Writing about Apple’s deep decarbonization efforts recently, I discovered something about my iPhone that I didn’t realize. In the US, if you are on iOS 16, you can now set your phone to charge on clean, green energy as much as possible.
What does that mean? If you go to “Battery Health & Charging” and turn on “Clean Energy Charging,” Apple tries to track your charging patterns and then, when plugged in, only actually charge your phone when relatively low-carbon-emission electricity is being produced (whether than be solar energy, wind energy, or nuclear energy). This new option or feature is part of Apple’s new partnership with the CoolClimate Network at the University of California–Berkeley.
Clearly, Apple is also able to see and is paying attention to what energy sources are being used for electricity production in real-time. It is also presumably tracking patterns in such electricity production and trying to match the times of greenest electricity with the times you have your phone plugged in.
As Apple wrote in October, “Available starting this month in the United States through iOS 16, the new feature looks at the sources of the electricity during expected charge times and optimizes for when the grid is using cleaner energy sources like solar or wind.”
So, even if you don’t have solar panels on your roof or a subscription to 100% clean electricity, you can charge your phone in a greener way by turning on one little feature on your iPhone. Enjoy!
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