12 ms·

Apple invests €1.7B in renewable energy data centres in Denmark and Ireland

133 points by FredericJ 12y ago

illumen 12y ago
Good work Apple. To give some balance to a press release... I wonder what all that tax avoided money could have bought in society, and what the 3 billion 30% cut they took from developers could have done for those developers. Better apps? Compared to other electronic manufacturers Apple products do seem to have a much longer life. Lots of people seem to use second hand Apple phones, and laptops... but not so much for other brands. I wonder why they didn't choose colder countries? Both Denmark and Ireland do have some pretty cold parts. Since cooling is the main energy use, choosing colder countries over ones where they pay less tax would have been a better choice for the environment. Athenry, Ireland is as far west in Europe as you can go. Meaning it is as far away from most Europeans as possible. But I guess closer to the USA. I wonder about why they chose there if they want to serve their communities best. Viborg, Denmark makes more sense from a power generation point of view. However, since the power generation is inland it is wasting land which could be used for people and food.
- bornabox 12y ago
  Still waiting for the Apple datacenter in the Swiss Alps. There are some de-militarized Bunkers available. And it's cold as it gets up at 3000m...
- johnloeber 12y ago
  Why they didn't choose colder countries? (1) Ambient temperature is not very important. In a data center, you want to cool large arrays of small machines -- for that purpose, whether it's cold or hot outside the building doesn't matter very much. The 10-degree difference in outside air temperature is basically irrelevant you're trying to stop components from overheating. (2) If you want places that are substantially colder, then you're looking at places that are far more "off-grid" i.e. remote. That may create substantial infrastructural difficulties (internet access, hardware supply, electrical supply, etc.). There's a reason why Google hasn't put all their datacenters on Antarctica. (3) Denmark and Ireland already have good environmentally sustainable energy sources in place, more so than many other alternative locations. This move is about environmental policy.
  - talideon 12y ago
    Well, one of the big advantages of Ireland is that it's the coldest country in Europe with a decent amount of transatlantic fibre running by its coast, and it has pretty stable temperatures. Ambient temperature can be very useful if you're building a datacentre. I work for the largest hosting provider in Ireland, and our new datacentre uses the temperature differential between the inside of our pods and the outside air to do energy recovery and cooling, and it's pretty effective . I'm a developer, so I don't have all the details, but I'll ask our CTO later for the details, if I've time.
    - cefstat 12y ago
      > Well, one of the big advantages of Ireland is that it's the coldest country in Europe [...] Perhaps you are confusing Ireland with Iceland? (seems improbable since you work in Ireland) Even then, Finland is colder than either of them although its coldest parts are not so easily accessible.
      - ptaipale 12y ago
        Coldest country with transatlantic fibre running by its coast... though a fibre running by a coast is not good in itself, you actually need to terminate the fibre in your country. (Like at my home, the council built a fibre to a nearby facility, but I can't plug into a fibre as it passes the house on the nearby street, underground...) Google has also set up a data center in Finland, where it indeed is colder; this one recycles a former paper mill and its energy connections. http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/hamina/ http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/ham...
      - talideon 12y ago
        You clipped off the important bit: > Well, one of the big advantages of Ireland is that it's the coldest country in Europe with a decent amount of transatlantic fibre running by its coast It's the fibre that's the key bit there.
  - iamphilrae 12y ago
- pjc50 12y ago
  This is probably the first time someone has described the west coast of Ireland as "not cold enough". (More seriously, the choice of Ireland will be for tax reasons)
  - plug 12y ago
    Aye, I'd concur with that. Pretty unusual/interesting that they chose Athenry Co. Galway though - I guess specific location is pretty irrelevant in a tiny country like Ireland but I would have imagined that Cork would be the default choice, since the EMEIA HQ is there too. Good news for Athenry in any case!
    - talideon 12y ago
      Nah, Cork wouldn't be a good place for something like this, other than the fact that a good amount of submarine cable lands there. But then by that, Wexford would be even better. The big reason for putting stuff on the west coast is wind and cooling. Doesn't hurt that Athenry is close enough to Galway City, and that makes it a great place to live. Frankly, if I was a network engineer, I'd totally be down for moving to Galway.
      - plug 12y ago
        Galway is a great spot alright, although I have to admit I do prefer living in Cork ;) I don't know anything substantial about data centres so I wasn't basing my assumptions on their real-world requirements. That said however, isn't Athenry a bit inland itself? You'd imagine far west Galway would be better again, with the added potential - I assume - to create infrastructure their own offshore wind energy.
  - soneil 12y ago
