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| Apple is building a solar energy storage project |
Apple announced Wednesday that it is building a solar array near a renewable solar storage facility in Central California that will power all facilities in the state.
The company said the project will store 240 megawatt hours of electricity, enough to power more than 7,000 homes with electricity per day.
The facility is located near the California Plains Solar Power Plant in southeast Monterey County, about 100 miles southeast of Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California.
During the day, the site sends 130 megawatt hours of electricity directly to Apple's California plant, but it does not provide any electricity during the hours of darkness.
Apple's vice president of environmental, political and social initiatives, Lisa Jackson, said the company plans to develop what it believes will become one of the largest battery-powered storage systems in the United States.
She added: The challenge with clean energy (sun and wind) is that it occurs intermittently. If we can do that and make it clear that it is useful for us, then we will eliminate the interruption and stability issues. It can be imitated or established by other companies.
Jackson said: Apple plans to share the results of the project with other companies, but it is too early to say exactly what it has done.
Apple has other projects involved in developing environmental technologies, including a joint aluminum smelter in Canada and a recycling technology laboratory in Texas.
Apple also said that 110 suppliers are now using clean energy in the work they do for the company. As a result, they plan to produce about 8 gigawatts of clean energy, which will take 3.4 million cars off the road and spare more than 15 million tons, the equivalent of carbon dioxide annually.
Apple said last year that 70 suppliers were on their way to transition to clean energy. At the time, Apple had set itself a goal of eliminating carbon emissions from its supply chain by 2030. This is an increase over the previous year.
Jackson said, "We are determined to help our suppliers become carbon neutral by 2030. We are extremely excited to join our company in various industries and countries around the world including Germany, China, USA, India and France."