News 2015

23 Feb 2015 

Apple and Citigroup Make Major Moves in Committing to Solar Energy 

Tech giant Apple, Inc has partnered with First Solar, Inc (a leading provider of photovoltaic solar systems) to collaborate on building a 2,900-acre solar farm just south of San Francisco. Apple announced that it will invest $848 million in First Solar’s “California Flats Solar Project” in Monterey County, California; in return, Apple will receive electricity from 130 megawatts of the project. When fully operational, the project will generate enough clean solar energy to serve the needs of about 100,000 average homes per year, displacing over 109,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually based on the PG&E grid—the equivalent of taking about 22,000 cars off the road. The companies have a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA), which they said is the largest agreement in the industry that provides clean energy to a commercial end user. [Read more]

Not to be outdone, Citigroup, Inc announced its own plans to lend, invest, and facilitate deals worth $100 billion by 2025 to support renewable energy projects. The $100 billion target goal from Citigroup comes at the heels of an earlier pledge they made in 2007 to invest $50 billion by 2016 which they achieved three years ahead of schedule. Citigroup would join its peers, Bank of America Corp., which said in 2012 it would support $50 billion in deals for low-carbon initiatives, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which announced a $40 billion program the same year, as major financial institutions who have pledged to help jump start the renewable energy economy.  [Read more]