All of Apple's Facilities Now 100% Green Powered

Apple Inc. (AAPL) announcing it has reached its goal of combating climate change by powering all of its facilities with clean energy, which it has achieved across all of its retail stores, offices, data centers and co-located facilities around the globe, including in the U.S., U.K., China and India.

In a press release announcing the milestone, the Cupertino, California, iPhone maker also said nine additional manufacturing partners have agreed to power all of their production of Apple products with 100% clean energy. That brings the number of suppliers that have signed on to the climate change fighting initiative to 23.

“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, in a press 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.” In 2017 Apple was near 96% but was able to hit 100% this year.

Bucking the Trend

Apple’s push to fight climate change comes at a time when the federal government, led by President Donald Trump and the Republicans, are pulling back earlier initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change. The Trump administration’s most public move on that front was to pull out of the Paris agreement, which was reached by the leaders of over 170 countries, all agreeing to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases and limit the global temperature increase to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) and, ideally, under 1.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. Apple was among the companies that urged the president not to drop out of the accord. (See more: Facebook, Apple, Google, Big Business Leaders Urge Trump to Stick to Climate Accord.)

For some time now, Apple has been committed to green energy and has been building new renewable energy projects around the globe, representing a range of energy sources such as solar arrays, wind farms, biogas fuel cells and micro-hydro generation systems, as well as energy storage technologies.

Currently, the company has 25 operational renewable energy projects around the world totaling 626 megawatts of generation capacity. Of that, it said 286 megawatts came from solar last year, which was the most in a single 12-month period. It has 15 additional projects that are under construction. Once complete, the tech powerhouse said that over 1.4 gigawatts of clean renewable energy generation will be spread across 11 countries. Since 2014, all of Apple’s data centers have been powered by 100% renewable energy, and its new headquarters is also powered completely by renewable energy, noted the company.