Samsung Plans To Use 100% Renewable Energy by 2020 (fortune.com) 60
Samsung said this week it plans to transition to entirely renewable energy in its offices, factories, and operational facilities in the United States, China, and Europe by 2020. From a report: The company has also joined the World Wildlife Fund's Renewable Energy Buyers' Principles and the Rocky Mountain Institute's Business Renewables Center. In its home in Korea, Samsung plans to install 42,000 meters of solar panels at its headquarters, and will continue to add approximately 21,000 meters of solar arrays and geothermal power generation facilities beginning in 2019 at its satellite campuses in Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong.
Renewable Energy (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
It won't be free, and likely not ever. Someone will have to pay for implementation (land and equipment), operation, and maintenance. It won't be free until either people stop wanting to be paid for work, or complete automation from manufacturing all the way to R&D.
Re: Renewable Energy (Score:1)
Free meaning marginal cost is basically zero. Of course there are fixed costs.
Re: (Score:2)
After implementation of this whole world will be using free electricity.
. . . which is why I am surprised that some patent troll hasn't tried to claim the IP rights to the sun:
"You can install solar panels . . . but you will have to pay a small licensing fee to the IP rights holder of the sun."
Actually, I was a little disappointed after reading the title. I was expecting to see solar & wind powered cell phones, TV sets and microwaves.
Korean Apple (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Pyrus pyrifolia? [quora.com] Most people call them Korean Pears. Yes, they have a shape and texture more like an apple, but... Pyrus, not Malus. And the taste is more pearlike.
Re: (Score:2)
At risk of getting more off-topic, on my TODO list someday is to create a new apple/crabapple crossbreed and name the resultant hybrid "maleficarum", so that the proper name for it would be "Malus x maleficarum".
42K meters? (Score:3)
Wow, that's a lot! 42 km of solar panels.
Of course, a lot depends on how WIDE that 42 km of solar panels it is....
In other words, would it be too much to ask the editors to actually, you know, edit?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or to stay Metric, 4200 hectares, or (if you are part of the former Ottoman Empire) 42,000 dunams.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you could probably power half of Asia with 42km * 42km of good panels. OK actually that'd only supply about 1% of global energy requirements, but a lot more than Samsung need I'm sure.
Source:
http://landartgenerator.org/bl... [landartgenerator.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Wow, that's a lot! 42 km of solar panels.
Of course, a lot depends on how WIDE that 42 km of solar panels it is....
In other words, would it be too much to ask the editors to actually, you know, edit?
Remember they are editors, not the people writing the story. The writer, one Emily Price, wrote that they were using 42,000 meters of solar panels.
You have to go back to the actual announcement from Samsung to see the itty bitty superscript 2 next to the meters https://news.samsung.com/globa... [samsung.com]
See what you made me do though? You made me stand up for the editors at Slashdot. I need a drink.
Death by Unicode (Score:2)
It's just a typo, and actually, I can't fault them. The original quote from Samsung uses unicode character 13217 to display the "m2" unit symbol, but it just comes out as "m" in the press re-post. On Slashdot, the entire character is stripped.
Re: (Score:2)
Someday Slashdot will discover the wonder that is Unicode.
I jest of course.
Re: (Score:2)
How about 42km wide!!! ;-)
And about 77 inches tall.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Informative)
Apple didn’t just announce it. They completed the transition to 100% renewable energy earlier this year, and now they’re forcing their suppliers—Samsung included—to do the same as well as a condition for retaining their contracts with Apple.
Talk is cheap, literally. I hope Samsung does as they say they will, but they say a lot of things (like claiming innocence as yet another of their chiefs is indicted of bribing government officials), so I’ll wait for action before believing them.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Last time I check nuclear energy does not dump any pollution into the environment. It is the only source of energy(except hydro) that is required to control 100% of its waste products.
Waste is a red herring. It has never harmed anyone in human history. It is only really dangerous if you eat it. Don't eat the heavy metal rod.
According to Finnish Analysis-assuming nuclear waste canisters start leaking waste after a mere 1000 years, a city is built on top of the repository by people who only eat food produced
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Other than the fact that breeder reactors don't work, it's a good theory.
From Wikipedia:
In 2010 the International Panel on Fissile Materials said "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them have been steadily cut back in most countries". In Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, breeder reactor development programs have been abandoned.[57][58]
Re: (Score:2)
Other than the fact that breeder reactors don't work, it's a good theory.
The United States built one in Idaho called the experimental breeder reactor II [wikipedia.org]. It worked and was the worlds first 4th generation reactor. So yes breeder reactors do work. The real issue with nuclear is that it would make fossil fuels obsolete which is why the fossil fuel industry has spent billions convincing "useful idiots" like yourself that nuclear is bad. That is why the project was shutdown. Not because it did not work, but because the fossil fuel industry did not want any competition from melt
Re: (Score:2)
Working as an experiment is much different than working as a viable commercial reactor. Definitely failed at that (all over the world).
Re: (Score:2)
You said that "breeder reactors don't work." A successful experiment is the only example I need to prove your statement false.
You are changing the goal posts by now saying "viable commercial reactor" which is also not true. The US fast-neutron breeder reactor project was shutdown by the Clinton administration as a favor to the fossil fuel industry. It was never an issue with technical feasibility or commercial viability. The Russians have a successful breeder reactor called the BN-800 reactor [wikipedia.org] which t
Re: (Score:2)
Your definition of "work" is different than mine.
Re: Why not? (Score:2)
Re: Why not? (Score:2)
If they worked, people would build them.
If the problems of waste, high cost, long lead time were solved, people would build them.
You can't modulate output so too much power at night.
All nuclear has these problems.
They don't work in any practical sense.
Re: (Score:2)
If it had been commercially viable it would have produced enough money to outbribe the fossil lobby.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
By getting backing from a company that hopes to make money from it if it's commercially viable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well luckily that is happening now with a nuclear startup called NuScale. They have not really bribed anyone, but they are building 12 reactors in Idaho. Even then it is going to be an uphill battle because there is no way they can outspend the fossil fuel companies.
You're adorable. I gave you the research that shows why this will never happen and you're just to much of a dogmatic ideologue to get it. Not that I'm going to clue you into how you are being used by the fossil fuel industry as their "useful idiot" - but do carry on.
Re: (Score:2)
The US fast-neutron breeder reactor project was shutdown by the Clinton administration as a favor to the fossil fuel industry. It was never an issue with technical feasibility or commercial viability.
Taking credit for my cognition and research I see.
Re: Why not? (Score:2)
Breeders were at first found attractive because their fuel economy was better than light water reactors, but interest declined after the 1960s as more uranium reserves were found,[2] and new methods of uranium enrichment reduced fuel costs. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Except Apple is not 100% renewable. Purchasing renewable credits is not the same thing as being 100% renewable.
Actually, Apple doesn’t purchase renewable energy credits (REC). They specifically addressed that topic, in fact, when they announced that they had hit 100% [9to5mac.com]. Good thinking, since Google and others are using that trick to claim 100%, but Apple isn’t one of them.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... you didn't bother reading the story, did you?
In its home in Korea, Samsung plans to install 42,000 meters of solar panels at its headquarters, and will continue to add approximately 21,000 meters of solar arrays and geothermal power generation facilities beginning in 2019 at its satellite campuses in Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong.
Good (Score:2)