China News Service, March 25. The 2024 Annual Meeting of the China Development Forum will be held on March 24-25, 2024. The "Carbon Neutrality and Global Climate Governance Symposium" was held on the afternoon of March 24. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in his speech during the "Dialogue" session: Apple's Chinese supply chain partners are carbon neutral. and play a very important role in the process.

　　Regarding moving towards carbon neutrality, Tim Cook said that for Apple, the largest carbon emissions actually come from the supply chain and customer use. Apple has publicly set a 2030 carbon neutrality goal. To achieve company-wide carbon neutrality by 2020. Since 2015, Apple's total carbon footprint (including its entire supply chain and customer use) has dropped by 45%, while the company's revenue has increased by 68% during the same period. The handling of environmental problems is different from the handling of business. Solving environmental problems is a systematic work and requires more innovation to solve such problems in order to achieve goals.

　　Tim Cook proposed that Apple's global companies have achieved carbon neutral operations and will continue to promote the goal of achieving carbon neutrality for every product produced by 2030. Last year, Apple released its first carbon-neutral product, the Apple Watch. Apple's projects fall into three main categories: materials, transportation and electricity. From a material perspective, Apple's ultimate goal is not to plunder anything from the earth to make products, but to continuously recycle resources, which requires very good technical support. Materials such as rare earths used in Apple Watch and cobalt used in batteries can already be recycled.

From an electricity perspective, Apple uses 15 gigawatts of renewable energy deployed globally, most of which are in China. This is an important step in the supply chain.

At the same time, Apple has also encountered challenges in the entire production process, such as transportation difficulties and the need to minimize packaging.

　　Tim Cook believes that “walking alone is fast, but traveling together is far.”

The role played by Apple's Chinese supply chain partners in the carbon neutrality process is very important. This is a "1+1=3" issue.

Suppliers not only accept Apple's goals, but also continue to innovate, and they are very willing to meet and overcome such challenges. In addition, AI brings fundamental changes to recycling, making it more likely that every company will achieve carbon neutrality goals, and AI can help in the process.