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All Apple facilities now powered by clean energy

Apple's solar farm in Arizona - REUTERS
Apple's solar farm in Arizona - REUTERS

Apple has hit its target of powering all its facilities with renewable energy, in the latest sign of an industry-wide shift towards clean power. 

Apple said the sites using clean energy comprise of all its retail stores, offices, data centres and co-located facilities across 43 countries.

The 100pc target does not include its suppliers, of which there are thousands, though Apple said a further nine suppliers had committed to power their production facilities with clean energy, bringing the total to 23.

More than 85 suppliers, meanwhile, have signed up to its Clean Energy Portal programme, which helps them to identify viable renewable energy sources.

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Although Apple has shifted to using purely renewable energy, its vice president for environment, policy and social initiatives, Lisa Jackson, said the company was "not spending any more than we would have".

In an interview with Reuters earlier today, Ms Jackson said: "We’re seeing the benefits of an increasingly competitive clean energy market."

In the UK, for example, the Government's latest auction for support contracts showed offshore wind costs had halved in recent years, and the costs for solar energy have also plunged, down 17pc last year according to a UN-backed report. 

Ms Jackson added that in the future, it will be a "requirement" for Apple's suppliers to use clean power. 

It comes less than a week after Google said it was the biggest corporate buyer of renewable energy, with contracts to buy 3 gigawatts of energy from green projects.

Google's senior vice president for technical infrastructure, Urs Hölzle, said in a blog post that it was "not yet possible to 'power' a company of our scale by 100pc renewable energy". 

Amazon, meanwhile, in October launched its biggest wind farm to date, which generates enough energy to power more than 90,000 homes per year.

“These are important steps toward reaching our long-term goal to power our global infrastructure using 100pc renewable energy,” said Amazon’s director of sustainability, Kara Hurst, at the time.