    'tax reasons' are actually why I find this most surprising. The "Double Irish" tax arrangement is being phased out, which has led some to worry that companies that are only here to take advantage of it, may move on. Seeing the complete opposite happening is very reassuring (as a local).
- soneil 12y ago
  Ireland isn't actually a bad spot for this kind of infrastructure. Transit options are great because major transatlantic links actually make landfall in Ireland on the UK->US span. And the Atlantic seaboard has more wind than you could ever want (as my hair this morning will attest to ..)
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  > and what the 3 billion 30% cut they took from developers could have done for those developers. Better apps? More money for the 1% of top apps actually making money (Rovio, King, EA, etc), more like. A 30% cut is not bad at all, especially if you compare it to traditional software - retailers often charge an easy 40% markup over wholesale prices, and that's the last step before it reaches the consumer. Re: colder countries, what is the environmental impact of internet signals having to travel a longer distance? higher latency for each request, times a billion phones? These are probably trivially small figures, but there's a lot of factors to take into consideration. > However, since the power generation is inland it is wasting land which could be used for people and food. Really? You know how much surface area a datacenter takes up in comparison to everything else, right? (hint: not much). And people generally prefer to live in the city anyway (else there wouldn't be any cities, just a big sprawl of suburbia)
jkot 12y ago
Does anyone have more information? I lived in Galway for several years and it sounds interesting. > recover land previously used for growing and harvesting non-native trees and restore native trees to Derrydonnell Forest Sad to hear that. There are not that many trees in Ireland.
- rsynnott 12y ago
  Coillte, the state forest management company, discontinued some less critical operations during the economic crisis. Looking at their website, this was never a particularly large-scale operation.
- CalRobert 12y ago
  It's refreshing to go to the few forested areas and see what almost all of the island looked like a thousand years ago. There's some beautiful places in the Bearagh peninsula. That being said, some of the planted forests are pretty obvious. I still like the trees, but it's definitely a different feel.
  - talideon 12y ago
    It takes time for that to recover. Initial plantations are always obvious, but that'll change over time.
- soneil 12y ago
  I'm not sure how to parse that sentence (and I know it's not yours, no worries). I read it as .. Apple will a) recover land previously used for, and b) restore native trees?
  - jkot 12y ago
    Ireland has maybe 1% of land covered by trees. Choping down forest near major city to build datacenter is just bad. There are many free pastures.
    - teh_klev 12y ago
artpop 12y ago
This flew under the radar for me but AWS has “a long-term commitment to achieve 100% renewable energy usage for our global infrastructure footprint.”
- sarreph 12y ago
  Source? Highly relevant to my interests... EDIT: Forgot that was a quote, and used Google — for anyone who's interested: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainable-energy/ http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainable-energy/
  - tschwarz 12y ago
    Interesting that they see renewable and not some term that envelops nuclear, given Bezos' investments in the latter.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  That seems silly, given the AWS is in the business of selling things as cheaply as possible.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    Why is that silly? Renewable energy doesn't mean it's more expensive, especially as non-renewable sources begin to run out in the future.
husted 12y ago
The Danish plant is about an hours drive from me. There's not much IT related going on in that area so it's good to see that someone is willing to invest.
silvestrov 12y ago
I'm surprised they placed one in Denmark since Netherlands and West-Germany (ie near Düsseldorf) would be much more central Europe for internet connections.
- quonn 12y ago
  Maybe, because Denmark has a huge supply of wind energy?
  - olavgg 12y ago
    Actually I believe Apple is going for a long term renewable energy strategy like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The additional electricity from wind(and maybe solar) can also be sold into the danish/European energy market. The big picture I see, is that if you look at the Nordic countries, you see that Finland and Sweden has several (unpopular)nuclear power plants. Denmark has a mix of everything, mostly coal and wind. And Norway get most of its electricity from hydro. Google has built a data center in Finland, Facebook in Sweden and now Apple will build one in Denmark. And I also believe Microsoft is building a data center in Finland. But few are considering Norway and that may be because electricity in Norway is already very cheap and neither wind or solar can compete with hydro. And you want additional profit by selling energy to the energy market. Selling electricity is a good sustainable long term investment.
    - doublerebel 12y ago
      It's flown under the radar, but Apple has gone big on renewable energy for datacenters since 2013. Idk why I sat on this article but I finally submitted today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9093657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9093657
