Apple, the transition to renewable energy, and why it matters

Apple usually makes good decisions. To decide to pivot for services and subscriptions it means that those two revenue buckets generated about 40% of its gross revenue after expenses in the last quarter. But that’s not the only smart decision the company has made of late; the decision to transition its entire business to renewable energy is just as far-fetched.

Here’s why that’s important.

Services = Servers + electricity

Apple services live in the cloud. And because they’re cloud-based, they use energy – a lot of it. Now, I have glimpsed though the the company’s environmental reports and I’m not 100% clear how much energy those services use. But it is not discontinuous.

At the same time, the company has been using 100% renewable electricity in offices, retail stores, and data centers since 2018, and now it attempt to switch suppliers to renewable sources.

That’s not just green-washing, you know. It is a necessary step that every business must take, because the cold truths (especially in the context of war in Ukraine) are that energy:

What is going on now

I West London, the proliferation of data centers means that developers cannot build new properties because the grid is operating at full capacity. In Wstelijk Havengebied in the Amsterdam region, no new businesses can be set up due to the energy demands of a 100MW data center being built there.

That’s not just a problem for property developers, start-ups, and data centers — it’s also a problem that will limit the evolution of electronic vehicles. After all, that replace all cars with battery powered equivalents we would have to use thousands of GW of new electricity production, not to mention major improvements to electricity supply grids to carry all that load. (And we have watched the previous shortage of charging points.)

This challenge is intensifying.

The move to hybrid remote work means that enterprise users are increasing their reliance on various types of cloud hosting and on-prem services. Those SaaS services require electricity to run. That’s driving the rapid proliferation of data centers around the world, and while Apple tries to run its enterprise on renewable energy, not all operators do – and even renewable energy is questionable when it comes to you use it. Carbon Offset Credits.

Even if you pay to plant trees somewhere, you’re still drawing electricity from the grid (although it helps that many of Apple’s data centers are located close to Renewable energy sources supported by Apple).

Where does your business get its energy?

What does this mean? To me, it means Apple should be applauded for seeing this problem coming and starting to take steps to address it early.

That’s great, but the fact that not all companies have taken similar action means you’re likely to find a few more that rely on old-fashioned electricity supply for every solar or wind data center .

It shows that a laissez-faire approach to energy production and consumption, especially in the context of limited supplies and the rapid proliferation of data-driven services essential to the enterprise (and therefore to the nation’s economic health), needs to be organized by its national and transnational level.

This has always been the case in the world of computing. We have always known that computers used electricity, and although manufacturers continue (well, Apple continuing) to explore ways to provide more performance per watt, it should not be surprising to consider that at some point we will hit an energy supply wall. And it seems that what is happening is slow.

[Also read: Why you should pay more attention to Apple’s green slide]

What will happen next?

Arguably, we need to look at China to get some sense of this. Faced with a huge demand for energy and major problems with industrial pollution, that nation has been on the path to using alternative energy sources for years. it he has achieved a lotpollution is down, and continues to make more use of wind, solar, hydro, and other energy production technologies.