Apple announced on April 9th that all of its facilities in 43 countries will be 100% powered by clean energy, including retail stores, offices, and data centers. Nine suppliers recently promised to use 100% clean energy for their production lines. This move has brought the total number of Apple's green-powered suppliers to 23.
The nine collaborative partners include Pegatron, Finisar Corporation, Luxshare-ICT, DSM Engineering Plastics, Arkema, ECCO Leather, Quadrant, Quanta, and Taiyo Ink Mfg.
Apple pointed out that two data centers that are under construction in Denmark will use 100% clean energy on the first day of official operation. Moreover, since 2014, all of Apple's data centers have used 100% renewable energy.
There are other good news from the companies that recently promised to use renewable energy. On March 21, Microsoft expressed that it plans to procure 315 MW of solar power plants from two new solar energy plans (Pleinmont I and II) in Virginia, USA. According to Microsoft's news center, this will set the record of largest corporate solar agreement in the US history.
Speaking of T-Mobile, it joined the RE100 in January and announced that it will use 100% renewable power by the end of 2021. The RE100 includes more than 100 renowned enterprises (such as Nike, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook) that promise to use 100% renewable power.
The positive outlook does not end here. According to U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), its Report of Short-Term Energy Outlook (March 2018) showed that demand of electricity declined. Thus, the US net electricity generation decreased 1.5% YoY in 2017. The natural gas power generation output dropped 7.7% YoY, and the coal power generation output was reduced 2.5% YoY. Meanwhile, hydro, wind and solar energy generation output all grew annually.
（Image：Luisa via Flickr CC BY 2.0）