    - ptaipale 12y ago
      There's wind and other renewables (wave/tide) in Denmark, but 48 % of electricity production is coal, so that's the marginal increase of production that Apple [edit: not Google] is actually going to use. BTW, in Finland nuclear isn't that unpopular, there's currently a new site under construction. (There is some trouble building it up, though: because the opponents of nuclear power will put just as much resistance to a site regardless of whether it is a 160 MW or 1600 MW plant, the planners make the site as big as possible, and the suppliers (in this case Areva) haven't considered this in the technology. The local nuclear safety authority is also ultra-safety-conscious, which is good in itself, except when slows down the deployment of a new, quite safe site so that the energy is bought off a Chernobyl-type thing near Leningrad).
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jafingi 12y ago
Awesome! Living in Denmark, this is huge news! I would have thought they would place it in Germany or the Netherlands, but in Denmark we can provide the datacenter with 100% green energy, and this is one of the main concerns for Apple. I wonder what the 300 people would work with, since just maintaining the datacenter wouldn't require that many people. So hope they're moving other jobs to Denmark, and accumulate different job positions there.
- kristiandupont 12y ago
  I am Danish too and I am not sure why we should be able to offer 100% green energy better than the German or the Dutch..?
  - jafingi 12y ago
    Of course not - but Viborg has plenty of energy, and a brand new 400 kV connection [1]. Would be ideal by Apple to use that, and they've probably gotten a good offer. [1] http://energinet.dk/DA/ANLAEG-OG-PROJEKTER/Anlaegsprojekter-el/Ny-400-kilovolt-ledning-Kassoe-Tjele/Sider/default.aspx http://energinet.dk/DA/ANLAEG-OG-PROJEKTER/Anlaegsprojekter-...
  - jlouis 12y ago
    The primary reason is a long investment in wind energy, which could be a good reason for Apple to pick up Denmark.
  - funkyy 12y ago
    Island country (at least partly) will have easier job to provide wind or even solar energy than Germany and Netherlands. There is also a benefit of pretty predictable wave and tide energy sources...
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  There's a number of datacenters being built in the Netherlands; one way up in the low-populated areas (actually closest to Denmark), IIRC bought by Google. They're even building a power line to Germany so that they can get power from there, where it's a bit cheaper than in the Netherlands itself.
mclemme 12y ago
The IT spokesperson from the same party as the former and current mayor of Viborg wrote a very critiqued article about making it attractive to build data centers in Denmark on the 6th of February[1]. Now when this deal is public he will surely boast about his brilliant foresight in the upcoming election... There's of course no definite proof that he knew about this deal at the time of the article, but the timing couldn't be better. [1] = http://www.version2.dk/blog/tid-til-danske-datacentre-76979 http://www.version2.dk/blog/tid-til-danske-datacentre-76979 (in Danish)
chvid 12y ago
Why does it matter that your data center uses green energy? The "green" is in the production not the consumption. Had your center instead used a chunk of electricity from a coal plant, the windmill produced electricity instead would be consumed by someone else in the energy network leaving the environmental impact the same. Had Apple instead sponsored a new windmill farm - then it would have been different.
- Brakenshire 12y ago
  > The "green" is in the production not the consumption. Well, electricity production generally has to be close to consumption. So if you can move a serious part of consumption to somewhere where renewable energy is plentiful, that's great and a clear net benefit.
- calvin_c 12y ago
  It creates a higher demand for green energy production.
- chvid 12y ago
  Are they paying extra for the green energy? Or how does it work? I meant it as a serious question (I can see it gets downvoted - for some reason?).
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    A while ago, as a consumer, you could get 'green energy' for a small extra fee. This was compensated again with government grants, so that 'green' energy was the same price as 'gray' energy; the government-funded surplus was then used (in theory) by the power company to build wind farms and whatnot.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      This is still the case in some markets, e.g. in Texas's partially deregulated electric market. Consumers can sign up with any of 20 or so electric providers, some of whom provide "100% green electricity", usually for a price a bit higher than the cheapest providers.
q2 12y ago
