China's Goldwind, Apple sign wind power deal

China's Goldwind and American multinational technology giant Apple have signed a deal to produce wind-based electric power as the global drive for clean energy gradually gains momentum.

Goldwind, the world's largest wind turbine maker, based in China's northwestern autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur sold Apple 30 percent of its equity in four companies to run four wind power projects in the provinces of Henan, Shandong, Shanxi and Yunnan, according to a report by China's official Xinhua news agency on Friday.

The projects will produce 285 megawatts of wind power in China.

Apple’s partnership with Goldwind marks the tech company's largest clean energy project to date.

Goldwind employs over 6,000 people worldwide and has a total production capacity of 32 gigawatts.

Apple's China operation

Apple's CEO Tim Cook pledged last year to make the company’s production chain in China powered by 100 percent renewable energy.

Cook promised 2,000 megawatts of clean energy in China alone, and 4,000 megawatts more around the world.

He said Apple would achieve this goal by boosting power efficiency and building solar projects and other sources of clean energy.

Apple is striving to improve the environmental impact of its production chain, which is responsible for more than 70 percent of its total carbon footprint, Xinhua reported.

"We should help our supply chain become greener and more sustainable. So, instead of giving them fish, we want to teach them how to fish," said Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives.

Apple had previously backed a 40-megawatt solar power project in the southwestern province of Sichuan and three solar power projects capable of generating 170 megawatts of power in the country's Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Looming threat

The threatening rise in global temperatures and greenhouse gases to new highs has raised the alarm across the world about the looming dangers of climate change.

A landmark Paris climate agreement among 196 countries is the latest planet-saving deal, which was reached among world leaders in the French capital last December.

The Paris Agreement seeks to wean the world economy off fossil fuels in the second half of the century and cap the global average rise in temperatures below two degrees Celsius. Otherwise, climate change would have a detrimental impact.

The Earth's inhabitants will be facing dangerous and frequent weather events such as intense droughts, storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and warming oceans.

These events can directly harm humans and animals, destroy the places they live, and wreak havoc across communities in an irreversible pattern, changing people's livelihoods in a drastic and unprecedented way unseen by any living creature to date.

The United States and China are the world’s biggest emitters of dangerous gases.

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