Apple’s latest sustainability report shows the company’s greenhouse gas emissions are decreasing as it encourages suppliers to operate cleaner.
A closer look at the report’s data reveals that Apple’s total carbon emissions decreased from 20.6 million tons in 2022 to 16.1 million tons in 2023. This is a 22% reduction over the year.
The company said in a press release today that this progress is primarily due to suppliers using cleaner power sources. Looking further back, Apple says that since 2015, it has reduced its total emissions by more than 55%. If this pace continues, Apple could be on track to meet his pledge to reduce emissions by 75% by 2030.
Dirty supply chains are perhaps the most difficult part of a company’s carbon footprint to clean up, but they also have the biggest impact.
Dirty supply chains are perhaps the most difficult part of a company’s carbon footprint to clean up. But it is also usually the most affected part, as it accounts for the majority of the pollution caused by global warming. For Apple, about 58% of its emissions last year came from purchased goods and services. This corresponds to 9.4 million tons of CO2 in 2023, compared to 13.4 million tons of CO2 the previous year.
The company has encouraged its suppliers to use renewable energy and improve energy efficiency. As a result, he saved 2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity at 100 supplier facilities last year. According to Apple, they also avoided nearly 1.7 million tons of carbon emissions.
In 2020, Apple pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by the end of the decade by reducing emissions by 75% and offsetting or capturing the rest. It’s not a perfect plan. Companies like Apple can buy credits on the carbon market from projects that purport to remove CO2 from the atmosphere by planting trees or restoring ecosystems. But these markets are full of phantom credits that don’t show real emissions reductions, or credits from projects that don’t last long enough to actually help fight climate change.
Apple used offsets to offset approximately 500,000 tons of its 2023 carbon emissions. This is just a fraction of the company’s carbon footprint, and Apple says it reserves this option for “residual emissions that are difficult to avoid with solutions available today.” ” This is still roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of a natural gas power plant.