>>> Apple supports nearly 672,000 European jobs, including 530,000 jobs directly related to the development of iOS apps. A bit off topic and NOT just Apple related: When corporates list such achievements as above, they need to do full disclosure like how many old type jobs are destroyed due to their actions/products/services and how much time it took for the effected people to readjust to new reality. Press statements as above -which we see from several organizations- give the impression of all positives and no negatives which is not true. Public companies are supposed to inform complete truth to public (since some of them are shareholders) and statements as above are not complete truth. Their actions may be innovation to the organization concerned but it is not for the affected. Personally, I feel, now-a-days, modern organizations and their executives are showing the habit of abusing the word of innovation[0] for whatever they do. This is not just applicable to Apple only but to every other organization in the world. Amazon has to list how many brick and mortar stores are effected in addition to creation of new jobs and similarly vehicle, energy companies has to list the pollution they/their products caused across the world. Cities like Beijing has polluted air and is it not human made through innovated products developed few decades before? If they are proud of positives, they should feel sorry and/or pay for negatives as applicable. Is n't it? In some cases, measurement may not be easy or indicators/metrics are not defined yet like "number of jobs ...etc". Governments and other competent organizations need to define and enforce them just like enforcing in the cases similar to harassment/discrimination/workspace issues/environmental issues. Even reference year also needs to be defined. Jobs alone is not indicator and it is just tip of the iceberg of the total effect due to the actions of organizations. [0] Some background on origin and growing popularity of the usage of the word "innovation": http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/r-gopalakrishnan-the-buzz-around-innovation-115021901257_1.html http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/r-gopalakri...
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  > they need to do full disclosure like how many old type jobs are destroyed due to their actions Except that in the case of Apple, they single-handedly created a whole new industry (app development), empowering individuals to be able to write software without support of, for example, an investor, publisher, or major company backing them. As far as I can tell, the only things that Apple and smartphones and whatnot helped out of business was those crappy ringtone and text message subscription services. Of course, new laws also helped with that. You also mention Amazon, who did introduce a ton of new entry-level jobs, yes, but if the stories coming from the order pickers are correct, they're not really great jobs. Plus Amazon is working on making those positions obsolete with further automation (robots and stuff).
MrJagil 12y ago
Interestingly, we don't even have Apple stores in Denmark yet, despite a wealthy and seemingly voracious market. Guess we don't promise enough growth opportunity.
- PMan74 12y ago
  Don't have them in Ireland either, just a few authorised resellers. I guess a population of ~5 million isn't sufficient to support.
  - csomar 12y ago
    HongKong has 7 million and has 3 Apple Stores ( http://www.apple.com/hk/en/retail/storelist/ http://www.apple.com/hk/en/retail/storelist/ ) I think it depends on sales, and the popularity of the location.
    - kszx 12y ago
      HK is a potential retail destination for > 1 bn consumers in East Asia. Mainland Chinese cross the border and come back with bags full of Apple products (in addition to LV bags etc.).
  - nazgob 12y ago
    Poland is much bigger and Apple is quite popular and also only resellers.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    I'd think Dublin would be a prime location for an Apple store in IRE.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - bluthru 12y ago
    Surprised Bono didn't make that happen long ago.
q2 12y ago
Can anyone say the type of renewable energy: Is it wind based?
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Yes, for the most part.
- _delirium 12y ago
  "100% renewable" in Denmark usually means a mixture of Danish wind and Swedish/Norwegian hydro. The wind power is highly variable so only fills Danish energy needs on some days, but Denmark has the fortune to be near very large hydro installations further north, which are relatively easy to flex, and provide the remainder via high-capacity links. (For customers not needing "100% renewable", the load is also managed using Denmark's thermal power plants and Sweden's nuclear plants.) This somewhat unusual arrangement does mean that wholesale spot electric prices are hugely variable, ranging from near-free on high-wind days, to around €0.025/kWh on normal days, to above €0.04/kWh on low-wind days [1]. But you can reduce that risk through long-term contracts. [1] Forecast for the coming week (look at the DK1/DK2 rows): http://www.nordpoolspot.com/ http://www.nordpoolspot.com/
mangecoeur 12y ago
And most definitely not a move designed to sweeten the European Union's mood after their investigation into Apple Europe's (allegedly) illegal tax deals :P (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-663_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-663_en.htm)
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  If you have money overseas that you don't want to repatriate because of tax rates (personal opinion: tax rates aren't too high for repatriation), would it not make sense to spend that money on renewables overseas for energy you're going to consume anyway?
therockhead 12y ago
I live in Galway, what type of jobs are created in data centres? I'm guessing there's very little, if any software development.
- alphadevx 12y ago
  Might be some devops, unless it's going to be managed remotely.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- jaimebuelta 12y ago
  I guessing mainly construction/maintenance jobs (infrastructure related), network engineering and a few sysadmin. I don't think there is going to be much development. Apple is very California-centered for development.

