Apple’s European renewables push raises familiar questions about power, place and purpose
Apple on Tuesday unveiled plans for a cluster of large-scale solar and wind projects across Greece, Italy, Latvia, Poland and Romania, saying the new developments — together with a solar array in Spain that has already begun feeding the grid — will add roughly 650 megawatts of renewable capacity in Europe. The company estimates those projects will generate more than 1 million megawatt-hours of clean electricity on its behalf by 2030, part of a wider push to hit its “Apple 2030” climate goal.
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“Our new projects in Europe will help us achieve our ambitious Apple 2030 goal, while contributing to healthy communities, thriving economies, and secure energy sources across the continent,” said Ms Jackson, Apple’s vice president for environment, policy and social initiatives.
What the numbers actually imply
The headline figures are striking: 650 megawatts sounds like a lot, and a million megawatt-hours evokes a tangible chunk of carbon-free power. But energy professionals caution that capacity and generation tell different stories. Installed capacity is the maximum output under ideal conditions; actual production depends on weather, grid constraints and how wind and solar are spaced across countries. In practical terms, Apple’s estimate implies a modest average output from those assets — consistent with a mixed portfolio of wind and sun spread across varied climates.
Apple also says the electricity is being procured on behalf of its users because product use — the power required to charge phones, tablets and laptops — accounted for about 29% of the company’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2024. Those are legitimate drivers for a tech company to look for clean electrons. But corporate renewable purchases typically come through power purchase agreements (PPAs) and virtual contracts that displace fossil generation on paper rather than physically routing green kilowatt-hours to specific devices.
Local resistance, global demand
The announcement arrives against a backdrop of rising scrutiny over the energy footprint of the technology sector, particularly data centres. In Ireland, for example, more than 80 data centres already operate and together account for roughly 22% of the country’s electricity use — a figure projected to grow as cloud services and artificial intelligence workloads expand.
That dynamic has produced friction. In 2018, Apple walked away from a planned €850 million data centre in Athenry, County Galway, after protracted legal and planning disputes slowed the project. Across Europe, communities weigh the potential jobs and investment that wind and solar projects — and the companies that purchase their power — may bring against concerns about land use, visual impacts, biodiversity, and pressure on local grids.
There is a familiar tension: rural landscapes and industrial-scale renewables can create new income streams for towns that have seen factories close, yet they also stir resistance when residents feel decisions are made far from local ballots. The tech industry’s appetite for power compounds the stakes: data centres, server farms and the charging of billions of devices mean the stakes for grid planning and public engagement are higher.
Green investment or green curtain?
For many environmentalists and policy experts, corporate announcements like Apple’s are a double-edged sword. On one hand, multinational buyers bring finance and contractual certainty that can speed the build-out of renewables and strengthen markets. On the other, such deals can be criticized as a form of offsetting that lets high energy users claim climate progress without altering core consumption patterns.
Campaigners have raised questions about “additionality” — whether projects result in new clean energy that would not have been built absent the corporate contract — and about the local impacts of large installations. At the same time, the logic of private procurement is clear to utilities and policymakers: when companies enter long-term agreements they reduce investment risk, which can draw private capital into green projects faster than public funds alone.
Where policy, markets and public interest must meet
Europe is wrestling with these trade-offs as it seeks energy security and faster decarbonisation following the shocks of the 2020s. Governments are drafting rules to shape the footprint of data centres, tighten grid connections, and require better community consultation for renewable projects. The European Green Deal and national targets set an overarching goal; the finer print is being written by planning authorities and regulators, often under local pressure.
For Apple, the investments in southern and eastern Europe also reflect a broader corporate strategy: diversify energy sources geographically, secure long-term power at predictable prices, and demonstrate progress on climate pledges. For locals and policymakers, the critical questions remain: Will these projects truly reduce emissions, or merely shuffle accounting? Will they strengthen local economies and grids, or shift burdens to communities and biodiversity? And as digital services grow, who will steward the balance between green energy build-out and the rights of places that host that infrastructure?
The answer will depend on how transparently these deals are structured, how regulators insist on grid upgrades and community benefits, and whether companies that consume vast amounts of electricity — from chipmakers to cloud providers — pair procurement with meaningful reductions in demand and efficiency improvements.
In the end, corporate headlines will matter less than how windmills and solar panels change life on the ground: whether they power local jobs and schools, or merely become lines on a balance sheet that absolve heavy energy users from rethinking the appetite that created the problem in the first place.
As governments and citizens frame the next decade of energy policy, they will have to ask themselves whether a future powered by tech can also be a future that is fair to the places and people who produce its power.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
