Technology giant Apple has served up the perfect riposte to U.S. President Donald Trump’s disavowal of the Paris Agreement by issuing $1 billion of green bonds with the explicit instruction that proceeds raised be steered towards clean energy and eco-friendly projects.
The iPhone maker has long been a supportive advocate of solar power, and last year issued the biggest ever green bond sold by a U.S. company when it sold $1.5 billion worth of green bonds.
This second foray follows Apple’s signing of an open letter in which the company, and others, pledged to continue supporting efforts to meet the Paris Agreement. Having seen his efforts to dissuade Trump from withdrawing from the agreement fall on deaf ears, Apple CEO Tim Cook has, with this green bond issuance, taken tangible steps towards meeting the firm’s environmental and social initiatives.
“Leadership from the business community is essential to address the threat of climate change,” said Apple’s VP of environment, policy and social initiatives Lisa Jackson in a statement. Following this latest green bond, Apple is now the largest issuer of dollar-denominated green bonds.
The purpose of this second green bond sale is to make it easier for investors to identify projects that are eco-friendly. Proceeds from projects funded under the green bond sale are dictated by a set of guidelines called the Green Bond Principles. By raising debt in this manner, the company does not have to dip into its cash reserves to fund clean energy projects.
Apple has also specified that projects pursued under the bond offering will follow the firm’s closed-loop supply chain principle, where Apple only makes products using recycled or renewable materials.
Apple already sources an impressive 96% of its energy from renewable sources, and in August last year was authorized to sell its renewable power on the U.S. wholesale market, becoming an independent power producer in its own right.
Other PV strings to the Apple bow include large-scale solar deals and projects in the U.S., while its new HQ, Apple Park, boasts one of the largest on-site solar arrays in the world.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
3 comments
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.