133 points by FredericJ 12y ago

Good work Apple. To give some balance to a press release... I wonder what all that tax avoided money could have bought in society, and what the 3 billion 30% cut they took from developers could have done for those developers. Better apps? Compared to other electronic manufacturers Apple products do seem to have a much longer life. Lots of people seem to use second hand Apple phones, and laptops... but not so much for other brands. I wonder why they didn't choose colder countries? Both Denmark and Ireland do have some pretty cold parts. Since cooling is the main energy use, choosing colder countries over ones where they pay less tax would have been a better choice for the environment. Athenry, Ireland is as far west in Europe as you can go. Meaning it is as far away from most Europeans as possible. But I guess closer to the USA. I wonder about why they chose there if they want to serve their communities best. Viborg, Denmark makes more sense from a power generation point of view. However, since the power generation is inland it is wasting land which could be used for people and food.

bornabox 12y ago
Still waiting for the Apple datacenter in the Swiss Alps. There are some de-militarized Bunkers available. And it's cold as it gets up at 3000m...
johnloeber 12y ago
Why they didn't choose colder countries? (1) Ambient temperature is not very important. In a data center, you want to cool large arrays of small machines -- for that purpose, whether it's cold or hot outside the building doesn't matter very much. The 10-degree difference in outside air temperature is basically irrelevant you're trying to stop components from overheating. (2) If you want places that are substantially colder, then you're looking at places that are far more "off-grid" i.e. remote. That may create substantial infrastructural difficulties (internet access, hardware supply, electrical supply, etc.). There's a reason why Google hasn't put all their datacenters on Antarctica. (3) Denmark and Ireland already have good environmentally sustainable energy sources in place, more so than many other alternative locations. This move is about environmental policy.
- talideon 12y ago
  Well, one of the big advantages of Ireland is that it's the coldest country in Europe with a decent amount of transatlantic fibre running by its coast, and it has pretty stable temperatures. Ambient temperature can be very useful if you're building a datacentre. I work for the largest hosting provider in Ireland, and our new datacentre uses the temperature differential between the inside of our pods and the outside air to do energy recovery and cooling, and it's pretty effective . I'm a developer, so I don't have all the details, but I'll ask our CTO later for the details, if I've time.
  - cefstat 12y ago
    > Well, one of the big advantages of Ireland is that it's the coldest country in Europe [...] Perhaps you are confusing Ireland with Iceland? (seems improbable since you work in Ireland) Even then, Finland is colder than either of them although its coldest parts are not so easily accessible.
    - ptaipale 12y ago
      Coldest country with transatlantic fibre running by its coast... though a fibre running by a coast is not good in itself, you actually need to terminate the fibre in your country. (Like at my home, the council built a fibre to a nearby facility, but I can't plug into a fibre as it passes the house on the nearby street, underground...) Google has also set up a data center in Finland, where it indeed is colder; this one recycles a former paper mill and its energy connections. http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/hamina/ http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/ham...
    - talideon 12y ago
      You clipped off the important bit: > Well, one of the big advantages of Ireland is that it's the coldest country in Europe with a decent amount of transatlantic fibre running by its coast It's the fibre that's the key bit there.
- iamphilrae 12y ago
pjc50 12y ago
This is probably the first time someone has described the west coast of Ireland as "not cold enough". (More seriously, the choice of Ireland will be for tax reasons)
- plug 12y ago
  Aye, I'd concur with that. Pretty unusual/interesting that they chose Athenry Co. Galway though - I guess specific location is pretty irrelevant in a tiny country like Ireland but I would have imagined that Cork would be the default choice, since the EMEIA HQ is there too. Good news for Athenry in any case!
  - talideon 12y ago
    Nah, Cork wouldn't be a good place for something like this, other than the fact that a good amount of submarine cable lands there. But then by that, Wexford would be even better. The big reason for putting stuff on the west coast is wind and cooling. Doesn't hurt that Athenry is close enough to Galway City, and that makes it a great place to live. Frankly, if I was a network engineer, I'd totally be down for moving to Galway.
    - plug 12y ago
      Galway is a great spot alright, although I have to admit I do prefer living in Cork ;) I don't know anything substantial about data centres so I wasn't basing my assumptions on their real-world requirements. That said however, isn't Athenry a bit inland itself? You'd imagine far west Galway would be better again, with the added potential - I assume - to create infrastructure their own offshore wind energy.
- soneil 12y ago
  'tax reasons' are actually why I find this most surprising. The "Double Irish" tax arrangement is being phased out, which has led some to worry that companies that are only here to take advantage of it, may move on. Seeing the complete opposite happening is very reassuring (as a local).
soneil 12y ago
Ireland isn't actually a bad spot for this kind of infrastructure. Transit options are great because major transatlantic links actually make landfall in Ireland on the UK->US span. And the Atlantic seaboard has more wind than you could ever want (as my hair this morning will attest to ..)
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
> and what the 3 billion 30% cut they took from developers could have done for those developers. Better apps? More money for the 1% of top apps actually making money (Rovio, King, EA, etc), more like. A 30% cut is not bad at all, especially if you compare it to traditional software - retailers often charge an easy 40% markup over wholesale prices, and that's the last step before it reaches the consumer. Re: colder countries, what is the environmental impact of internet signals having to travel a longer distance? higher latency for each request, times a billion phones? These are probably trivially small figures, but there's a lot of factors to take into consideration. > However, since the power generation is inland it is wasting land which could be used for people and food. Really? You know how much surface area a datacenter takes up in comparison to everything else, right? (hint: not much). And people generally prefer to live in the city anyway (else there wouldn't be any cities, just a big sprawl of suburbia)

