Apple now powers all data centers with renewables—has largest private solar array

Apple's PV array in N.C.While Apple’s apple logo is colorless these days, it’s sure trying to looking green. The company recently updated its environmental report for 2012. The company announced that it’s now powering all of its data centers with renewable energy, thanks in part to the 20 megawatt PV array at its data center in Maiden, N.C., and sources 75 percent of all its energy across all its corporate facilities from renewables.

The company also said it is planning to source more, in fact all, of its power from renewables. “We expect that number to grow as the amount of renewable energy available to us increases. We won’t stop working until we achieve 100 percent throughout Apple,” it said. At this point it says it’s also achieved 100 percent renewables at all of its data centers and at its facilities in Austin, Elk Grove, Cork, and Munich, and its Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino.

The company has greened its image repeatedly by taking such steps over the past few years in response to criticism from environmentalist organizations like Greenpeace, which first led the charge to get Apple to get rid of hazardous materials in its supply chain, which it did within a year. Subsequently they criticized Apple’s use of electricity from coal-fired power plants, like in North Carolina, where the grid is still largely powered by the antiquated fuel source.

With this report Apple also said it now has the largest privately owned PV array in the U.S., which will soon see a twin completed nearby. “In 2012, we completed construction on the nation’s largest end user–owned, onsite solar photovoltaic array on land surrounding the data center,” Apple said. It’s a 100-acre, 20-megawatt, PV farm. “And we’re currently building a second 20-MW solar photovoltaic facility on nearby land that should be operational in late 2013.”

Both installations are connected to North Carolina’s grid and displace other dirtier forms of electricity that otherwise would have been used, but their environmental benefits are used only by Apple and the company retains all the additional benefits like the renewable energy credits the systems produce. It could sell the credits to offset the costs of the solar installations but chooses not to.