offshoring

Apple will reportedly be the subject of a Senate hearing next week into U.S. companies' offshore tax practices.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is expected to testify Tuesday before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, according to Politico, which first reported on Apple's involvement at the hearing. The committee has been examining the various tax-avoidance strategies used by companies, including Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, and how that affects U.S. interests.

Apple recently announced a $17 billion bond plan as part of its shareholder capital returns plan that will save it $9.2 billion in taxes it would have had … Read more

What's the dirty secret behind all our glittering tech gadgets? That question was on the minds of many this week as The New York Times turned up the heat on a long-simmering story about Apple supplier Foxconn's labor practices (and Apple's response to the situation). In the following video, reporter Martha Teichner of the CBS News program "Sunday Morning" takes a look at the Foxconn-Apple relationship.

A new report on Apple offers up an interesting detail about the evolution of the iPhone and gives a fascinating--and unsettling--look at the practice of overseas manufacturing.

The article, an in-depth report by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher of The New York Times, is based on interviews with, among others, "more than three dozen current and former Apple employees and contractors--many of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs."

The piece uses Apple and its recent history to look at why the success of some U.S. firms hasn't led to more U.S. jobs--and to examine … Read more

When it comes to capturing energy from powerful offshore winds, bigger is better.

Siemens today introduced a larger version of its 6-megawatt wind turbine with a permanent magnet-driven generator set for installation offshore in Europe. The diameter of the circle created by spinning rotor blades will be either 120 meters or 154 meters (that is, almost 400 feet or 505 feet) across.

Land-based turbines typically have a capacity of up to 2 megawatts, but larger turbines are being designed to capture stronger, steadier offshore winds. Siemens projects that up to 50 of its SWT-6.0 turbines will be installed in … Read more

Deep offshore wind could produce energy for 8-10 cents per kilowatt within 10 years, according to a report released today from the University of Maine and DeepCWind.org.

The extensive 557-page report (PDF) represents a collaboration between the Advanced Structures and Composites Center at the University of Maine, and the James W. Sewall Company, but was funded with a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The report includes input from several members of DeepCWind.org, a consortium of companies, manufacturers, environmentalist groups, and academic institutions related to the offshore wind industry.

More interesting than how inexpensive … Read more

Massachusetts utility regulators today approved the initial power purchase agreement for Cape Wind, bringing the controversial offshore wind farm product closer to construction.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities approved a 15-year power purchase agreement between Cape Wind and utility National Grid to buy half of the electricity produced at the proposed farm in the Nantucket Sound off the coast of Cape Cod.

The rates at which National Grid agreed to purchase power from Cape Wind are above market rates. But the Department of Public Utilities concluded that Cape Wind is in the public interest and the prices are acceptable … Read more

Swedish energy company Vattenfall announced today that it's partnering with Germany's largest utility to build a massive offshore wind farm in the North Sea at a cost of about 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) .

The DanTysk wind farm will consist of giant wind turbines supplied by Siemens and spaced out over a 70-square-kilometer area about 70 kilometers (42 miles) west of the German island of Sylt. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2012 and to wrap up by the start of 2014.

Once complete, the 288-megawatt wind farm is expected to produce about 1,320 gigawatt-hours of … Read more

Without a "backbone" to shuttle megawatts of power, the offshore wind resource on the U.S. Atlantic coast will remain undeveloped, according to one of the architects behind the Atlantic Wind Connection offshore transmission line project.

Trans-Elect Development today detailed an ambitious project to lay underwater cables to carry electricity generated by offshore wind turbines along the eastern seaboard from Virginia to New Jersey.

The group said that an initial group of investors, including Google and Good Energies, have put in tens of millions of dollars each into the project, which they hope to begin construction of in … Read more

Developers of the Cape Wind project won a legal decision that brings the controversial offshore wind farm in Massachusetts closer to the start of construction.

In a 4-2 decision issued on Tuesday, the state supreme court upheld an earlier ruling that Cape Wind could get a "composite" of permits from the state to cut through the local permitting process.

Placement of the turbines would be in federal waters, but a transmission line connecting to the mainland on Cape Cod needs to be built. Local towns and the Cape Cod land planning agency denied the project a permit in … Read more