Posted on 08/24/2017 2:19:27 PM PDT by TigerClaws
You are absolutely right. And that overseas money would be repatriated in a blink of an eye as soon as our corporate tax rate is the same as Ireland’s. Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their owners to be good stewards of their money and that includes not paying taxes you don’t need to pay.
Doesn’t really matter to me. I got rid of my iPhone. I have no friends or family in Iowa. Hope the citizens appreciate their 50 jobs.
Everyone is an economist.
LOL!
My degree is in Economics. "Everyone's" is not.
Nice try at denigrating me. . . but I supported what you essentially said.
I know you agree with what I said and I appreciate that but technically everyone is an economist.
Indeed. I've seen what happens when a successful company builds in a town and contributes to the local economy. Genentech headquartered in South San Francisco (my town) and have contributed mightily to the local economy, regularly donating for public causes. Such as scholarships and donations to local schools, including my daughter's schools. My eldest daughter worked at Genentech in SSF for a number of years before moving to Des Moines and saw the public works that her company provided. The downtown in SSF was revitalized and is now a go-to destination for many workers. Genentech grew into a campus of more than several dozen buildings covering many blocks and attracted other companies and hotels to build near them. The bay shore was modernized with walking trails and parkland and creeks and piers beautified. There are many building cranes at work in the area today in SSF building on former empty deserted acreage (some of it long-empty steel plants, warehouses and slaughterhouses). A renaissance happened.
I don't understand why people knock a company moving into an area and contributing towards making thousands of lives better, reversing the trend of companies going overseas to China. We should applaud the efforts of these companies building here. I do.
To demonstrate how right you are and how much of an impact successful companies like Genentech and Apple have on communities, consider this true story. I live in a prosperous town on the San Fran peninsula south of SSF with a 75 year old community center that is way past its economic lifetime. The town is about twice the size of the town in Iowa that’s going to get the Apple windfall. Various citizen groups have been trying to float a bond issue for years here to rebuild a modern civic center with a community pool. A bond issue hit the ballot in 2015 that would have raised $65M for construction and required bond payback of almost $100M. It required 2/3 Yes to pass and was voted down with only 29% yes. There’s no doubt the project was too big and too vague to earn an “OK,” but still the scale of the defeat is amazing. Just goes to show how hard it is for any town to raise $100 million for works like this.
The big problem is that Waukee has no idea how their nice little town is about to change. What makes it attractive to many of the residents today is going to disappear and may totally change the character of their town. Maybe this won’t happen because it isn’t bringing in a new employer with 2,000 workers — 50 new FT jobs is too small enough to negatively impact traffic, housing, schools, etc. But the town could become a LOT more desirable place to live and change the character a lot.
A flat tariff of say ten percent is something I would not object to if it were coupled with tax and regulatory rollbacks as well.
It's the tax cuts and tariffs which are targeted to specific industries and even specific companies which I hate.
The role of the federal revenue system is to raise money, not to tweak the economy in order to benefit one sector versus another.
Targeted tax cuts and tariffs will draw the lobbyists and other swamp creatures like a dead dog draws flies.
Iowa Economic Development Authority and Waukee city council is not the Federal Government.
Seems to me your citizens have spoken, and understand the difference between necessities and luxuries.
Still it's a bad idea. Cutting business taxes across the board by the same amount as this Apple deal would be a good, no, great idea.
Yes. We were absolutely on the “no” side. The loud and clear “NO” surprised everybody.
As usual you spew Apple BS:
Last year (2014), Apple filed a permit to build a 50 MW electrical substation to serve future expansion in Reno Technology Park. Currently Project Mills is being served by a almost-at-capacity 15 MW feed from Nevada’s public utility.
https://www.datacenters.com/apple-reno-data-center
Your link was from 2015.
Apple to Build Huge Solar Project to Power Reno Data Center Campus
BY YEVGENIY SVERDLIKApple has entered into a joint venture with the utility NV Energy to build a massive solar plant in Nevada to power the Apple data center campus outside of Reno, the companies announced this week.
Along with companies like Google and Facebook, Apple has emerged over the recent years as one of the leaders among large-scale data center operators in terms of the amount of investment and effort put into adding renewable energy generation onto the portions of the electrical grid that supply its data centers.
Like the other global-scale web platforms, Apple has committed to operating on 100 percent renewable energy, and as it continues to expand the infrastructure that supports its platform, it has to continue investing in renewables to deliver on that commitment.
Nevada is a heavily regulated energy market and as such presents a number of challenges in sourcing renewable energy at utility scale, which is the scale required for mega data centers like the ones Apple builds. Apple’s first solar project in the state, the 20 MW Fort Churchill Solar PV, was financed and built by Apple, but NV Energy operates the plant and manages its energy output.
