Apple promises to bring entire carbon footprint to net zero by 2030. Here’s how
In a press release and a heart-warming short video produced by Apple, the company unveiled its plan to bring their entire carbon footprint to net zero by 2030. This will include its entire business, manufacturing supply chain, and product life cycle.
Apple is already carbon neutral for its facilities, corporate emissions, and corporate travel since April this year. They also use 100 percent renewable electricity, and are currently investing in the restoration of forests, wetlands, and grasslands to remove carbon naturally.
“Businesses have a profound opportunity to help build a more sustainable future, one born of our common concern for the planet we share. The innovations powering our environmental journey are not only good for the planet—they’ve helped us make our products more energy efficient and bring new sources of clean energy online around the world. Climate action can be the foundation for a new era of innovative potential, job creation, and durable economic growth. With our commitment to carbon neutrality, we hope to be a ripple in the pond that creates a much larger change,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.
To help fulfil the goal, Apple is providing detail on its approach to carbon neutrality with a 10-year roadmap—which is also meant for other companies to refer to, as industries look to reduce their impact on climate change:
Low carbon product design
Apple will keep increasing the use of low carbon and recycled materials in its products, innovate in product recycling, and design products to be as energy efficient as possible.
Apple’s latest recycling innovation—a robot called “Dave”—disassembles the Taptic Engine from iPhones to better recover key materials like rare earth magnets and tungsten while also enabling recovery of steel, the next step following its line of the “Daisy” robot.
The company’s Material Recovery Lab in Texas, which focused on innovative electronics recycling technology, is now partnering with Carnegie Mellon University to further develop engineering solutions.
All iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch devices released in the past year are made with recycled content.
With the above actions, they have already decreased its carbon footprint by 4.3 million metric tons in 2019. Over the past 11 years, Apple has reduced the average energy needed for product use by 73 percent.
Expanding energy efficiency
Apple plans to identify new ways to lower energy use at its corporate facilities and help its supply chain make the same transition.
The US-China Green Fund will invest USD100 million in accelerated energy efficiency projects for Apple’s suppliers through a partnetship.
The number of facilities participating in Apple’s Supplier Energy Efficiency Program grew to 92 in 2019. Because of this, these facilities avoided over 779,000 annualised metric tons of supply chain carbon emissions.
In 2019, Apple invested in energy efficiency upgrades to over 6.4 million square feet of new and existing buildings, lowering electricity needs by nearly one-fifth—and saving the company USD27 million in the process.
Renewable energy
As Apple already has 100 percent renewable energy for its operations, they will be focusing on creating new projects and moving its entire supply chain to clean power.
Apple now has commitments from over 70 suppliers to use 100 percent renewable energy for Apple production. These commitments will avoid over 14.3 million metric tons of CO2e annually—equivalent of taking more than 3 million cars off the road each year.
New and completed projects in Arizona, Oregon, and Illinois bring Apple’s renewable capacity for its corporate operations to over 1 GW—equivalent to powering over 150,000 homes a year.
Apple is launching one of the largest new solar arrays in Scandinavia, as well as two new projects providing power to underserved communities in the Philippines and Thailand.
Process and material innovations
To tackle emissions, Apple aims to do so through technological improvements to processes and materials needed for its products.
They are supporting the development of the first-ever direct carbon-free aluminium smelting process.
The first batch of this low carbon aluminium is currently being used in production intended for use with the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Apple has also reduced emissions from fluorinated gases by more than 242,000 metric tons in 2019. Fluorinated gases are used in the manufacturing of some consumer electronics components and can contribute to global warming.
Carbon removal
Apple is investing in forests and other nature-based solutions around the world to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
There will be a first-of-its-kind carbon solutions fund to invest in the restoration and protection of forests and natural ecosystems globally.
In partnership with Conservation International, the company will invest in new projects, building on learnings from existing work like restoring degraded savannahs in Kenya and a vital mangrove ecosystem in Colombia.
Apple has helped protect and improve the management of over 1 million acres of forests and natural climate solutions in China, the US, Colombia, and Kenya, through its work with The Conservation Fund, the World Wildlife Fund, and Conservation International.
“By 2030 our whole carbon footprint—from manufacturing to transportation to end-of-life material recovery—will be nonexistent. All of Apple will be 100 percent carbon neutral,” wrote Apple.
Besides Apple, many other large software and manufacturing companies are committed to reducing their carbon footprint. The other companies include Samsung, Google, Dell, Intel and Microsoft.