Apple: We Believe Climate Change is Real

"... And that it's a real problem."

When a company becomes the most valuable in history, with a market capitalization of more than $700 billion (worth more than Microsoft and Google combined), it pays to consider the impact that that company's public statements may have on the world.

Even after it becomes the world's first "Trillion Dollar Company", Apple will stake an increasingly significant role as a leader in the green building industry and in portraying the positive impacts of green business.

One could even envision Apple achieving a trillion dollar market cap, while simultaneously achieving 100% carbon neutrality.

Take Apple's massive facilities operations for instance. The company's goal is to operate all of its data centers, corporate offices and retail stores from 100% renewable energy. To date it's achieved this for 73% of its facilities globally.

Apple's strategy here is prioritized to first design and develop its own energy sources and then second to fulfill its remaining energy needs with grid-purchased renewable energy from Green-e certified Renewable Energy Credits (RECs).

It will be interesting to read about Apple's performance in 2014, which will be released on March 10th, 2015 at Apple's annual shareholder meeting this year, for even though the company's energy usage seems to grow every year, its carbon footprint continues to shrink.

Apple's LEED Platinum Data Center

Apple's data centers, for instance, are massive consumers of energy, and in some cases, water. With its data centers, Apple is on the front lines of optimizing energy efficiency in its operations.

Apple runs 100% of its data centers on 100% renewable energy... As such the company is in the unique position to experiment with a variety of data center efficiency strategies, renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind and geothermal power, as well as fuel cells, to power its data center operations more sustainably.

Apple's data centers run Siri, Apple Maps, iTunes, the App Store, iMessage and more. This means every time a song is downloaded from iTunes, or an app is installed from the Mac App Store or a book is downloaded from iBooks, the energy Apple uses is provided by nature.

Apple's first LEED Platinum certified building is a data center in Maiden, North Carolina. The 500,000 square foot building is the largest data center to achieve the Platinum rating.

To power the building, Apple generates between 60-100% of the renewable energy used by the data center from directed biogas fuel cells and two, huge, 20 megawatt solar arrays nearby.

If additional power is needed beyond the capacity of the on-site renewable energy, the company purchases the rest from RECs certified by the Green-e standard.

Apple's 100% Renewable Energy Powered Corporate HQ

The company has also made a commitment with its new spaceship headquarters, designing it to run from 100% renewable energy.

The company recently also made headlines for its involvement in an $850 million solar project in partnership with First Solar (FSLR).

Contrary to many headlines, Apple isn't actually buying or building this solar array, First Solar and its investors are doing that. However, Apple is committing to purchasing power generated from the project for 25 years at a fixed price of about 10 cents per kWh.

As with the company's demonstrably masterful management of its incredible cash flow, Apple's plan here seems to be as much about managing electric price volatility as it is about making a sustainability statement. In both cases, the company is managing risk more effectively.

Tim Cook has made it clear that he personally believes in climate change. And the CEO is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while making investments in renewable energy.

Indeed, at Apple's annual shareholder meeting in 2014, Tim Cook blasted Justin Danhof, of conservative think-tank NCPPR, who questioned whether Apple's sustainability efforts were good for the bottom line.

According to Bryan Chaffin of The Mac Observer who attended the meeting, Mr. Cook rejected Mr. Danhof's accusations saying, "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."

This was of course, back on February 28th, 2014... Since then AAPL stock has almost doubled.

Well played, Mr. Cook.