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

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].<p>Now when this deal is public he will surely boast about his brilliant foresight in the upcoming election...<p>There&#x27;s of course no definite proof that he knew about this deal at the time of the article, but the timing couldn&#x27;t be better.<p>[1] = <a href="http://www.version2.dk/blog/tid-til-danske-datacentre-76979" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.version2.dk&#x2F;blog&#x2F;tid-til-danske-datacentre-76979</a> (in Danish)

I&#x27;m surprised they placed one in Denmark since Netherlands and West-Germany (ie near Düsseldorf) would be much more central Europe for internet connections.

Interestingly, we don&#x27;t even have Apple stores in Denmark yet, despite a wealthy and seemingly voracious market. Guess we don&#x27;t promise enough growth opportunity.

Awesome! Living in Denmark, this is huge news!<p>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.<p>I wonder what the 300 people would work with, since just maintaining the datacenter wouldn&#x27;t require that many people. So hope they&#x27;re moving other jobs to Denmark, and accumulate different job positions there.

The Danish plant is about an hours drive from me. There&#x27;s not much IT related going on in that area so it&#x27;s good to see that someone is willing to invest.

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.”

I live in Galway, what type of jobs are created in data centres? I&#x27;m guessing there&#x27;s very little, if any software development.

And most definitely not a move designed to sweeten the European Union&#x27;s mood after their investigation into Apple Europe&#x27;s (allegedly) illegal tax deals :P<p>(<a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-663_en.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;europa.eu&#x2F;rapid&#x2F;press-release_IP-14-663_en.htm</a>)

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

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

&gt;&gt;&gt; Apple supports nearly 672,000 European jobs, including 530,000 jobs directly related to the development of iOS apps.<p>A bit off topic and NOT just Apple related:<p>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&#x2F;products&#x2F;services and how much time it took for the effected people to readjust to new reality.<p>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.<p>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&#x2F;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&#x2F;or pay for negatives as applicable. Is n&#x27;t it?<p>In some cases, measurement may not be easy or indicators&#x2F;metrics are not defined yet like &quot;number of jobs ...etc&quot;. Governments and other competent organizations need to define and enforce them just like enforcing in the cases similar to harassment&#x2F;discrimination&#x2F;workspace issues&#x2F;environmental issues. Even reference year also needs to be defined.<p>Jobs alone is not indicator and it is just tip of the iceberg of the total effect due to the actions of organizations.<p>[0] Some background on origin and growing popularity of the usage of the word &quot;innovation&quot;: <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/r-gopalakrishnan-the-buzz-around-innovation-115021901257_1.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.business-standard.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;r-gopalakri...</a>

Why does it matter that your data center uses green energy?<p>The &quot;green&quot; is in the production not the consumption.<p>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.<p>Had Apple instead sponsored a new windmill farm - then it would have been different.

Good work Apple.<p>To give some balance to a press release...<p>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?<p>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.<p>I wonder why they didn&#x27;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.<p>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.<p>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.