Apple says more than 110 of its global suppliers are moving to 100 per cent renewable energy

Once completed, these commitments should help avoid annual emissions of 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide

Technology giant Apple announced last week that 110 of its manufacturing partners across the globe are on track to meet a 100 per cent clean power goal for the work they do for Apple.

The sustainability efforts will see about 8 gigawatts of clean energy to come online in the coming years. Moreover, the move is expected to avoid over 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, the equivalent of removing more than 3.4 million cars from the roads each year.

Apple says it is also investing directly in renewable energy projects to cover a portion of upstream emissions.

Apple plans to invest in a new energy storage project in California that will mark the next phase of its efforts to become carbon neutral for its supply chain and products by 2030.

"In a year like no other, Apple continued to work with a global network of colleagues, companies, and advocates to help make our environmental efforts and everything we do a force for good in people's lives - and to work alongside the communities most impacted by climate change," noted Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president for environment, policy and social initiatives.

She said that the company is committed to help suppliers that span industries and countries around the world, including the US, China, France, India and Germany.

Apple last year pledged to become carbon neutral throughout its entire business, manufacturing supply chain and product life cycle by 2030.

The iPhone maker said that it was already carbon neutral across its global corporate operations, but the new pledge meant that every Apple product sold worldwide would need to have zero climate impact by the end of the decade.

In recent years, many large tech firms have signed key declarations to combat climate change.

In 2019, Amazon announced a string of measures aimed at lowering its greenhouse gas emissions.

In July last year, Microsoft announced that it had successfully used hydrogen fuel cells to power a data centre for two consecutive days.

Earlier this year, 25 companies and 17 trade associations operating in the European cloud infrastructure industry signed the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, committing to lead the European industry in transition to a climate neutral economy.

Google, AWS, Aruba, TechUK and DigiPlex were among the companies that agreed to take firm steps to make their data centres climate neutral by 2030.

However, the industry has a long history of 'greenwashing' and there have been calls for tech firms to go further with their commitments.

Last week, non-profit group Climate Voice launched a new campaign, urging major technology firms to promise to spend a fifth of their 'lobbying dollars' on efforts to push for bold climate policy actions.

Climate Voice says its mission is "to mobilise the voice of the workforce to urge companies to go 'all in' on climate, in both business practices and policy advocacy".

"We're calling on Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft to commit one in five lobbying dollars for climate policy aimed at a just transition to keep us below 1.5°C degrees of warming," Climate Voice says on its website.

The group highlights that across the top five Big Tech companies, climate-related policy issues account for an average of just 4 per cent of their overall federal-level legislative lobbying activities in the US.

"This compares to 38 per cent of Big Oil's reported federal-level legislative lobbying activities," according to Climate Voice.

The campaign seeks to target employees, as well as students at the colleges where tech firms recruit, with comic-book-style digital ads. It will also support groups of employees who wish to approach their bosses directly and make the case for climate action.