Apple Commits To 100% Renewable Energy Sources for NC Data Center 108
judgecorp writes "Stung by continued criticism from Greenpeace and protests at Apple's headquarters over its use of electricity from non-renewable sources, Apple has promised that its data center in Maiden, North Carolina will use 100 percent renewable electricity, 60 percent of it generated by Apple itself. The update is possible because it is building a second giant solar array, and because its data center only needs 20MW at full capacity, instead of the 100MW which Greenpeace had estimated."
foo (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You mean Greenpeace lied? (Score:2, Interesting)
We really need to stop giving Greenpeace press. They just make things worse.
Unless you think that getting Apple to move to 100% renewable power is making things worse, it's hard to see how you arrived at the above conclusion from this article. It seems to me that this was a win all around.
Stung by? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But... (Score:4, Interesting)
The array will produce far more energy during its lifetime than was used to produce and install it.
I wouldn't say far more.
It takes about 10 years for a typical silicon solar cell to generate the amount of energy that was used in the cell's production. The typical lifetime of the cell is about 25 years. So these types of cells only produce about 2.5 times as much energy as was needed for its production.
There are other solar cells such as organics that take less energy to produce, but because they have a much shorter lifespan, they aren't that much better from this point of view, and they don't get used in large arrays like this one.
The upshot is that the situation with solar cells is not yet as good as we would like it to be, and I don't think that we should be recommending large uptake of solar cells as a truly environmental solution until there is an large improvement in energy required to energy produced ratio.