The concern is diverting or otherwise mitigating attention to climate change on impressive-sounding, but ultimately meaningless distractions, all the while flamboyantly bragging about it and bolstering one's self image.
I do not see demand side management as a meaningless distraction.
People are already accustomed to the idea of running their laundry or dishwasher based of time-of-day electricity pricing.
Apple is introducing people to the idea that they can also change their electricity usage patterns based on how “green” the marginal electricity production is. The familiarity people gain here can be build upon for laptop, which have a bigger energy draw, and eventually for their electric cars.
You say it's not a meaningless distraction, but fail to make a reasonable argument for how it "saves" the environment, or whatever. Running laundry or charging an AV at a different time of day doesn't materially impact energy usage and emissions, it just increases the bottom line of the utility company.
Everyone's heard about the "duck curve". Part of that shape is due to demand. The demand associated with people leaving for work and coming back home. [0]
> Running laundry or charging an AV at a different time of day doesn't materially impact energy usage and emissions, it just increases the bottom line of the utility company.
This is objectively false. The non-uniform nature of the energy demand necessitates, currently, natural gas peaking plants. Time of use pricing, and demand side management allows us to spread/shift those peak to times where the peaking plants would not come online.
And those peaking plants are very expensive, since their contract with the utility company includes getting paid for idling those plants waiting for the peaks to occur. Getting rid of these plants, lower the price to the consumer AND lowers emissions generated.
> Running laundry or charging an AV at a different time of day doesn't materially impact energy usage and emissions,
Doing it when there is surplus renewable capacity has beneficial impact on emissions compared to doing it when marginal demand is met by fossil fuel sources, even though it doesn't impact total energy usage.
People are already accustomed to the idea of running their laundry or dishwasher based of time-of-day electricity pricing.
Apple is introducing people to the idea that they can also change their electricity usage patterns based on how “green” the marginal electricity production is. The familiarity people gain here can be build upon for laptop, which have a bigger energy draw, and eventually for their electric cars.