Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Foxconn plant.
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Apple supplier Foxconn is falling behind in its decarbonization efforts, claims in a Greenpeace report, with the supply chain partner producing the highest emissions of any final assembly company.
Apple has committed to achieving carbon neutrality across all areas of its business by 2030, including everything from sales and usage of devices like iPhone to initial production. A Greenpeace report released on Tuesday left the impression that there was still a lot of work to be done in the supply chain.
Greenpeace's Supply Transformation 2023 report assessed the decarbonization efforts of 11 major suppliers working with major brands such as Apple. Some, including Samsung and iPhone assembly partner Foxconn, “have taken insufficient steps to reduce emissions.”
“Tech companies brag a lot about how green they are, but when you look at the bigger picture, their supply chains are extremely dirty,” says climate and energy campaigner Xueying Wu. “Samsung Electronics and Foxconn's actions on climate change have been surprisingly weak”
The environmental group says emissions from the five largest manufacturers, including Foxconn, TSMC and Luxshare Precision, increased in 2022 compared with 2020 levels of the year. For these companies, this was due to an increase in production across the board.
11 energy providers also consumed more than 111,000 GWh of electricity in 2022, which is said to exceed Chile's annual electricity consumption.
The ranking ranked Foxconn as the second worst-performing company considered to perform “final assembly,” with a D+ rating in 2022 equal to its 2021 rating. It was better than Goertek, which received an F grade in both cases. years, but the results were worse than Pegatron from D- to C and Luxshare from D+ to C+.
Foxconn “showed little progress in reducing emissions and deploying renewable energy compared to its rival Luxshare,” the report said. Foxconn's renewable electricity usage rate in 2022 is said to be just 8%.
Only four suppliers on the list have committed to achieving net-zero chain emissions by 2050, including Foxconn, Luxshare and TSMC. However, Greenpeace believes they are “missing targets to reduce emissions by more than 50% by 2030, meaning their 2030 emissions reduction targets fall short of the Paris Agreement's 1.5C target.”
In April, Foxconn announced environmental initiatives and plans to cut emissions in 2025 by 21% of 2020 levels.
Many suppliers were found to be relying “heavily” on low-carbon technologies. influence procurement mechanisms such as RECs to improve the procurement ratio of renewable electricity. Luxshare, Pegatron and Foxconn obtained at least 70% of their electricity through methods including on-site generation, renewable energy investments and power purchase agreements.
Although Foxconn did not score highly in most categories, it did manage to earn an A+ grade for transparency for disclosing “full environmental data,” including energy use, electricity and emissions. Despite this, he was given an F rating for Advocacy due to a lack of publicly available information or direct disclosure of his work “advocating for renewable energy-related policies and sharing information among colleagues.”
