[evanws]

Just to be clear, 7% of Apple's global power is still dirty and they have not made any public commitment to bring that down any further.

Google is a much much larger energy consumer, has been carbon neutral since 2007, and is going to use 100% renewables globally within the next year.

Also, Google made its energy company play back in 2010. Apple made theirs in 2016.

[kevinchen]

Apple has pressured Foxconn to build out renewable capacity for certain steps of iPhone manufacturing by 2018. There is a lot of work to be done in manufacturing (much harder problem) but they have definitely made a public commitment to reduce the impact:

https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/10/22Apple-Launches-Ne...

[Ph0X]

Let's just agree that both Apple and Google are doing fantastic jobs in this sector, and other big tech companies need to step it up.

[infectoid]

Indeed. Let's not drive a wedge where none is needed.

[sangnoir]

I think the point parent was making was that Google (as a whole, not just data centers) is leading the industry to 100% renewable energy. Something Apple - which is making great advances - is yet to achieve.

[snarkyturtle]

100% renewables for their data centers. In the same way that Apple's total power is still partly dirty I'd think some of their offices won't be running entirely off the grid.

[evanws]

It isn't just data centers, they're going to hit 100% renewables for global operations.

From Google's 2016 energy report: "And in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations..."

[megablast]

So the Pixels made by HTC are also using renewable energy?

[NEDM64]

No.

[jdc0589]

Its not just datacenters, but those are the biggest consumer of energy by a disproportionate amount.

[astrodust]

Apple is making great strides towards getting their offices off the grid as well. Their new campus has a considerable amount of solar deployed on-site plus they're partnering with other companies to provide power from off-site.

http://qz.com/342240/apple-is-building-a-massive-farm-of-sol...

[CPLX]

> Google is a much much larger energy consumer

That seems implausible. The electrical requirements of Aluminum production are extreme. Obviously there's a lot of issues about where one draws the line between the company and its subcontractors and so on, but it seems hard to believe Apple's global energy footprint is not higher than Google's

[mda]

I didn't know Apple produced its own aluminum.

[IBM]

Apple includes their suppliers, retail stores, offices, and customers' product use in their carbon footprint (in addition to data centers) [1]:

When we measure our carbon footprint, we include hundreds of suppliers, millions of customers, and hundreds of millions of devices. And we’re always looking for ways to make the biggest difference in five major areas: manufacturing, product use, facilities, transportation, and recycling.

[1] http://www.apple.com/environment/climate-change/

[low_battery]

Edit: Correction by 3 orders of magnitude because of multiplication error :)

Then lets do a back of the envelope calculation for energy consumption for Apple's aluminum use.

Very roughly Apple sells ~25 million macs and ~200 million iphones per year. Again lets assume that it needs 2kg of aluminum for macbooks and 100g for phones (not all iphones are aluminum and this might be lower), that makes ~70 thousand metric tonnes of aluminum.

Modern smelters use 13KW/h to produce 1 kilogram of aluminum, but their production involves recycled aluminum (and possibly shavings from milling?) so number should be lower, lets say it is 10KWH per kilo.

This makes 70M*10KWh = 700GW/h year

Google's datacenter energy consumption, is difficult to guess, if there are 1 million servers, and assuming each server consumes 10KWH per day, then it makes ~3.5 TWH per year.

This is apples to oranges of course, aluminum vs server running energy costs, but still kinda implies that Google uses more energy, at least directly.

[magicalist]

> Google's datacenter energy consumption, is difficult to guess, if there are 1 million servers, and assuming each server consumes 10KWH per day, then it makes ~3.5 TWH per year

FWIW, the linked article mentions

> The 5.7 terawatt-hours of electricity Google consumed in 2015 “is equal to the output of two 500 megawatt coal plants,” said Jonathan Koomey

though they don't mention the source

[kwhitefoot]

kWh not kW/h

[SamBam]

The question is whether Apple's products affect the amount of aluminum extracted. If it does, then that aluminum's footprint belongs to Apple.

Likewise, you couldn't just keep buying big batteries from third parties to power all your needs, and claim to have no carbon footprint because you didn't make the batteries.

[low_battery]

Why? Aluminum production needs a lot of electricity but if you recycle back, costs goes down, total aluminum energy cost of Apple is likely much lower than all those servers running throughout the year.

[dredmorbius]

Recycling rates are generally pretty low. I think the highesst rates have been ~80% for lead (batteries). For aluminium in the US, it's closer to 40% IIRC.

USGS has online reports.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/rec... 40% ~2001

For 2015, it looks as of 30% of supply came via recycling: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/mc...

[CptJamesCook]

Too bad Google's founders fly all over the world on private jets, doing far more damage than these measures prevent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...

[late2part]

Now you're just being silly. Yes, I'm sure they enjoy a luxurious transport and it would be more efficient for them to walk or take a rowboat or fly commercial.

But the energy used, carbon emitted, is fairly small for the 1000 or so flights they take relative to the aggregate benefit they're making by buying so much "cleaner" power.

You really ought consider the relative perspective, I don't think their 757 carbon impact compares to the output of a 5MW data center running 24/7.

[CptJamesCook]

A 747 in the air consumes more power than every single home in San Francisco.

"A Boeing 747 jet has an average power consumption of 140 megawatts."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)

You can use this link to see San Francisco's power usage in 2015: http://ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbycounty.aspx

It was almost exactly 140 megawatts/hour * 24 hours * 365 days.

I highly doubt Google's worldwide data centers use more power than all of SF.

So, not silly!

[douche]

Holy shit, is that really what a 747 draws? That is nuts. I worked for a few summers at a powerplant that put out about 40-50 MW/h, burning wood biomass.

[majewsky]

As a physicist, I'm always surprised how people generally get units right [1], but they shoot themselves in the foot multiple times over when trying to measure power and energy.

MW/h doesn't make any sense. A unit of power would be MW, a unit of energy would be MWh (megawatt times hour, not divided by hour). MW/h would be a power increase over time, which is surely not what the parent means.

[1] Unless they're in the US, Liberia or Myanmar. :)

[SixSigma]

How do iPhones get exported from China ?

[CptJamesCook]

Air freight.

[jjtheblunt]

citation for the assertion "Google is a much larger energy consumer" ?

[ariwilson]

https://blog.google/topics/environment/100-percent-renewable...

Google is purchasing 2600GW of renewable energy as of Nov 2016, while Apple is purchasing around 150GW.

[droopyEyelids]

Without more detail this isn't useful information.

For example, Apple's global power consumption definitely includes power used in manufacturing, a problem that Google externalizes from this sort of computation.

[NEDM64]

Cognitive dissonance, it's your problem.