Apple And Google Achieve 100% Renewable Energy Goals

The two technology behemoths say they’ve achieved important renewable energy goals they set for themselves – and both have more renewables in the pipeline.

Both Apple and Google are huge consumers of electricity. In the 2016 fiscal year, Apple’s facilities (corporate, retail, data centers) consumed some 1,454,000 megawatt-hours of electricity and Google slurped through 6,315,179 megawatt-hours according to Statista.

Apple Reaches 100% Renewables Goal

By 2014, all Apple data centers were 100% renewables-powered according to the company. In 2016, Apple joined the RE100 and reaffirmed its commitment to 100% renewable energy. Last year it said it had reached 96%.

Earlier today, Apple announced all its global facilities – including retail stores, offices, data centres and co-located facilities in dozens of countries – are now powered with 100 percent renewables.

The company says it has 25 operational renewable energy projects around the world representing 626 megawatts of generation capacity. Just last year, 286 megawatts of solar PV was brought online.

Among the projects was Apple’s new headquarters in Cupertino, California. Apple Park boasts a 17-megawatt onsite rooftop solar panel installation, four megawatts of biogas fuel cells and battery storage.

“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.

Apple says it also has 15 more projects under construction that once built will give the company 1.4 gigawatts of clean renewable energy generation capacity spread across 11 countries.

The company also announced today nine more of its manufacturing partners have committed to power all of their Apple production with 100 percent clean energy (assumption: renewables), which brings the total number of supplier commitments to 23.

Google Confirms 100% Renewables Achievement

Last week, Google said it had confirmed that after having recently completed accounting, its renewable energy purchases announced in December will see the company exceed the amount of electricity used by its operations around the world, including Google offices and data centers.

Currently, it has contracts to purchase three gigawatts of output capacity from renewable energy projects, including wind and solar energy facilities. Google has laid claim to being the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world based on Bloomberg figures – and it says more is to come.

“We’re building new data centers and offices, and as demand for Google products grows, so does our electricity load,” said Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Technical Infrastructure. ” We need to be constantly adding renewables to our portfolio to keep up. So we’ll keep signing contracts to buy more renewable energy.”

Businesses large and small around the world are turning to renewables, not just as a way to slash their emissions or for PR purposes, but also to reduce their energy costs.