India’s iPhone Surge: Apple’s Suppliers Stuck on RECs, Not Real Renewables

As iPhone manufacturing in India ramps up at breakneck speed, Apple promise of a greener supply chain is running into an inconvenient truth which is – most of its Indian suppliers are nowhere near ready for renewable energy.

The gap between Apple’s climate ambition and its suppliers’ real-world energy choices is widening at precisely the moment when India is becoming central to the company’s global hardware strategy.​

India: New iPhone Factory Floor

India’s electronics manufacturing sector has grown around 20 percent annually since 2019-20, with production reaching 115 billion dollars in 2023-24 and projected to touch 282 billion dollars by 2030.

Mobile phones and other consumer electronics account for over half of this output, and Apple is at the heart of this surge. By FY 2024, 20 percent of the world’s iPhones were assembled in India, and exports of iPhones from India touched 17.4 billion dollars.​

This explosion in production brings with it a surge in energy demand and emissions, in a country that is already the world’s third-largest greenhouse gas emitter and is expected to see energy-related emissions grow further with rapid electrification.

Ground Reality

Apple intends to reduce combined Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by 75 percent by 2030 from a 2015 base year, and a supplier mandate to use 100 percent renewable electricity for all Apple-related manufacturing by 2030.

Around 76.3 percent of Apple’s total emissions in 2024 came from manufacturing and assembly (Scope 3, Category 1), making the supply chain the critical battleground for decarbonisation.​

Globally, Apple reports sharp declines in “market-based” manufacturing emissions, largely credited to suppliers’ renewable energy use, including nearly 30 million MWh of RE in 2024.

But when you look at location-based emissions, what the grid actually emits where factories are located, the picture is far less flattering, with Apple’s manufacturing emissions staying almost flat since 2022.

The gap between these two numbers is driven by the heavy use of low-impact instruments like unbundled renewable energy certificates (RECs), which allow suppliers to claim “clean power” without meaningfully changing what powers their factories.​

India Suppliers

Climate Risk Horizons analysed 13 Apple suppliers with manufacturing operations in India. All are part of Apple’s Supplier Clean Energy Program and, on paper, committed to 100 percent renewable energy for Apple-related production by 2030.

Yet their own corporate targets and disclosure practices tell a very different story.​

Only one company – Tata Electronics – has a 100 percent renewable energy goal aligned with Apple’s 2030 timeline. Twelve other suppliers have long-term RE targets that push full decarbonisation well beyond 2030, effectively misaligned with both Apple’s roadmap and the 1.5°C pathway that requires electronics manufacturing to shift to 100 percent RE by 2030.

Even more worrying, just four out of the 13 suppliers have any interim RE milestones (such as 50 percent by a certain year), a basic indicator that a company has a credible stepwise plan rather than a distant promise.​

In other words, while Apple is promising a 100 percent clean supply chain by 2030, most of its Indian manufacturing partners are planning for a slower transition that could stretch a decade or more beyond that horizon.​

Data Blind Spots and Questionable Accounting

The report also finds that nearly half of Apple’s Indian suppliers either do not publicly report energy data for their Indian facilities or do not appear to be tracking it in a robust manner.

Only six of the 13 suppliers publicly disclose any energy or electricity data for their India operations, and of these, just a subset provide information on renewable energy shares.​

Tata Electronics, for instance, claims “carbon neutrality” over 12 months using international RECs amounting to 154,015 MWh and mentions 11.64 MW of rooftop solar, but does not disclose what proportion of its total consumption this actually covers. Others simply report global figures that may not include Indian plants, or exclude India entirely from their reporting boundary, as in the case of Lingyi iTECH’s sustainability reporting.​

Verification is another weak link. Nine suppliers have only limited or moderate third‑party assurance of their global energy data, while at least three – including Tata Electronics, Interplex and Yuto – do not subject their data to independent verification at all.

High-RE States, Low-Impact Choices

Perhaps the most striking finding of the report is geographical. Apple’s India supply chain is heavily concentrated in states that are already leaders in renewable energy and open access markets, but suppliers are largely failing to tap into this structural advantage.​

Ten of the 13 suppliers operate in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka or Maharashtra – three of India’s top states for open access renewable capacity and year‑on‑year additions, where open access tariffs for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers are generally cheaper than conventional grid power.

These states are precisely where long‑term RE PPAs, captive or group‑captive projects, and hybrid solar‑wind plus storage structures are commercially viable and expanding fast.​

Yet only two suppliers, FIH Mobile (Foxconn) and Flex Ltd., have adopted high‑impact procurement mechanisms for their India operations, such as physical PPAs, on‑site solar, or bundled green retail power.

The other 11 either report no renewable energy use in India, rely on unbundled RECs, or provide no information at all. PEGATRON explicitly reports zero RE use in its India operations, despite operating in a state with strong open access infrastructure and benefiting from India’s production-linked incentives to scale iPhone assembly.​

In effect, Apple’s India supply chain is scaling up in locations that are ideal for cheap, clean power, yet most suppliers are sticking with fossil-heavy grid electricity and, at best, paper-based RECs to green their numbers.​