Solar panels on top of more than eight hundred buildings in Singapore will provide Apple with all the energy it needs for its operations there, making it the first company in the region to be powered by 100-percent renewable energy. Apple has also announced it will open its first retail store in Singapore, another first for the company, and that it will only take power from the solar panels.

To make it possible, Apple has signed a deal with solar energy developer Sunseap Group, which provides rooftop solar energy farms across Singapore — a solution to ground space being at a premium on the small island.

In addition to the retail store, the solar panels will power Apple’s corporate office that’s home to 2,500 Apple employees. Sunseap has worked closely with Apple on the project, and will send a massive 40GWh of clean energy to ensure its needs are covered. Sunseap will also receive funding from Apple to continue building its solar energy farms.

Not all the energy created by the harvesting system will be sent to Apple. Reuters says 33MW of the potential 50MW — which is enough to keep 9,000 homes up and running — will be used by the company, with the remainder going to “publicly owned housing,” according to Apple’s VP of environment Lisa Jackson.

Apple’s solar-power plans in Singapore are part of its ongoing plan to power its entire business globally by renewable energy. In October, it announced clean energy programs in China — one of which involves Foxconn, makers of many Apple products — and earlier, the company said it planned to use solar energy to power its new, futuristic campus building, currently under construction in California. At the beginning of 2015, Apple confirmed plans to build two data centers in Europe that will be run on 100-percent renewable energy, and that another data center in Arizona would also be solar powered.

• [Editor:tianyawei]