Apple's carbon-neutral goal is a giant task, could echo through big tech
An examination into Apple's environmentalism asks whether Apple could truly reach its pledge of making the iPhone carbon neutral, with comments from Apple's executive leadership along with other environmentalists suggesting it is possible, but a very big task.
Solar farm investments are one way Apple is pressing forward with being a carbon-neutral entity, with over 80% of energy used stemming from Apple-invested projects.
Apple has made numerous strides in its bid to make itself more environmentally friendly, as part of an initiative to become carbon neutral across the entirety of its business by 2030. The lofty goal, which covers everything from the supply chain to the end of a product's life, is being tackled aggressively, but the task is also massive in scale to undertake due to Apple's size.
In a profile of the initiative by British GQ, Apple's VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson and SVP of Worldwide Marketing Greg Joswiak were questioned about both the scale of the problem and how far Apple is progressing down the path.
These efforts have included transitioning its facilities to run on renewable energy and using recycled materials in its products, but they are only part of the solution. "We set really big goals for ourselves. At one point we were even calling them crazy questions," said Jackson.
Going beyond making its own offices and operations carbon neutral and attempting to tackle the indirect pollution caused by suppliers and other business areas by 2030 is a much loftier goal. One that is considered by Greenpeace to be a demonstration of "what's possible for tech brands and could lead to a mindset shift" for other producers.
Apple's work in the field is important to environmental groups, as they see that changes by Apple are keenly adopted by other vendors in the tech industry. By making sustainability a marketable feature of the iPhone, competitors may try to make their own products have similar credentials to appease customers.
Apple's VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, Lisa Jackson
Jackson's decision to join Apple wasn't just the size of the problem, but also that Apple wanted to go further. "During my interviews no one said 'What do we have to do to get in front of all these environmental rules and regulations?" Jackson remembers. "They said 'What can we do to lead the world to a better place? And that was really impressive to me. I didn't run across that practically ever."
The deep-grained environmentalism is felt in other areas in the company, as evidenced by Joswiak's comments. "We're always looking at ways to minimize the e-waste from our products, it's a continuous effort and an important one," said Joswiak.
He continued "We're fortunate that people buy a lot of Apple products, so we know that the decisions we make in this regard are going to have an enormous impact. It's our responsibility to minimize packaging and minimize what's in the packaging if it's not something the consumer needs."
Moves such as investing in clean energy projects are thought to be "very significant" for companies like Apple, suggests Greenpeace senior corporate campaigner Elizabeth Jardim. "Because much of its supply chain is in China and Southeast Asia, where there's a huge amount of coal power, this allows them to find cleaner sources of energy in a region that is otherwise dirty and hopefully begin to shift the grid mix in those regions."
The scale of the problem is still tough to swallow for those working on it, with Jackson admitting "It's a really huge goal. Even saying it, I always get a little lump, because I know how much work is involved in doing it, but we have a very detailed plan."
Jackson also brings up how Apple CEO tells employees to "be a ripple in the pond," to try and influence others with its actions. "Not just to change Apple, but to change the world," she clarifies, continuing "Apple is a manufacturer and that is the hardest segment to decarbonize and change to clean energy. When we do that work a lot of those manufacturers will go ahead and use that clean energy for other folks."
"Apple's commitment represents a new model that we want more companies to follow," suggests WWF senior director of corporate engagements for forests. "It's no longer enough for them to simply commit to 'reduced impact.'"
Solar farm investments are one way Apple is pressing forward with being a carbon-neutral entity, with over 80% of energy used stemming from Apple-invested projects.
Apple has made numerous strides in its bid to make itself more environmentally friendly, as part of an initiative to become carbon neutral across the entirety of its business by 2030. The lofty goal, which covers everything from the supply chain to the end of a product's life, is being tackled aggressively, but the task is also massive in scale to undertake due to Apple's size.
In a profile of the initiative by British GQ, Apple's VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson and SVP of Worldwide Marketing Greg Joswiak were questioned about both the scale of the problem and how far Apple is progressing down the path.
These efforts have included transitioning its facilities to run on renewable energy and using recycled materials in its products, but they are only part of the solution. "We set really big goals for ourselves. At one point we were even calling them crazy questions," said Jackson.
Going beyond making its own offices and operations carbon neutral and attempting to tackle the indirect pollution caused by suppliers and other business areas by 2030 is a much loftier goal. One that is considered by Greenpeace to be a demonstration of "what's possible for tech brands and could lead to a mindset shift" for other producers.
Apple's work in the field is important to environmental groups, as they see that changes by Apple are keenly adopted by other vendors in the tech industry. By making sustainability a marketable feature of the iPhone, competitors may try to make their own products have similar credentials to appease customers.
Apple's VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, Lisa Jackson
Jackson's decision to join Apple wasn't just the size of the problem, but also that Apple wanted to go further. "During my interviews no one said 'What do we have to do to get in front of all these environmental rules and regulations?" Jackson remembers. "They said 'What can we do to lead the world to a better place? And that was really impressive to me. I didn't run across that practically ever."
The deep-grained environmentalism is felt in other areas in the company, as evidenced by Joswiak's comments. "We're always looking at ways to minimize the e-waste from our products, it's a continuous effort and an important one," said Joswiak.
He continued "We're fortunate that people buy a lot of Apple products, so we know that the decisions we make in this regard are going to have an enormous impact. It's our responsibility to minimize packaging and minimize what's in the packaging if it's not something the consumer needs."
Moves such as investing in clean energy projects are thought to be "very significant" for companies like Apple, suggests Greenpeace senior corporate campaigner Elizabeth Jardim. "Because much of its supply chain is in China and Southeast Asia, where there's a huge amount of coal power, this allows them to find cleaner sources of energy in a region that is otherwise dirty and hopefully begin to shift the grid mix in those regions."
