Apple plant plans to use 100% renewables

Apple Inc. has shared few details regarding its supplier’s factory in Mesa that will make sapphire glass for the company. But one thing the Cupertino, Calif., company has boasted since announcing the plans in November is that the plant will run on 100 percent renewable power from day one.

But the details of how the factory will achieve that goal remain a mystery, and the plant is reportedly opening soon.

Few buildings in the country, let alone massive factories, can claim to be “net-zero,” or to produce as much electricity on site from solar or other renewable energy as they consume.

Apple’s plans are even less clear as to whether the tech company plans to generate all the renewable power on site, to build a renewable-energy facility elsewhere, or to simply buy renewableenergy credits, or RECs.

RECs represent the environmental attributes of renewable energy, and can be bought and sold separately from the electricity produced at renewable facilities. Thus, a business in Arizona could buy RECs from a solar power plant in another state while the actual electricity from the plant is used some-

ENERGY where else.

Using RECs is common among large businesses that aim to support alternative energy, even among those that produce a portion of their energy on site. The New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, Colo., is an example of a large processing facility that uses both on-site renewable energy in addition to RECs to make the claim it is powered 100 percent by renewable energy.

Apple representatives declined to elaborate on their plans, but without a new renewable-power project to meet the factory’s needs, it seems likely RECs will be part of the plan.

Salt River Project will serve the factory with electricity, and the utility gets its power mostly from natural gas, coal and nuclear plants.

SRP has committed to getting 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020, and today it is meeting about 10 percent of its power demand with those sources. But because SRP counts energy conservation like a resource, the actual amount of electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind is smaller than 10 percent.

Excluding SRP’s efficiency projects, it gets most of the renewable energy from its hydropower dams on the Salt River. After that, it gets most from the Dry Lake wind farms near Snowflake, with geothermal power behind that. Solar power is the fourth largest contributor to its renewable-energy portfolio.

Various news sources and blogs reported recently that SRP was building solar and geothermal projects to support the Apple factory. That is not happening. The utility is not building any power plants for the sole purpose of serving Apple, officials said.

“We are still working with Apple to reach an agreement with how exactly we are going to provide all of their renewable-energy needs,” SRP spokesman Scott Harelson said.

SRP signed a new contract to buy power from a geothermal power plant in Utah in December, but that power is not slated specifically for the Apple plant, Harelson said.

SRP also has two solar power plants in the far East Valley, but some of that power is purchased by customers who want to support solar but not install it on their own homes or businesses.

“Ultimately, some of the energy from some of those facilities might get assigned to Apple,” Harelson said. “We still are working on that.”

If the utility “assigns” the power from those solar plants to Apple, it doesn’t mean the power will go directly to Apple. Like all power plants, their electricity gets fed into the grid and dispersed throughout the power lines with the rest of the electricity generated at other plants.

Harelson said purchasing RECs is an option, but it is unclear how the transaction will take place and who will pay. Harelson said SRP will look to shield its other customers from paying the additional cost of RECs for Apple.

However, SRP has offered Apple an undisclosed discount on its electricity, determining it is more beneficial to ratepayers to have the building occupied and paying a lower electric rate than have it empty and paying nothing.

The Apple facility has some capacity to generate electricity on site, but not near enough to power the entire operation. Apple bought the facility from Tempe’s First Solar Inc., one of the largest solar-panel makers in the world.

First Solar installed a 3.5-megawatt solar array on the roof, which was included in the sale, spokesman Steve Krum said. But the solar panels mounted on the ground near the factory are part of test arrays, and First Solar will be removing them later this year, once the company’s quality and reliability test center is moved out of the building, he said.

It seems plausible that Apple would rebuild the ground-mounted solar arrays, but the company declined to comment on that possibility.