Apple has been planning on meeting its electricity needs with green sources like solar, wind and hydroelectric power for quite some time now. With Walmart and Google already having received a federal designation for the same,; Apple too, hopes to generate its own green utility company.
It seems like Apple’s hopes have finally been realized. Apple’s first store based in California has officially been declared to be running on 100 per cent renewable energy.
It’s a win-win situation for Apple as not only is it reducing the cost of its electricity load but also reduces the carbon dioxide emissions from electricity production, which is considered as the biggest source of greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.
Apple has contracted with First Solar to begin buying a little less than half of the power later this year from California Flats, a solar energy farm now under construction.
“If we had our preference, we’d just be able to say, ‘We want 100 percent green power everywhere we use power. The best would be if we could run every one of our stores, every one of our data centers, every office complex, every building we have, on 100 percent renewable — and if we didn’t have to spend a whole bunch of our time and energy figuring out how to get that done,” said Lisa Jackson, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who is now the Apple executive overseeing environmental policy, social initiatives and worldwide government affairs.