The scale of the problem is still tough to swallow for those working on it, with Jackson admitting "It's a really huge goal. Even saying it, I always get a little lump, because I know how much work is involved in doing it, but we have a very detailed plan."
Jackson also brings up how Apple CEO tells employees to "be a ripple in the pond," to try and influence others with its actions. "Not just to change Apple, but to change the world," she clarifies, continuing "Apple is a manufacturer and that is the hardest segment to decarbonize and change to clean energy. When we do that work a lot of those manufacturers will go ahead and use that clean energy for other folks."
"Apple's commitment represents a new model that we want more companies to follow," suggests WWF senior director of corporate engagements for forests. "It's no longer enough for them to simply commit to 'reduced impact.'"
Comments
However, the elephant in the room is its supplier Scope 3 emissions, which accounts for 76% of the emissions in its value chain. Apple is making tremendous strides there as well: suppliers have already installed and are using 2.7GW in renewable capacity (think of the equivalent of three full-scale nuclear power plants at work), and they have committed 7.8GW which is well ahead of Apple's goal of 5GW supplier renewable capacity by 2020. This will be more than half of the suppler emissions associated with manufacturing Apple products, a huge achievement.
Apple still has some ways to go with its supplier emissions, and it has committed to becoming neutral for that, as well as for the emissions associated with consumer use and disposal of their products -- again, a first for any tech company, perhaps any company -- by 2030.
Lisa Jackson is a superstar.
Also, offsets are a bit of a copout. A lot of that could be less-than-authentic. Apple, OTOH, has directly invested in substantial renewable energy capacity.
https://www.macobserver.com/news/google-carbon-free-2030/
Not "neutral" which means reducing pollution but playing a shell game with offsets to make it appear you're clean. This is carbon free, all renewable resources. Not net zero, but true zero. Of course as others said, it's easier when all you do is push data and not make things. But this is a major stand.
The Ball's In Apple's Court.
AFAICT Google's carbon-neutrality includes both Scope 1 and Scope 2, and 3rd party audited for verification. Read it for yourself including the Appendix and see if you have the same takeaway.
https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/google_2019-environmental-report.pdf
Google announced its data centers and MORE were carbon neutral in 2017. Google has also invested more in renewable energy than even Apple BTW.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said in a statement:
A clip from last years sustainability report:
Google is the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy. Since 2010, we’ve signed 34 agreements to purchase a total of more than 3.75 GW of renewable energy that is new to the grid. On July 27, 2015, as part of the American Business Act on Climate Pledge, Google committed to tripling our purchases of renewable energy from 1.1 GW to 3.4 GW by 2025. We surpassed this in 2018, exceeding our target seven years early.
In 2012, we set a long-term goal to purchase enough renewable energy to match all the electricity we consume globally on an annual basis. In 2017, we achieved it for the first time: Google’s total purchase of energy from sources like wind and solar matched the amount of electricity used by our operations around the world, including our offices and data centers. And in 2018, we again matched 100% of our annual electricity consumption with purchases of renewable energy (see Figure 6). This amounted to more than 10 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy—more electricity than is used annually by the state of Hawaii.
To date, we’ve purchased a total of nearly 26 million MWh of renewable energy. We’re the first company of our size to achieve 100% renewable energy two years running.
Refute that.
Explain this figure then from their just-published carbon report (their latest data -- as with Apple -- is for 2019, so no need to look for anything newer):
As a closely related aside I think you'd have to agree at this point that your initial claim "Apple is head-and-shoulders ahead of other tech companies on the carbon mitigation front" may have been more than a bit overstated.
In the meantime, I'll stand by what I said.
"In 2018, our gross Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions were 4.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2 e), but because of our renewable energy purchases, our net GHG emissions were reduced by 3.7 million tons to 750 thousand tCO2 e (see Figures 7 and 8). Due to growth in our business, our operational emissions increased 30% over the past year. After accounting for our carbon offset purchases, our net operational carbon emissions were zero"
Scope 1 AND Scope 2.
And how about answering my question on Scope 3 supplier emissions? Also, has Google eliminated its employee commuting and business travel emissions? Perhaps they have, but I did not see that.
As far as Scope 3 see page 60 in the aforementioned Google 2019 Sustainability Report.
TBH Anant there was nothing in your post (#6) that was 100% accurate. If you want to disagree point out the specific claim you made in that post and I'll explain why it was incorrect, at least according to what I'm reading.
EDIT: In the process of research I came across this easier for the masses to understand explanation of what 100% carbon neutral means and how Google and Apple are able to make that claim.
https://onezero.medium.com/what-it-really-means-when-google-and-apple-say-they-run-on-100-renewable-energy-f6d1719fd865
Can you show me what they've done with the elephant in the room, their supplier Scope 3 emissions, which is a massive number relative to their total carbon footprint (i.e., the 15 million in line 1 above minus 1.21million shown in line 2). Thanks.
2) I'll stand 100% by my claims ("Apple is head-and-shoulders above"), but give Google credit for reducing or offsetting 8.1% of their total carbon footprint.
3) To quote @rotateleftbyte above, "[Emissions reduction] is a whole lot easier if you ... only make a little bit of stuff."
Even tho Google directly uses a heck of a lot more energy than Apple does Google has matched or exceeded Apple's efforts in energy sustainability so far across the board other than in PR. Google has never been good at tooting their own horn, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt you just didn't know better. Don't make me think you'd be a less-than-honest poster now that you do.
Be satisfied that Apple is to be commended for their very public position on it and the time, effort, and money that they've invested in making it a major priority for other businesses around the globe. They've accomplished something on the environment that Google cannot: A loud and ringing voice for change.