Apple for quite some time has shown an arguably unrivaled commitment among tech companies towards the environment. With that in mind, Apple earlier today announced that every single Apple structure runs on 100% renewable energy, from Apple’s brand new spaceship campus down to the company’s data centers and chain of retail stores. In effect, Apple is setting a new bar for environmental responsibility. Incidentally, the fact that Apple reached the 100% mark this year isn’t all that surprising given that Apple last year noted that 96% of its facilities were running on renewable energy.
Word of the achievement came via a press release alongside a Fast Company interview with Apple executive Lisa Jackson.
“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,” Tim Cook explained. “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.”
And in an effort to increase environmental responsibility across the industry and down the supply chain, Apple also notes that 23 of its suppliers now intend to operate on 100% renewable energy.
As for some of the renewable energy projects Apple has been working on, the company lists the following examples:
- 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 percent renewable energy from multiple sources, including a 17-megawatt onsite 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 center 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 totaling 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 3,000 Japanese homes.
- Apple’s data center 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 centers in Denmark that will run on 100 percent renewable energy from day one.
Apple’s full press release can be viewed over here.
