Apple reaches 100% renewable energy milestone

Apple’s power is now composed of 100% renewable energy, as part of the company’s commitment to fighting climate change.

This achievement includes retail stores, offices, data centres and co-located facilities in 43 countries — including the United States, the United Kingdom, China and India.

The company also announced nine additional manufacturing partners have committed to power all of their Apple production with 100% clean energy, bringing the total number of supplier commitments to 23.

“We’re committed to leaving the world better than we found it. After years of hard work we’re proud to have reached this significant milestone,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

“We’re going to keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible with the materials in our products, the way we recycle them, our facilities and our work with suppliers to establish new creative and forward-looking sources of renewable energy because we know the future depends on it.”

Apple and its partners are building new renewable energy projects around the world, improving the energy options for local communities, states and even entire countries. Apple creates or develops, with utilities, new regional renewable energy projects that would not otherwise exist. These projects represent a diverse range of energy sources, including solar arrays and wind farms as well as emerging technologies like biogas fuel cells, micro-hydro generation systems and energy storage technologies.

Apple currently has 25 operational renewable energy projects around the world, totalling 626 megawatts of generation capacity, with 286 megawatts of solar PV generation coming online in 2017. This is the company’s largest amount ever in one year. It also has 15 more projects in construction. Once built, over 1.4 gigawatts of clean renewable energy generation will be spread across 11 countries.

Since 2014, all of Apple’s data centres have been powered by 100% renewable energy. And since 2011, all of Apple’s renewable energy projects have reduced greenhouse gas emissions (CO_2e) by 54% from its facilities worldwide and prevented nearly 2.1 million metric tons of CO_2e from entering the atmosphere.

Apple’s renewable energy projects include:

• Apple Park, Apple’s new headquarters in Cupertino, is now the largest LEED Platinum-certified office building in North America. It is powered by 100% renewable energy from multiple sources, including a 17-megawatt on-site rooftop solar installation and four megawatts of biogas fuel cells, and controlled by a microgrid with battery storage. It also gives clean energy back to the public grid during periods of low occupancy.
• Over 485 megawatts of wind and solar projects have been developed across six provinces of China to address upstream manufacturing emissions.
• Apple recently announced plans to build a 400,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art data centre in Waukee, Iowa, that will run entirely on renewable energy from day one.
• In Prineville, Oregon, the company signed a 200-megawatt power purchase agreement for an Oregon wind farm, the Montague Wind Power Project, set to come online by the end of 2019.
• In Reno, Nevada, Apple created a partnership with the local utility, NV Energy, and over the last four years developed four new projects totalling 320 megawatts of solar PV generation.
• In Japan, Apple is partnering with local solar company Daini Denryoku to install over 300 rooftop solar systems that will generate 18,000 megawatt-hours of clean energy every year — enough to power more than 3000 Japanese homes.
• Apple’s data centre in Maiden, North Carolina, is supported by projects that generate 244 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy per year, which is equivalent to the energy used by 17,906 North Carolina homes.
• In Singapore, where land is scarce, Apple adapted and built its renewable energy on 800 rooftops.
• Apple is currently constructing two new data centres in Denmark that will run on 100% renewable energy from day one.

To get to 100% renewable energy for its own facilities, the company worked to set an example for others to follow. Apple also announced that 23 of its suppliers are now committed to operating on 100% renewable energy, including nine new suppliers. Altogether, clean energy from supplier projects helped avoid over 1.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases from being emitted in 2017 — the equivalent of taking more than 300,000 cars off the road. In addition, over 85 suppliers have registered for Apple’s Clean Energy Portal, an online platform that Apple developed to help suppliers identify commercially viable renewable energy solutions in regions around the world.

Image credit: ©fotoscool/Dollar Photo Club

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