Apple Inc. announced this week that it is now "globally powered by renewable energy," including all of its offices, retail stores, data centers and co-located facilities in 43 countries.
But that doesn't mean you'll see solar panels on the roof of every Apple Store.
Apple does have a number of renewable energy projects attached directly to its facilities -- notably a 17-megawatt solar installation on the roof of its Cupertino, Calif. headquarters -- but Apple has also invested in renewable energy projects throughout the world that aren't directly connected to their own buildings.
According to its web site, Apple "creates or develops, with utilities, new regional renewable energy projects that would not otherwise exist."
That includes solar arrays and wind farms as well as other renewable technologies like biogas fuel cells, micro-hydro generation systems and energy storage technologies. Currently, Apple has completed 25 renewable energy projects all over the world, with 626 megawatts of generating capacity.
There are 15 more projects under construction that will increase that total to 1.4 gigawatts in 11 countries.
It makes sense if you think about it. Not all stores are in locations suitable for solar or wind power and it's just more economical and effective to build large-scale renewable projects in good locations than to mount solar panels on the roof of every store.
Once electricity flows onto the grid, it's basically impossible to track exactly where it goes anyway. You can only measure how much goes on and how much comes off.
So for companies like Apple or Walmart, they say they're powered by 100 percent renewable energy when the amount of power they take off the grid equals the amount of renewable energy their projects around the world put onto the grid.
Many other large corporations are achieving their corporate renewable energy goals by developing projects that may or may not be close to their actual facilities.
That includes projects in Alabama, like the 79.2-megawatt solar farm in Chambers County, the state's largest solar farm, that was developed to help Walmart reach its clean energy goals.
Apple says its renewable energy projects have reduced the company's greenhouse gas emissions by 54 percent since 2011 and prevented nearly 2.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.
"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, Apple's CEO and an Alabama native, said in a news release. "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's existing renewable projects include:
- the Cupertino solar array and four megawatts of biogas fuel cells
- 485 megawatts of solar and wind power in China
- A power-purchase agreement with a 200-MW wind farm in Oregon
- 320 MW of solar power in Nevada
- 800 rooftop solar arrays in Singapore, where land is scarce
- 300 rooftop solar arrays in Japan
Apple also announced this week that 23 of its suppliers have also committed to using 100 percent renewable energy.