Green energy: Apple continues to expand projects in Europe

Apple has announced the expansion of several green electricity projects within the European Union. The group wants to acquire energy from Poland, Latvia, Spain, Italy, Romania and Greece from “large-scale solar and wind farms” that are currently under construction. A total of 650 megawatts of additional capacity is to be fed into European power grids. According to Apple, the investments triggered by this amount are more than 600 million US dollars – how much of this comes from the company remained unclear at first. “By 2030, this is expected to generate over one million megawatt hours of clean electricity for Apple users,” the company writes in his announcement.

Device usage to be balanced

Apple still wants to become CO₂-neutral by 2030 – across its entire supply chain. However, this can only be done through compensation projects. The new wind and solar farms, of which a solar power project in Spain has just been put into operation, are intended to ensure that this is also done for the device use of Apple customers. The green electricity projects thus serve the purpose of “offsetting the electricity consumption of European customers when charging and using their Apple devices,” the company writes. The aim is to achieve 100 percent by 2030, although this is likely to be based on calculations and predictions, as Apple has difficulty recording the power consumption of each individual Apple device.

Apple wants to give its users “the assurance that all the energy needed to charge their iPhones or run their Macs will be offset by clean energy,” according to Apple’s head of environmental affairs Lisa Jackson. The company also hopes to make “a contribution to healthy communities, thriving economies and a secure energy supply across the continent” at the same time.

Share of electricity consumption in the CO₂ footprint

The iPhone manufacturer also provided information on how much the pure energy consumption of the hardware sold is in the context of product use – i.e. for charging and operating the devices. In 2024, the company estimates the quota to be “about 29 percent of Apple’s total greenhouse gas emissions”.

In the case of offsetting projects, this takes into account where the equipment is used. Priority will be given to green electricity projects in regions where “electricity grids with currently higher carbon intensity” have prevailed so far. By 2030, a total of around 3000 gigawatt hours are to flow into the grids annually. One example is a project in Poland where a 40 MW solar plant is running, in Romania a 99 MW wind farm is being added and in Greece Apple wants to buy electricity from a 110 MW solar project.