CLEAN MOVE

Tech giant Apple has announced that its facilities worldwide are now powered with 100% clean energy.

This achievement covers retail stores, offices, data centres and colocated facilities in some 43 countries, including China, India, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Apple has also declared that nine manufacturing partners have made a commitment to power all of their Apple production with 100% clean energy, bringing the total number of supplier commitments to 23.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said: “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.”

Solar arrays and wind farms – as well as emerging technologies such as biogas fuel cells, micro hydration generation systems and energy storage technologies – are all utilised by Apple, whose new headquarters building in Cupertino, California, has been certified as the largest LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum-certified office building in North America.

It is powered by 100% 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.