Amber Neely
Apple has announced its official support for California's SB 253, a bill that mandates companies earning over $1 billion annually to disclose detailed information relating to greenhouse gas emissions.
SB 253 would require all large U.S.-based corporations doing business in California that make over $1 billion annually to publicly disclose their full carbon footprint in an easily understandable and available way. Senator Scott Wiener introduced the bill.
Senator Wiener posted a letter from Apple that showed the company's support for the bill to X.
Huge new endorsement — @Apple — of our groundbreaking climate bill to require large corporations to disclose their carbon footprint (SB 253).
— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) September 7, 2023
Thank you, Apple, for making clear that this is doable & a critically important piece of climate action. pic.twitter.com/mntbWzXFDV
The letter was signed by Apple's director for state and local government affairs, D. Michael Foulkes.
"Throughout our environmental journey, we've emphasized the importance of measurement and reporting to help us understand our impact," the letter reads.
"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."
The letter continues to commend SB 253 in a few key areas, most notably in proposing that companies would need to measure and report Scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 emissions are not produced by the company itself but rather from assets owned or controlled by the company. This would require companies like Apple to report emissions from their supply chain partners.
In April, Apple shared its annual Environmental Progress Report, documenting its progress toward becoming carbon neutral by 2030.
Malcolm Owen
Christine McKee
19 Comments
This bill speaks to how reticent people are to change. This bill is only about reporting, not actually doing something. We need bills to do something! Every and all things must tried. Write the bill to enforce >1b companies to be carbon neutral.
Even in California, there is a strange hesitancy. They are going to test out this idea of covering a waterway with solar PV for some hundreds of feet. Hundreds of feet? The passivity here is crazy. Hundreds of feet?! It should be hundreds of miles. California, you will need water. Lots and lots of fresh water. The best option is desalination. You will need basically free energy to do it. Just completely overbuild solar PV by 2x, 4x your peak demand needs. Cover every single waterway and river with solar PV. Not completely always in the shade covered, but covered. Then use that "free energy" to power desalination plants, batteries of all kinds, direct air capture to gas or to ground. Put in a serious carbon tax to get everyone to turn over.
This is seriously one of the reasons I doubt I will ever find reasons to switch from Apple products.
Few other companies of this size have been as consistently proactive as Apple in terms of both minimizing their harm to the environment while at the same time vastly increasing their use of renewable (and low-cost, after the initial investment) resources.
This is why companies are leaving California.
The Climate Cult will never be satisfied with the data the businesses HAVE TO PAY FOR. It costs them and adds another State mandate burden to meet just to do business in Cali.