Apple's supply chain carbon reduction has been questioned again, and the report says that Foxconn, BOE, and Goertek have failed to perform
Following the public questioning of Apple's first carbon-neutral product, the Apple Watch, by the Chinese non-governmental environmental protection organization IPE, the latest tracking released by the international environmental protection agency Greenpeace also shows that the overall decarbonization performance of the supply chain of the consumer electronics industry is not good.
On November 21, Greenpeace East Asia released the "Outsourcing Emissions: A Media Brief on Climate Action of the World's Leading Consumer Electronics Suppliers (2023)", which comprehensively assessed the climate actions of 11 leading suppliers in the global consumer electronics industry. Among them, Samsung Electronics, Foxconn, BOE (000725.SZ), and Goertek (002241.SZ) failed (D+ or F).
According to Greenpeace, these four companies are currently suppliers of Apple, HP and Dell.
In September this year, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs published "Doubts about Carbon Neutrality in Apple Products?", which raised five questions about the first batch of carbon neutral products launched by Apple, the Apple Watch, which aroused social concern.
One of the points of IPE's questioning is that Apple does not have its own factories and its production is outsourced to suppliers, but most of Apple's suppliers have not publicly disclosed the details of the use of renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions to the public, and the public cannot verify whether the relevant suppliers or factories actually use 100% green electricity to produce "carbon neutral watches".
On the other hand, IPE believes that Apple may be concentrating resources such as clean electricity into a product line by "pinching the tip", so that niche products can achieve carbon neutrality faster, rather than really achieving low carbon in every production link of the Apple Watch.
In response, Apple responded in an interview with Southern Weekly that it did not use the electricity allocated to the iPhone or other products for the Apple Watch. Regarding the renewable energy disclosure of suppliers, Apple said that some suppliers need some time to obtain clean energy solutions, so some of the clean energy that has been promised in the Apple Watch supply chain has not yet been put into operation. During this time, Apple used its own renewable energy projects to close the gap, reducing the electricity footprint of manufacturing the Apple Watch to zero.
Greenpeace East Asia's briefing outlines the emissions reduction commitments and renewable energy transition progress of a number of suppliers.
The briefing paper evaluates the performance of suppliers from four aspects: corporate carbon reduction and renewable energy commitments, actual progress in renewable energy procurement, environmental information transparency, and policy advocacy.
The results show that Lixun Precision (002475.SZ), the A-share "brother of the fruit chain", ranked first because it put forward the goal of "using 50% renewable energy by 2025". However, it is only rated C+. Greenpeace said the reason is that "Luxshare Precision has not yet set a 2030 carbon reduction target, and has not set a 2030 target for 100% renewable energy transition".
Among the four companies rated below the passing line, BOE and Goertek have not set any carbon neutrality and 100% renewable energy transition goals. In terms of transparency, the two companies' disclosures on electricity consumption data, Scope 3 carbon emissions, and carbon emission intensity are not yet complete.
According to the briefing, Goertek's use of renewable energy in 2022 will be 5.77%, while BOE did not disclose this data.
Foxconn ranked third from the bottom in this assessment. According to the briefing, Foxconn's electricity consumption in 2022 will be nearly 10 billion kWh, but the current proportion of renewable energy use is only 8%, and the progress of renewable energy transformation is lagging behind.
Samsung Electronics was only rated D+ due to the fact that its proposed net-zero emissions and 100% renewable energy transition goals were achieved late in 2050, and the consumption of renewable energy had limited impact on carbon reduction, and it mostly relied on green certificates and other methods of separating electricity from electricity.
It is worth noting that, similar to IPE's questioning, the brief found that the carbon emissions of five consumer electronics suppliers have increased in recent years.
TSMC, Samsung Electronics, Foxconn, Luxshare Precision, and Intel's emissions increased in 2022 compared to 2020. Among them, Lixun Precision has the largest increase, with emissions increasing by more than 200% compared with 2020.
Interface News found that in addition to Apple, HP has also launched "carbon neutral products" - HP claims that the commercial computers it sells are "carbon neutral when delivered to customers".
Regarding whether the supply chain carbon reduction data of such "carbon neutral products" can be tracked, Wu Xueying, author of Greenpeace briefing and director of the climate and energy program, told Jiemian News that at present, there is no specific disclosure of renewable energy procurement at the product or plant level in the mainstream corporate information rules initiative, such as the Global Environmental Information Research Center CDP, which is only subdivided into the level of the company's branch location.
In the face of disclosure standards that are not conducive to public verification of the carbon footprint of products, Wu believes that suppliers' commitment to 100% renewable energy transition will help brands prevent "greenwashing" when launching "carbon-neutral" products.
According to Jiemian News, the consumer electronics supply chain has a high degree of agglomeration, and the same supplier supplies multiple consumer electronics brands at the same time. When individual brands, such as Apple, require suppliers to use 100% renewable energy for production, suppliers only commit to green electricity for the product lines supplied to the brand. The rest of the production lines are not within the scope of commitment.
"For consumer electronics suppliers, the biggest emissions come from Scope 2, which is the emissions generated by purchased energy. One of the most effective ways to reduce these emissions is to purchase renewable energy. Wu Xueying told Jiemian News that 2030 is of great significance to achieving global 1.5°C temperature control, and the completion of 100% renewable energy transformation by consumer electronics suppliers in 2030 is an effective way to practice carbon reduction and avoid greenwashing.
Regarding the above-mentioned climate action assessment, Jiemian News reporters contacted Luxshare Precision, Foxconn, BOE, and Goertek in writing. As of press time, no response has been received.
(Jiemian News reporter Xu Shiqi also contributed to this article)
