Apple Inc. To Build $850 Million Solar Farm As CEO Tim Cook Says 'Climate Change Is Real'

Apple Inc. is looking to get greener. Now the tech giant is planning to build a 1,300-acre, $850 million solar farm in Monterey County, California, in a bid to power its new spaceship-like campus in Cupertino on green energy.

"We know at Apple that climate change is real," CEO Tim Cook said at an investor conference Tuesday. "The time for action is now."

The facility, big enough to power 60,000 homes, is expected to generate enough electricity to power every Apple office in California, as well as 52 retail stories and the company's data center across San Francisco Bay in the town of Newark.

The Monterey County solar farm will be Apple's fourth; it already has two in North Carolina and one in Nevada. Cook said all of Apple's data centers run on renewable energy, including a planned $2 billion data center to be built in Arizona.

"It's right to do but financially good to do as well," Cook said at the Goldman Sachs technology conference in San Francisco. "We're expecting to have significant savings with renewable energy vs. brown energy."

Apple certainly has the means to make such an ambitious investment. The company ended the day with a $710.7 billion market cap, marking the first time any U.S. company has reached that milestone.