Apple goes green, embraces clean energy sources for its offices

Apple Park in Cupertino is now the largest LEED Platinum-certified office building in North America powered fully by renewable energy.

The iPhone maker also said nine suppliers had recently committed to running their operations entirely on renewable energy sources like wind and solar, bringing to 23 the total number to make such a pledge.

The announcement follows reports Apple has stepped up its opposition to moves in the U.S. to repeal the Clean Power Plan, warning that scrapping President Obama's flagship climate policy could undermine its current and future investments in renewable energy. "After years of hard work we're proud to have reached this significant milestone", Cook said.

In March, Apple's latest Supplier Responsibility progress report for 2018 had highlighted how India supplier Wistron had achieved a Zero Waste to Landfill certification in record time.

Apple's announcement comes just days after fellow technology heavyweight Google said it had met its own 100% global renewable power target.

Alphabet's Google a year ago purchased enough renewable energy to cover all of its electricity consumption worldwide.

Apple now has 25 operational renewable energy projects around the world, including wind and solar facilities, totalling 626MW.

It also has 15 more projects in construction.

Filling out the last 4% required Apple to find renewable energy sources in some of its more remote retail stores and offices. It is all controlled by a microgrid with battery storage, and gives clean energy back to the public grid during periods of low occupancy.

Hölzle went on to explain the company is taking its responsibilities even further, entering into contracts to buy a further three gigawatts of power from renewable sources.

By changing to renewable energy, Wynn retired more than 835 geothermal and solar renewable energy credits in 2016, and expects to retire more than 850 in 2017. To be clear, the search giant is not powering its operations exclusively with 100 percent renewable energy.

Luxshare-ICT, a supplier of accessories for Apple products. Solar is abundant and cost-competitive in the region, but until now the market rules did not allow companies like ours to purchase renewable energy.