Apple, Microsoft and Amazon are locked in a race to see who can first reset carbon pollution.
Apple reported on Wednesday that it is more than half there. Since 2015, says the company It has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 60%. This covers everything from construction and marketing to corporate businesses and customer use.
Many companies have successfully eliminated the carbon footprint of their basic functions. Cheap solar and winds, and more and more affordable network scale batteries, have done this relatively simple-and even beneficial-from the cost of the cost.
But Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have promised to eliminate not only their own carbon emissions but also those of their suppliers and the use of their customers’ energy. These so -called Field 3 The broadcasts are the most difficult to deal with because they do not fall into direct control of a company.
In this respect, Apple has taken some innovative steps. When the company announced the Apple Watch 9 series, it also said it would buy renewable energy on behalf of its customers. A year later, he did the same for the buyers of the new M4 Mac Mini.
The Mac Mini announcement also unintentionally underlined the huge role that semiconductors play in the carbon footprint of electronic goods.
The main Mac mini model with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage creates 32 kg of carbon pollution during its lifetime, while the top SPEC version, which has 64GB of RAM and 8TB storage, has a 121 kg footprint. The largest number of chips is largely responsible for nearly quadruple of the shape.
Apple said on Wednesday that it is working with semiconductor suppliers to address the issue, with 26 of them already promising to reduce at least 90% of fluorid greenhouse gases in their activities. Fluorized greenhouse gases are widely used in the manufacture of semiconductors today for brands and cleaning of equipment. But fluoridized compounds are some of the most powerful greenhouse gases. For example, extinction of extinction produces 9,200 times greater heating as an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.
Apple aims to eliminate at least 75% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, which means it is over half of its target, with five years remaining. The company said it would offset the remaining 25% through carbon removal programs.
This is similar to the way other companies face the most difficult emissions to reduce, though they differ in their details. Microsoft, for example, invests in technological solutions such as direct air intake Along with nature -based solutions such as reforestation. Apple has determined That nature -based solutions offer the best opportunity to reduce emissions in the near future.