It’s unclear what the arrangement will be for the new project, but NV Energy said it plans to seek permission from the state utility regulator to sing a power purchase agreement for the future plant’s output.
It is difficult to circumvent the utility and buy renewable energy directly from a producer in Nevada. A company that wants to do that has to apply for regulatory approval and can be blocked if the regulators decide it will have negative effect on the utility’s other customers. It took Switch, operator of massive data center campuses in Las Vegas and Reno years of negotiations and court battles to untangle itself from NV Energy and buy renewable energy for its data centers, although its “exit fee” may be as much as $27 million.
Apple has taken a different route, choosing to go in on a joint venture with the utility.
The future solar plant’s capacity will be 200 MW. The companies expect it to come online by early 2019. Up to 5 MW of its output will power a future solar subscription program for residential and commercial customers the utility apparently has in the works.
The Apple data center campus in Reno Technology Park continues expanding. Before it had a chance to complete building out the first set of data centers, collectively referred to as Project Mills, the company applied for permits to build another adjacent complex.
According to the most recent data the company has made available, it was 93 percent renewable worldwide as of one year ago.
To offset the energy use of its Maiden, North Carolina, data center, Apple uses a combination of its own solar plants (almost 60 MW total), a biofuel-powered Bloom Energy fuel cell plant, and solar energy it buys from the utility, Duke Energy. Energy consumed by the Apple data center in Newark, California, is offset by energy generated by wind farms in the state. To offset consumption by its data center in Prineville, Oregon, Apple mostly buys wind energy from the local utility, while about 10 percent of its load is generated by micro-hydro systems the company built to harness energy from water flowing through irrigation canals.
The company expects to launch a data center in Athenry, Ireland, this year, which it said will run on 100 percent renewable energy sourced from turbines that harness wave energy along the coast. Another Apple data center coming online this year is in Viborg, Denmark. The company has not yet specified renewable-energy plans for that facility.
Its most recently announced data center project is in Mesa, Arizona. The company said that site will also be fully powered by renewable energy (primarily solar).
In addition to operating its own data centers, Apple leases space from third-party data center providers. The company says it is working with those providers to get them to 100 percent renewable energy too.
One of those third-party data centers is in Singapore, where real estate constraints don’t allow any kind of utility-scale solar installations. To address that problem, Apple partnered with a local company to source power (about 32 MW) from rooftop solar panels on more than 800 buildings in the tiny island nation. According to Apple, that capacity is enough to compensate for energy consumption of its offices in Singapore and its footprint in the data center.
The KEY data here are found in this sentence:
"Apple’s first solar project in the state, the 20 MW Fort Churchill Solar PV, was financed and built by Apple, but NV Energy operates the plant and manages its energy output."
Yet, as per your claim, the Apple Data Center "Project Mills" is only drawing some portion of the 15 MW from the Reno Technology Park substation. Oh, according to KC Mares, the fellow who conceived and coordinated the building of Reno Technology Park, there are many data centers in the Park drawing from that 15 MW substation not just Apple's data center, including the following:
I would not hesitate to say that Apple's data center, although the first tenant in the Park, is probably drawing less power than many of those other tenants. . . yet is the ONLY one that has bothered to build renewable energy plants to power their facilities. In other words, Apple has ALREADY built a Solar Energy Plant to provide more than enough power for their Reno Data Center several times over what it needs, but under Nevada's arcane regulations, that solar generated electricity has to be fed FIRST into the grid, and then bought from the Nevada public power Utility. Yet Apple is planning to build even more solar power for future expansion for this facility. . . even though they still have to operate under the same asshat regulations. It appears they have found a way to dedicate 50% of the plant's output for their needs though, instead of accepting the Utility's management's decisions for that output.
At the last Financial Conference Call on August 1st, Apple CEO Tim Cook clearly stated that Apple had reached 100% renewable energy for all of its US facilities (it was 93% in 2015 as per the above article) and in many of them were able to sell excess power back to the grid (in Nevada, the energy is being sold by the Utility from a plant Apple financed and built before Apple can even benefit from it!). In any case, the fact is, on the Reno Data Center, that renewable energy is handled for now by those investment offsets, as the article states due to Nevada regulations protecting their Utility company from "competition" from self-generation plants, but that will happen even more so of when the solar plant goes on line adjacent to the two Apple facilities.
Also, Apple, as part of its agreement to locate in that business park agreed to not impact the electrical draw capacity of the other businesses in Reno Technology Park. Thus they have to upgrade the electrical substation. They have to have the ability to connect to the grid even if they were to build solar panels on their roof to sell excess co-generation power back onto the grid. . . through an electrical substation. In this case, that is yet to be done if the Nevada regulators ever allow it.
