Apple has come out in support of a new bill in California that would require companies to reveal more information about climate emissions from supply chain partners. In a letter penned to California lawmakers, the company said that it is “strongly supportive of climate disclosures to improve transparency and drive progress in the fight against climate change.”
The letter was sent by Mike Foulkes, Apple’s director of state and local government affairs, to California state senator Scott Wiener. Wiener is one of the lawmakers behind the California Senate Bill 253. The bill would require that companies generating over $1 billion revue “publicly disclose to the emissions reporting organization.”
As reported by CNBC, Apple’s letter comes out in strong support of the bill. The company writes:
Throughout our environmental journey, we’ve emphasized the importance of measurement and reporting to help us understand our impact. We’re strongly supportive of climate disclosures to improve transparency and drive progress in the fight against climate change, and we’re grateful for your leadership to drive comprehensive emissions disclosure.
For the last decade, Apple has modeled, measured, and voluntarily reported our carbon emissions, working to improve the accuracy of our footprint and raise the ambition of our goals. Our efforts over the years appear in a comprehensive annual environmental report that outlines our environmental efforts, including our work to reduce our carbon footprint, strategies to address our climate impact, and progress towards reaching our carbon neutrality goal.
The bill specifically focuses on something called “Scope 3” emissions which come from a company’s supply chain. Companies in California are already required to report certain data about their carbon footprint, and this bill would further expand those requirements to include Scope 3 data.
Apple acknowledges that Scope 3 emissions are harder to track than Scope 1 and Scope 2. The former includes emissions that are “released from sources that are owned by an organization,” while the latter are greenhouse gas emissions generated by a company buying electricity, heating and cooling buildings, and more.
To ensure accuracy and transparency, we strongly believe that companies’ carbon emissions disclosures should include their scope 3 emissions. While these emissions can be challenging to measure, they are essential to understanding the full range of a company’s climate impacts.
We acknowledge that there is inherent uncertainty in modeling carbon emissions, primarily due to data limitations. Scope 3 emissions, in particular, involve making educated assumptions and complex modeling. We believe, however, that our reports attest to the feasibility of reasonably modeling, measuring and reporting on all three scopes of emissions, including scope 3 emissions, which represent the overwhelming majority of most companies’ carbon footprint and are therefore critical to include.
Apple gave an update on its environmental goals back in April. For its global corporate emissions, Apple is already carbon neutral. It supports 1.5 gigawatts of renewable electricity around the world to power all corporate offices, data centers, and retail stores. The company’s goal is to turn its supply chain completely carbon neutral by 2030.
Senator Scott Wiener shared a full copy of Apple’s letter of endorsement of the bill on Twitter, which you can find here.
Follow Chance: Threads, Twitter, Instagram, and Mastodon.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments