring and only recently acknowledged on a limited basis because they were forced to by threat of a huge class action lawsuit.
So... What exactly does Apple do?
They don't make premium hardware anymore (charging premium prices isn't the same thin
What they make? (Score:1)
What they make is COURAGE. Never forget that.
I'm an "all the above guy" (Score:1)
We should be using *all* available energy sources.
When the cost of power spiked in north CA six years ago, I ripped out my two electric furnaces and replaced then with coal stoves (one heat, one combo heat/cook stove). You know what?? They're not dirty, not sooty, and provide a higher quality of heat for a **MUCH** lower price than electricity. Consider me a coal convert. IMHO, more people should be considering coal for heating and cooking needs. **Much** cheaper than electricity in this particular mar
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Using electricity for resistive heating is like using vintage wine to marinate. Electricity is kinetic-quaity energy... heat is just heat. Which is why air conditioners and heat pumps can move more "watts" of heat around than they use in watts of electricity.
So it's no surprise that just about anything was cheaper than that.
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The local 'coal store' isn't convenient to me.
We know you are lying.
Perpetual motion - it comes (Score:2, Troll)
Perpetual motion is quackery, but we use it every day with solar, geothermal, wind and hydroelectric sources. I'll grant you that "perpetual" doesn't really apply when applied to sources of energy that come from a giant ball of gas undergoing fusion, since it isn't technically perpetual. Nonetheless, it is free energy on a human scale. Let's support investing in collecting and using such free energy sources because it makes life better for all of us. I know Apple isn't without its faults, but each time huma
It makes sense (Score:2)
Apple has a ton of money
Apples stuff is made in China
Greenhouse gas emmissions are a global problem
And Trump doesn't beieve in global warming, so why invest in the US?
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The corporate executes who appointed Obama and his administration (facts exposed in the DNC emails https://www.wsws.org/en/articl... [wsws.org]) are still president. Uncle Tom Obama the choom gang coward is nothing but a empty talking head, speaking words written by his handlers, under threat of exposure for who he really is. This makes Michael Corbat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] actual US president in reality. After all the US president chooses the US cabinet and as such the CEO of citibank is the president and
Bullshit ... (Score:1)
... renewable energy is the future and Apple has more cash than God.
It's a sound investment and a way for Apple to diversify.
However, it's also a red flag.
Apple is not investing in R&D and cannot buy a Steve Jobs replacement.
When companies step away from their core competency, it forms a bubble that pops down the road.
As they implode, they sell off all the non-core assets and concentrate on the original business model -- often too late to save itself.
I give you Mobil Oil Corporation.
I worked for them ba
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Apple is not investing in R&D
Oh, for crying out loud. Apple spend $2.57 billion in R&D last quarter - almost 15 times as much as 10 years before when they were still working on the iPhone.
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You do get what happened, right?
Ten years before, they were not the power player they were post-iPhone.
Now they are speeding forward in a backwards direction.
Buying non-core shit is not R&D.
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Buying non-core shit is not R&D.
Spending $2.5B on R&D is fucking R&D.
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This isn't fucking R&D. [cnn.com].
The iPhone maker struck a deal this week to buy a 30% stake in three subsidiaries of Goldwind, China's biggest wind-turbine manufacturer.
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This isn't fucking R&D. [cnn.com].
This is you [rapgenius.com] or at least what you are fucking
What the hell makes you think the price of "buying a 30% stake in three subsidiaries of Goldwind, China's biggest wind-turbine manufacturer" would in any way or form be counted in Apple's R&D budget?
In case you already forgot your original claim to which I responded:
Apple is not investing in R&D
To which I replied the number Apple cites in their quarterly report, which is way higher than zero.
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What the hell makes you think the price of "buying a 30% stake in three subsidiaries of Goldwind, China's biggest wind-turbine manufacturer" would in any way or form be counted in Apple's R&D budget?
You made my point, didn't you?
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What the hell makes you think the price of "buying a 30% stake in three subsidiaries of Goldwind, China's biggest wind-turbine manufacturer" would in any way or form be counted in Apple's R&D budget?
You made my point, didn't you?
You have no point. And you probably can't read.
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And you probably can't read.
Because you can. [saylor.org]
Think about it (Score:2, Funny)
Re:electricity (Score:5, Informative)
My bet is they won't be putting up a local wind farm to actually use renewable energy.
Cause that would require investing In America - instead of china.
You're right, Apple is not putting up wind farms in the US. They're putting up (mostly) solar farms [cleantechnica.com]
This means Apple will now be able to sell renewable power it does not need but it owns or has under contract — note that 93% of Apple facilities worldwide run on renewable electricity.
According to the FERC filing, Apple holds positions in these solar properties:
67.5 MW of facilities in North Carolina
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But apple haters are gonna keep on hating no matter what.
That is the real story.
Some people hate Apple more than they hate those in government.
Yet Apple paid more tax in the USA than any other company. Even that is not enough. They want a special Apple tax rate of 150%.
Make America Great === Donald ruling by Tweet. Fuck Congress and the Senate and the States, Tweets tell the mass unwashed what their 'Dear Leader' wants of them directly.
{Donald has obviously read 1984 several times and in well on his way to
Apple is looking into the future... (Score:1)
As its a big company (Score:2)
It's probably because they will profit somehow with this AND get to pretend they're good guys.
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It's probably because they will profit somehow with this AND get to pretend they're good guys.
What's happening is that this wind farm is a test-bed for Chinese wind turbine makers, who will then proceed to export under-cost wind turbines until they've driven most foreign manufacturers out of business just like they've done to rare-Earth mines and solar-cell makers outside of China.
The Chinese simply made Apple pay for it; "that's a nice business you have there, it would be terrible if you suddenly were unable to have your stuff built here".
Apple is helping to finance the destruction of Western alter
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Apple is helping to finance the destruction of Western alternative energy equipment manufacturing by China.
Strat
Once all of the coal miners are back to work, and hte US has all the clean coal power that progressives have denied us, why would we care one little bit about a faulty pseudo technology like wind power?
We stand on the cusp of a new great age, and China and our homegrown commies can eat their turbines, because they can't compete with our coal.
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Once all of the coal miners are back to work, and hte US has all the clean coal power that progressives have denied us, why would we care one little bit about a faulty pseudo technology like wind power?
We stand on the cusp of a new great age, and China and our homegrown commies can eat their turbines, because they can't compete with our coal.
What, you think I'm a Trump-ette? LOL!
I only hope he at least does minimal damage, and maybe even does a few good things that neither party has been willing to do.
At this point, that's about the best I can hope for.
Strat
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Once all of the coal miners are back to work, and hte US has all the clean coal power that progressives have denied us, why would we care one little bit about a faulty pseudo technology like wind power?
We stand on the cusp of a new great age, and China and our homegrown commies can eat their turbines, because they can't compete with our coal.
What, you think I'm a Trump-ette? LOL!
Never said anything like that. But renewable energy is not a conservative thing. And being that you rail on every chance about the progressives, so I took a wild-ass guess that you toe the company line.
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Never said anything like that. But renewable energy is not a conservative thing. And being that you rail on every chance about the progressives, so I took a wild-ass guess that you toe the company line.
I'm absolutely *for* renewable energy.
*BUT* I'm for renewable energy that can compete equally against other forms without being propped-up by governments. I believe giving renewables special tax breaks, grant programs, etc etc actually *hurts* and/or slows the advancement of renewable energy technology.
If renewable energy gets special breaks then there's not as much competitive pressure on renewable sources/technology to improve as fast or as much. Let them succeed or fail on their own merits. Let Darwinist
bad choice apple (Score:2)
They should stop ALL new coal plants and start closing them, esp. the old ones. BUT, they are counting on these to power their EVs, which is what they are pushing more.
now, this may look like Apple is helping, but they are not. China will continue to build out NEW coal plants that exceed the AE. As such, prices for electricity will go down and their investment will be worthless.