So, Mad_As_He$$, it is not Apple BS, but facts which I back up with contemporary facts. Once again, Mad_as_He$$, you should learn not to try and battle with me on facts. . . especially when your ammunition is out of date by several years AND incomplete. You are hoist on your own petard.
So Swordmaker you said this “Every single one of Apple’s data centers is 100% energy-independent and self-powered and in fact sells power back into the grid.”
That is a false statement and BS. They are not “Self-powered”, they require the grid to operate. “Self” means the make power there on site. I drive by the Reno Apple Center almost every day. IT IS NOT SELF POWERED and is in fact across the river and I-80 from the main conventional power production area in the region. And the power line runs straight to the conventional power plant switch yard.
Has Apple provided the generation facilities for the power required (and far over and above, for that matter) to supply the Reno Data Center or not?
I agree that in this instance, due to the bassackwards Nevada co-generation regulations, the means of handling that power is convoluted, but Apple bought and paid for a TWENTY MEGAWATT SOLAR POWER PLANT which pumps fungible power into the grid and currently consumes far less than fifteen megawatts of fungible power drawn out of that same grid. The result, basically for users of Nevada users is the same regardless of where that power is generated. You are just picking nits. Apple has found a way to accomplish its goals within the Byzantine maze of idiotic crony regulations designed to protect the utility's bailiwick. More costly, but it worked and. accomplished Apple's intent. So what if it is transmitted through an Apple paid for switching facility?
What skin is missing from YOUR nose? From what I see, you as consumer of electricity in the area, even assuming Apple were to use all 15 MW the Reno Technology Park substation is capable of carrying, there's a net 5 MW additional capacity for your use that would not have been there but for Apple. Instead of criticizing, you should say thank you to Apple for building it for you. . .
“Has Apple provided the generation facilities for the power required (and far over and above, for that matter) to supply the Reno Data Center or not? “
Apple owns ONE solar farm in Nevada that has an 19.5mW rating. It is 60 miles from the data center so with line loss it is a pitiful amount. Great idea when the sun shines or is up otherwise NV Energy has to keep intermediate and peaker power available - the most expensive kind of power generation.
https://www.nvenergy.com/renewablesenvironment/renewables/solar.cfm
Nice try. You transform the electricity to high voltage for long distance transmission just as you do for any other electric generation facility. That minimizes line loss. I also see your psychological ploy by using a lower case "mW"making people read "milliWatt".
I see you avoided answering the yes or no question. Typical. The answer is "Yes."
This is not like San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and it's O'Shaughnessy Hydroelectric Dam's 234 MW electrical generation system owned by the SF City Utility which transmits all the power over high tension lines 160 miles from the dam to San Francisco without the benefit of participating in the grid.
We are not stupid, mad_as_he$$. But apparently you are. You don't put specific identifiable power into a power into the grid and then take the SAME power out 60 miles away after losses. Electricity is fungible, just like money; you can put it in at one place on the grid (think bank branch) and take it out at another with no loss because closer users have taken advantage of the capacity you've provided. Apple OWNS the power they put into the grid because their equipment generated it. however, under Nevada arcane regulations require Nevada's utility company gets to manage its generation and usage.
Here are the actual facts instead of your obfuscation post claiming "a pitiful amount of power available" for Apple to run its data center. This is from your own link, NVEnergy, Nevada's Electrical Utility Company, which YOU obviously hoped people would not bother to go and actually read (Italics added):
"Fort Churchill Solar Array - 19.5 megawatts
Owned by Apple, Inc. and situated on property leased from NV Energy adjacent to the Fort Churchill Generating Station in north Mason Valley, Nevada - this project uses SunPower's C7 Tracker advanced photovoltaic technology.
You see, Apple currently owns ONE data center drawing considerably less than 15 MW of electricity and Apple owns ONE solar generation power plant with an average output of 19.5 MW of electricity. Again, the 15 MW power station serves several data centers not just Apple's in the Reno Technological Park.
All this merely proves you are delusional and will distort fact to try and prove YOUR unprovable specious argument which is untenable. You're merely making a nitpicking point without any valid reason to prove anything factual except that Nevada has ridiculous regulations.
You've just proved my point in spades. The power that Apple's Reno Data Center uses is 100% renewable and is generated by Apple and Apple sells that excess capacity.
You clearly know nothing about power distribution.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that electricity transmission and distribution losses average about 5% of the electricity that is transmitted and distributed annually in the United States.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3
Nice of you to finally admitted that the Apple data center in Reno is not “self-powered”. Yes, you idiot, I know electricity is fungible.
How much does Apple contribute to the Northern Nevada Grid at night? None, ZIP, Zero, NADA - forcing use rate payers to support Apple with intermediate and peaker generation. You can Google those terms.
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