jkot 12y ago

Does anyone have more information? I lived in Galway for several years and it sounds interesting. > recover land previously used for growing and harvesting non-native trees and restore native trees to Derrydonnell Forest Sad to hear that. There are not that many trees in Ireland.

rsynnott 12y ago
Coillte, the state forest management company, discontinued some less critical operations during the economic crisis. Looking at their website, this was never a particularly large-scale operation.
CalRobert 12y ago
It's refreshing to go to the few forested areas and see what almost all of the island looked like a thousand years ago. There's some beautiful places in the Bearagh peninsula. That being said, some of the planted forests are pretty obvious. I still like the trees, but it's definitely a different feel.
- talideon 12y ago
  It takes time for that to recover. Initial plantations are always obvious, but that'll change over time.
soneil 12y ago
I'm not sure how to parse that sentence (and I know it's not yours, no worries). I read it as .. Apple will a) recover land previously used for, and b) restore native trees?
- jkot 12y ago
  Ireland has maybe 1% of land covered by trees. Choping down forest near major city to build datacenter is just bad. There are many free pastures.
  - teh_klev 12y ago

artpop 12y ago

This flew under the radar for me but AWS has “a long-term commitment to achieve 100% renewable energy usage for our global infrastructure footprint.”

sarreph 12y ago
Source? Highly relevant to my interests... EDIT: Forgot that was a quote, and used Google — for anyone who's interested: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainable-energy/ http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainable-energy/
- tschwarz 12y ago
  Interesting that they see renewable and not some term that envelops nuclear, given Bezos' investments in the latter.
tomjen3 12y ago
That seems silly, given the AWS is in the business of selling things as cheaply as possible.
- freehunter 12y ago
  Why is that silly? Renewable energy doesn't mean it's more expensive, especially as non-renewable sources begin to run out in the future.

husted 12y ago

The Danish plant is about an hours drive from me. There's not much IT related going on in that area so it's good to see that someone is willing to invest.

silvestrov 12y ago

I'm surprised they placed one in Denmark since Netherlands and West-Germany (ie near Düsseldorf) would be much more central Europe for internet connections.

quonn 12y ago
Maybe, because Denmark has a huge supply of wind energy?
- olavgg 12y ago
  Actually I believe Apple is going for a long term renewable energy strategy like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The additional electricity from wind(and maybe solar) can also be sold into the danish/European energy market. The big picture I see, is that if you look at the Nordic countries, you see that Finland and Sweden has several (unpopular)nuclear power plants. Denmark has a mix of everything, mostly coal and wind. And Norway get most of its electricity from hydro. Google has built a data center in Finland, Facebook in Sweden and now Apple will build one in Denmark. And I also believe Microsoft is building a data center in Finland. But few are considering Norway and that may be because electricity in Norway is already very cheap and neither wind or solar can compete with hydro. And you want additional profit by selling energy to the energy market. Selling electricity is a good sustainable long term investment.
  - doublerebel 12y ago
    It's flown under the radar, but Apple has gone big on renewable energy for datacenters since 2013. Idk why I sat on this article but I finally submitted today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9093657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9093657
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    There's wind and other renewables (wave/tide) in Denmark, but 48 % of electricity production is coal, so that's the marginal increase of production that Apple [edit: not Google] is actually going to use. BTW, in Finland nuclear isn't that unpopular, there's currently a new site under construction. (There is some trouble building it up, though: because the opponents of nuclear power will put just as much resistance to a site regardless of whether it is a 160 MW or 1600 MW plant, the planners make the site as big as possible, and the suppliers (in this case Areva) haven't considered this in the technology. The local nuclear safety authority is also ultra-safety-conscious, which is good in itself, except when slows down the deployment of a new, quite safe site so that the energy is bought off a Chernobyl-type thing near Leningrad).

