Apple suppliers avoided almost 14 million metric tons of carbon emissions in 2021

Apple Renewable Energy China Sichuan Province Solar Project
Apple Renewable Energy China Sichuan Province Solar Project (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple has shared details on changes its suppliers have been making to avoid impacting their environment.
  • Apple suppliers were able to avoid 13.9 million metric tons of carbon emissions throughout 2021.

Apple has today announced that its suppliers were able to avoid 13.9 million metric tons of carbon emissions throughout 2021 while also more than doubling their use of clean power.

The news, shared via a Newsroom post today, notes that Apple is "constantly working with its global supply chain to accelerate and support its transition to clean energy."

Apple is constantly working with its global supply chain to accelerate and support its transition to clean energy. As of today, 213 of the company's major manufacturing partners have pledged to power all Apple production with renewable electricity across 25 countries. The dozens of new commitments announced today will accelerate progress toward Apple's 2030 goal to become carbon neutral across its entire supply chain. Apple has been carbon neutral for its global operations since 2020.

Apple's announcement goes on to outline some of the changes its suppliers have been making around the world. One example is Apple's own investment in the United States — in Brown County, Texas to be specific.

In the US, Apple is investing directly in the 2,300-acre IP Radian Solar project in Brown County, Texas. The project will generate 300 megawatts of electricity once construction is completed later this year. Apple made this investment to help address the electricity customers use to charge their Apple devices, which represents 22 percent of the company's gross carbon footprint.

Internationally, both LG Display and Samsung SDI have "committed to clean energy for all Apple production" in South Korea.

Those interested in learning more about how Apple is pushing its suppliers to use clean energy can read the full announcement including images that show some of the work that has been going on around the world.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.