In a move that is potentially a hit to many, Apple CEO Tim Cook took time to acknowledge environmental issues and announced that the company is on its way to invest $850 million on a 25-year deal with solar panel firm First Solar.
The deal is slated to cover the building of a 2,900 acre solar facility in Monterey County, California and will power the new Apple headquarters, along with a computer center and 52 retails stores in California.
At the Goldman Sachs investment conference in San Francisco, Cook made the important announcement, saying that Apple recognizes climate change and the time is right for taking action. Apple is due to receive 130 megawatts of power from the plant- enough to power its new headquarters in Cupertino, California.
Greenpeace lauded the move, saying that Fortune 500 CEOs would do well to follow the example set by Cook, as reported by Daily Mail.
First Solar will be in charge of building the facility, which will reportedly have the capacity to produce 280 megawatts of power. The remaining electricity will be sold to the chief utility for Northern California, Pacific Gas and Electric.
After this announcement, Apple stock market value rose 1.9 percent, closing at an unprecedented $710 billion according to Reuters. Shares of First Solar also showed a rise of 3 percent.
Apple is already using green energy to power data centers that support iTunes and iCloud. The company is also due to invest about $2 billion in a project that will convert a defunct sapphire glass plant in Arizona into a data center powered mostly by green energy.