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jafingi 12y ago

Awesome! Living in Denmark, this is huge news! I would have thought they would place it in Germany or the Netherlands, but in Denmark we can provide the datacenter with 100% green energy, and this is one of the main concerns for Apple. I wonder what the 300 people would work with, since just maintaining the datacenter wouldn't require that many people. So hope they're moving other jobs to Denmark, and accumulate different job positions there.

kristiandupont 12y ago
I am Danish too and I am not sure why we should be able to offer 100% green energy better than the German or the Dutch..?
- jafingi 12y ago
  Of course not - but Viborg has plenty of energy, and a brand new 400 kV connection [1]. Would be ideal by Apple to use that, and they've probably gotten a good offer. [1] http://energinet.dk/DA/ANLAEG-OG-PROJEKTER/Anlaegsprojekter-el/Ny-400-kilovolt-ledning-Kassoe-Tjele/Sider/default.aspx http://energinet.dk/DA/ANLAEG-OG-PROJEKTER/Anlaegsprojekter-...
- jlouis 12y ago
  The primary reason is a long investment in wind energy, which could be a good reason for Apple to pick up Denmark.
- funkyy 12y ago
  Island country (at least partly) will have easier job to provide wind or even solar energy than Germany and Netherlands. There is also a benefit of pretty predictable wave and tide energy sources...
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
There's a number of datacenters being built in the Netherlands; one way up in the low-populated areas (actually closest to Denmark), IIRC bought by Google. They're even building a power line to Germany so that they can get power from there, where it's a bit cheaper than in the Netherlands itself.

mclemme 12y ago

The IT spokesperson from the same party as the former and current mayor of Viborg wrote a very critiqued article about making it attractive to build data centers in Denmark on the 6th of February[1]. Now when this deal is public he will surely boast about his brilliant foresight in the upcoming election... There's of course no definite proof that he knew about this deal at the time of the article, but the timing couldn't be better. [1] = http://www.version2.dk/blog/tid-til-danske-datacentre-76979 http://www.version2.dk/blog/tid-til-danske-datacentre-76979 (in Danish)

chvid 12y ago

Why does it matter that your data center uses green energy? The "green" is in the production not the consumption. Had your center instead used a chunk of electricity from a coal plant, the windmill produced electricity instead would be consumed by someone else in the energy network leaving the environmental impact the same. Had Apple instead sponsored a new windmill farm - then it would have been different.

Brakenshire 12y ago
> The "green" is in the production not the consumption. Well, electricity production generally has to be close to consumption. So if you can move a serious part of consumption to somewhere where renewable energy is plentiful, that's great and a clear net benefit.
calvin_c 12y ago
It creates a higher demand for green energy production.
chvid 12y ago
Are they paying extra for the green energy? Or how does it work? I meant it as a serious question (I can see it gets downvoted - for some reason?).
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  A while ago, as a consumer, you could get 'green energy' for a small extra fee. This was compensated again with government grants, so that 'green' energy was the same price as 'gray' energy; the government-funded surplus was then used (in theory) by the power company to build wind farms and whatnot.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    This is still the case in some markets, e.g. in Texas's partially deregulated electric market. Consumers can sign up with any of 20 or so electric providers, some of whom provide "100% green electricity", usually for a price a bit higher than the cheapest providers.

