A new industry report has concluded that Apple Inc. has the most installed solar capacity of any company in the United States
Apple Inc. is one of the most profitable multinational organisations in the world, and (with a globally situated workforce) produces a lot of things for their (often) evangelistic customer base. However, it’s not just consumer technology that they’ve been recently lauded for producing - it’s solar power.
The 2018 Solar Means Business Report, produced in July this year by The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), revealed that U.S. businesses are increasingly turning to solar energy as a cost-effective means of powering their operations. As of 2018, Apple now leads the United States with the most solar capacity installed of any company in that country, followed closely by the retail behemoths Amazon, Target and Walmart.
Last year, Apple installed just short of 400 megawatts of solar capacity and the SEIA stated in their report case study that Apple Park, Apple’s HQ in Cupertino, California, is the largest LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum-certified office building in North America. It’s powered by 100% renewable energy from multiple sources, including a 17 megawatt onsite rooftop solar installation and 4 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.
According to Apple, they currently have 25 operational renewable energy projects around the world, totalling 626 megawatts of generation capacity, with 286 megawatts of solar PV generation which came online in 2017, its most ever in a single year. It also has 15 more projects in construction that, once completed, will total over 1.4 gigawatts of clean renewable energy generation spread across 11 countries worldwide.
Additionally, over the last five years, all of Apple’s data centres have been powered by 100% renewable energy and since 2011, Apple have stated that all of their renewable energy projects have reduced greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) by 54 percent from its facilities worldwide.
Do you know of an Australian company following in Apple’s footsteps? Stay tuned for more!
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* Copyright and image courtesy of Apple Inc.
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