Apple Now Globally Powered by 100 % Renewable Energy
Apple’s new headquarters in Cupertino is powered by 100 percent renewable energy, in part from a 17-megawatt onsite rooftop solar installation.
The global tech giant says that this was made possible through a variety of projects ranging from solar arrays and wind farms as well as emerging technologies like biogas fuel cells, micro-hydro generation systems and energy storage technologies. With this, Apple continues to lead the trend of the largest IT firms from Silicon Valley going ‘green’. In fact, the FANG group of massive giants (Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google) have been at the forefront of corporate buying of renewables. Amazon, another firm that has a much more diversified and bigger carbon footprint, has in fact struggled to keep pace with its peers on this issue.
Apple yesterday announced that its retail stores, offices, data centers and co-located facilities present in a total of 43 countries are running on clean energy. Building on this achievement and in order to promote the concept of clean energy delivery for the foreseeable future, the tech giant has also announced that nine additional manufacturing partners have committed to powering all of their Apple production with 100 percent clean energy, bringing the total number of supplier commitments to 23.
Apple now expects to add 5 GW of renewable energy to its supply chain by 2020, exceeding its goal of four gigawatts in that timeframe.
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Apple says that manufacturing makes up 74 % of its carbon footprint. To address this, Apple and its suppliers have invested in or procured a mix of clean energy technology, including wind and solar. Apple has also further expanded its supplier education and support initiatives.
Apple also announced that it has allocated all of $2.5 billion in green bonds, the largest amount of any U.S. corporation. Through this, the company says it has contributed to 40 environmental initiatives around the world, including projects Apple has created to cover its entire electricity load.
Apple’s Green Bonds also support environmental research and innovation. Projects include solar rooftops in Japan, an aquifer to conserve water in Oregon, and the creation of a custom alloy made of 100 percent recycled aluminum.
Since 2011, all of Apple’s renewable energy projects have reduced greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) by 54 percent from its facilities worldwide and prevented nearly 2.1 million metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere, claims the company.
