Apple Inc, expanding its environmental efforts, has announced a US$300 million fund to promote clean energy in China.
The iPhone maker said it is creating the fund to boost the use of renewable energy in its supply chain, which is primarily spread across China.
The company and 10 of its key suppliers and manufacturing partners, including Corning Inc, Pegatron Corp (和碩), Wistron Corp (緯創) and Luxshare Precision Industry Co (立訊), are to contribute to the fund over the next four years, the Cupertino, California-based company said in a statement on Thursday.
The fund is to be managed by DWS Group GmbH & Co, the asset-management arm of Deutsche Bank AG.
DWS is also to invest in the fund.
The money is to go toward developing projects totaling a gigawatt of renewable energy in China, Apple said.
China’s four-decade transition into an industrial behemoth has brought the side effects of severe air, soil and water pollution, and the government is pushing various initiatives to clean things up, including incentives for renewable energy and the electric-car industry.
Most of Apple’s products worldwide are assembled in vast production networks in China that employ hundreds of thousands of workers and the company has taken various steps to reduce the resulting carbon emissions.
In 2015, Apple committed to using clean energy in its supply chain and has said it hopes to create 4 gigawatts of renewable energy globally by 2020, an increase from a goal of 3 gigawatts announced earlier this year.
Currently, Apple uses renewable energy across 100 percent of its facilities worldwide.
Earlier this year, the company also helped aluminum suppliers Alcoa Corp and Rio Tinto Aluminum begin the development of a new technology that eliminates greenhouse-gas emissions during production, which is expected to be ready by 2024.
Additional reporting by AFP
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