Apple spends $850million to build giant solar farm that will power its new HQ producing enough energy for 60,000 homes
The tech company will be the biggest single consumer of energy from the new solar facility, which is being constructed on 2,900 acres in rural Monterey County, south of the San Francisco Bay Area where Apple is headquartered.
The project reflects Apple's concern about climate change, CEO Tim Cook said at a Goldman Sachs investment conference Tuesday in San Francisco.
Cook said that will be enough to power the new headquarters Apple is building in Cupertino, California, along with all of its other offices in the state, as well as Apple's 52 California retail stores and a computer center.
First Solar said it will sell the remaining electricity to Pacific Gas & Electric, the chief utility for Northern California.
Construction on the California Flats Solar Project is expected to start in mid-2015 and finish by the end of next year.
Apple already uses renewable energy for its data centers that power iCloud and iTunes. Last week, it said it would invest $2billion over 10 years to convert a failed sapphire glass plant in Arizona into a data center that would be powered mostly by solar energy.
'Apple still has work to do to reduce its environmental footprint, but other Fortune 500 CEOs would be well served to make a study of Tim Cook,' Greenpeace said in a statement following Tuesday's announcement.
Apple also today became the first US company to close trading with a market value above $700billion. Record sales and profit in recent quarters have boosted shares.
'You'll remember exactly where you were when you had a $700billion market cap,' Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn told Cook, according to San Jose Mercury News.
The stock rose 1.9 per cent Tuesday to $122.02, valuing Apple at more than $710billion.
The record Apple quarterly profit -- on unprecedented revenue of $74.6 billion -- was driven by the sale of 74.5 million iPhones, well ahead of most analysts' expectations.
Analysts are also seeing expanded adoption of the Apple Pay system that enables customers to purchase items with a tap of their iPhone, and many predict strong demand for the Apple Watch set for release in April.