Major Report on Apple's Supply Chain being on a Collision Course with Climate Change
A new major report posted today reminds us that Few global multinationals have been more vocal and forthright in their ambitions to take on climate change than Apple Inc.
Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has woven environmental policy into the very fabric of its brand. The iPhone maker boasts that it has been carbon neutral across all its offices, stores and data centers since 2020, and cut emissions by 45% since 2015.
“By 2030, all Apple devices will have a net-zero climate impact,” Cook said in a recent skit where he’s quizzed by a fictional Mother Nature played by actor Octavia Spencer. The focus isn’t new: A decade ago Cook, who ran Apple’s supply chain operations before taking over from founder Steve Jobs, told climate-denying shareholders to “get out of this stock.”
And yet that vast supply chain — comprising more than 400 facilities across 180 regions in nearly 30 countries, stretching from the Austrian Alps to Vietnam’s Mekong Delta — stands in the path of some of the most damaging effects of climate change itself, according to a Bloomberg Opinion analysis of Apple’s publicly released supplier reports.
Drawing from global databases of power-generation, extreme weather, flood zones, economic impact and carbon emissions, Bloomberg Opinion found that the very regions most vulnerable to climate change are those with the highest concentration of manufacturers. This risk isn’t exclusive to Apple. Global electronics companies including Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Group Corp. and Dell Technologies Inc. procure from many of the same vendors. The analysis is based on Apple’s supply chain because, to its credit, the iPhone maker is one of the most transparent when it comes to shining a light on working conditions, conflict minerals and the environmental impact of its business.
Put simply, the belt of the planet where natural disasters will intensify most rapidly due to global warming — from floods and heatwaves to increasingly powerful cyclones — is precisely the one where Apple has built its manufacturing footprint. It’s most visible in a swath of Asia from India in the southwest to Japan in the northeast.
Many of the most dramatic effects of climate change will take place in the tropics and subtropics, where stronger sunlight means there’s more atmospheric energy to be unleashed as damaging weather phenomena. Unlike heavily-urbanized Latin America and underdeveloped sub-Saharan Africa, the manufacturing belt in Asia is seeing a rapid wave of migration to its cities. The same demographic phenomenon is providing both a workforce to assemble Apple’s products, a burst in energy demand that’s keeping emissions on the rise and a growing population in the path of more frequent and damaging natural disasters.
The following charts map out the path upon which supply chains and climate change are set to collide.
We’ve already seen the damage weather disasters can do to multinational manufacturing operations. Floods across Thailand in 2011 caused by rainfall from the La Niña climate cycle shuttered more than 14,000 businesses, throwing a spanner into global automotive and electronics supply chains that were dependent on low-cost manufacturing close to the capital Bangkok. It was the biggest flood disaster in the history of the insurance industry, causing about $55 billion of losses and slowing deliveries of Apple’s Mac computers as component suppliers were forced to suspend work.
Power cuts pose risks to manufacturers. That’s likely to be a growing problem as hotter summers, rising use of air conditioning, unpredictable rainfall and unplanned shutdowns at aging, unprofitable fossil-fired generators put more strains on electricity grids. China’s Yunnan province earlier this year curbed production from smelters that produce aluminum like that used in iPhones, thanks to a drought that reduced the region’s hydroelectric output. A heat wave last year left India’s grid on perilously thin margins as coal-fired generators ran short of fuel.
It’s hard to predict what combination of generators are most likely to cause problems in future extreme weather conditions, but Apple’s own plans for greening its manufacturing network illustrate the challenge. Last October the company called on its suppliers to follow its own path to zero-carbon power by 2030. Yet many of the countries on which it is most dependent have unusually high shares of fossil fuels in their grids, with coal accounting for more than 60% in China and Indonesia, and nearly 75% in India.
Apple’s suppliers are primarily located in carbon-intensive countries, a situation known as “carbon leakage” where production moves to regions with more lax emissions constraints. The costs of remaking its manufacturing web could be substantial should the EU continue raising climate-based trade barriers. And Europe won’t be alone. Australia is among the latest nations examining carbon-based adjustment measures as a way of using trade to enforce climate policy outside its own borders, while similar measures have been proposed in the US Congress.
Apple has done much to limit its contribution to a heating atmosphere. It may have a far harder time future-proofing itself against the effects that global warming will have on its own operations.
For more charts, stats and information, read the full Bloomberg report.
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