Monday Apple announced that all of its facilities in 43 countries around the world are powered by renewable, clean energy.
“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 has flaws but compared to the fossil fuel industry they have shown a considerably more forward-thinking approach in taking climate change seriously. One of their big pushes has been to get their supply chain on board.
To get to 100 percent renewable energy for its own facilities, the company worked to set an example for others to follow. Apple also announced today that 23 of its suppliers are now committed to operating on 100 percent 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.
According to Fast Company who spoke with the company’s VP of Environment, policy and social initiatives Lisa Jackson, Apple has been trying to run its environmental announcements like it does its products, to make the biggest, least problematic impacts upon release.
The overarching goal of Apple going 100% green is, of course, is to reduce harmful emissions from dirty fuels. The company says it’s reduced its greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) by 58% since 2011, preventing 2.2 million metric tons of CO2e from entering the atmosphere. But Apple’s own progress as measured by the numbers isn’t the only point. In places where it has facilities, the company has often been a catalyst, working with local utilities and regulators to build new solar or wind farms that pump new green power onto the public grid. Jackson told me Apple especially likes to do this in markets where the majority of the existing energy comes from ecologically unfriendly sources like coal or oil. “It’s an approach that’s really important because you’re growing the clean energy market around you,” she says.
This is a glimpse of some of the directions our entire country could be collectively walking down if we weren’t so beholden to the short-sighted and greedy impulses of our fossil fuel industry and their conservative minions.