I analyzed Apple's progress toward their 2030 goal of carbon neutrality by analyzing four main factors:

1. How much total emissions had decreased from 2015-2022.

2. The carbon footprint for newer Apple models.

3. Normalizing factors, including the number of employees, market capitalization, and revenue.

4. Areas for improvement: the types of emissions that increased over time, and the top sources of emissions.

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1. Total Emissions Summary

Apple had a significant decrease in emissions over time, from 38M total emissions in 2015 to 20M total emissions in 2022. This is a decrease of 47.37%.

2. Carbon Footprint for Apple Models

As you can see in the bar chart above, the carbon footprint for Apple models varied over time.

The fields on the X-axis (the product names) are sorted in chronological order, from iPhone 6s (released in 2015 with a carbon footprint of 54), to iPhone 15 (released in 2023 with a carbon footprint of 56.) The iPhones increased in carbon footprint from 2015 and reached a peak in 2019 before decreasing again.

The iPhoneX had the highest carbon footprint at 79 (released in 2017), while the iPhone 6s had the lowest carbon footprint at 54 (released in 2015).

3. Normalizing factors

When analyzing Apple's progress toward carbon neutrality, it's important to take normalizing factors into account. The normalizing factors for Apple include market capitalization, employees, and revenue, which all increased from 2015-2022. Market Capitalization saw the most dramatic increase from 580 in 2015 to 2490 in 2022 (an increase of 329.31%)

4. Areas for Improvement

The following types of emissions increased from 2016-2022:

• Fleet Vehicles (from 8,740 to 12,600) = 44.17% increase
• Natural Gas Emissions (from 19,360 to 42,840) = 121.28% increase
• Upstream Fuel (from 0 to 10,600)
• Product Transportation (from 1,200,000 to 1,900,000) = 58.33% increase
• Steam, Heating, Cooling Emissions (from 0 to 3,000)
• Work from Home (from 0 to 7,500)

I wanted to dive deeper into Apple's highest emissions, so I created a line chart with all the emission descriptions listed and added a filter on the page for the Top N = Top 5 sources of emissions.

As you can see, manufacturing is by far the biggest source of emissions by Apple, followed by product use (use of sold products.)

The breakdown of the top 5 sources of emissions for 2022 is:

1. Manufacturing (purchased goods and services) in 2022 = 13,400,000

2. Product Use (use of sold products) in 2022 = 4,900,000

3. Product Transportation (upstream and downstream) in 2022 = 1,900,000

4. Employee Commute in 2022 = 134,200

5. Business Travel in 2022 = 113,500

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Final Thoughts

I was impressed by Apple's overall progress towards carbon neutrality by 2030.

Apple has also managed to decrease the carbon footprint of its iPhone products over time while increasing their baseline storage.

However, to meet Apple's goal of carbon neutrality, they will need to address the top 5 sources of their gross emissions. It is especially important for Apple to analyze Manufacturing (purchased goods and services), as it is by far the highest source of gross emissions, totaling 13,400,000 in 2022 alone.