q2 12y ago

>>> Apple supports nearly 672,000 European jobs, including 530,000 jobs directly related to the development of iOS apps. A bit off topic and NOT just Apple related: When corporates list such achievements as above, they need to do full disclosure like how many old type jobs are destroyed due to their actions/products/services and how much time it took for the effected people to readjust to new reality. Press statements as above -which we see from several organizations- give the impression of all positives and no negatives which is not true. Public companies are supposed to inform complete truth to public (since some of them are shareholders) and statements as above are not complete truth. Their actions may be innovation to the organization concerned but it is not for the affected. Personally, I feel, now-a-days, modern organizations and their executives are showing the habit of abusing the word of innovation[0] for whatever they do. This is not just applicable to Apple only but to every other organization in the world. Amazon has to list how many brick and mortar stores are effected in addition to creation of new jobs and similarly vehicle, energy companies has to list the pollution they/their products caused across the world. Cities like Beijing has polluted air and is it not human made through innovated products developed few decades before? If they are proud of positives, they should feel sorry and/or pay for negatives as applicable. Is n't it? In some cases, measurement may not be easy or indicators/metrics are not defined yet like "number of jobs ...etc". Governments and other competent organizations need to define and enforce them just like enforcing in the cases similar to harassment/discrimination/workspace issues/environmental issues. Even reference year also needs to be defined. Jobs alone is not indicator and it is just tip of the iceberg of the total effect due to the actions of organizations. [0] Some background on origin and growing popularity of the usage of the word "innovation": http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/r-gopalakrishnan-the-buzz-around-innovation-115021901257_1.html http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/r-gopalakri...

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
> they need to do full disclosure like how many old type jobs are destroyed due to their actions Except that in the case of Apple, they single-handedly created a whole new industry (app development), empowering individuals to be able to write software without support of, for example, an investor, publisher, or major company backing them. As far as I can tell, the only things that Apple and smartphones and whatnot helped out of business was those crappy ringtone and text message subscription services. Of course, new laws also helped with that. You also mention Amazon, who did introduce a ton of new entry-level jobs, yes, but if the stories coming from the order pickers are correct, they're not really great jobs. Plus Amazon is working on making those positions obsolete with further automation (robots and stuff).

MrJagil 12y ago

Interestingly, we don't even have Apple stores in Denmark yet, despite a wealthy and seemingly voracious market. Guess we don't promise enough growth opportunity.

PMan74 12y ago
Don't have them in Ireland either, just a few authorised resellers. I guess a population of ~5 million isn't sufficient to support.
- csomar 12y ago
  HongKong has 7 million and has 3 Apple Stores ( http://www.apple.com/hk/en/retail/storelist/ http://www.apple.com/hk/en/retail/storelist/ ) I think it depends on sales, and the popularity of the location.
  - kszx 12y ago
    HK is a potential retail destination for > 1 bn consumers in East Asia. Mainland Chinese cross the border and come back with bags full of Apple products (in addition to LV bags etc.).
- nazgob 12y ago
  Poland is much bigger and Apple is quite popular and also only resellers.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  I'd think Dublin would be a prime location for an Apple store in IRE.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- bluthru 12y ago
  Surprised Bono didn't make that happen long ago.

q2 12y ago

Can anyone say the type of renewable energy: Is it wind based?

jacquesm 12y ago
Yes, for the most part.
_delirium 12y ago
"100% renewable" in Denmark usually means a mixture of Danish wind and Swedish/Norwegian hydro. The wind power is highly variable so only fills Danish energy needs on some days, but Denmark has the fortune to be near very large hydro installations further north, which are relatively easy to flex, and provide the remainder via high-capacity links. (For customers not needing "100% renewable", the load is also managed using Denmark's thermal power plants and Sweden's nuclear plants.) This somewhat unusual arrangement does mean that wholesale spot electric prices are hugely variable, ranging from near-free on high-wind days, to around €0.025/kWh on normal days, to above €0.04/kWh on low-wind days [1]. But you can reduce that risk through long-term contracts. [1] Forecast for the coming week (look at the DK1/DK2 rows): http://www.nordpoolspot.com/ http://www.nordpoolspot.com/

mangecoeur 12y ago

And most definitely not a move designed to sweeten the European Union's mood after their investigation into Apple Europe's (allegedly) illegal tax deals :P (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-663_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-663_en.htm)

toomuchtodo 12y ago
If you have money overseas that you don't want to repatriate because of tax rates (personal opinion: tax rates aren't too high for repatriation), would it not make sense to spend that money on renewables overseas for energy you're going to consume anyway?

therockhead 12y ago

I live in Galway, what type of jobs are created in data centres? I'm guessing there's very little, if any software development.

alphadevx 12y ago
Might be some devops, unless it's going to be managed remotely.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
jaimebuelta 12y ago
I guessing mainly construction/maintenance jobs (infrastructure related), network engineering and a few sysadmin. I don't think there is going to be much development. Apple is very California-centered for development.