What Is Clean Energy Charging on iPhone and How Does It Work?
Reading Time: 4 minutesClean Energy Charging is an iOS feature that aims to reduce the carbon footprint of your iPhone. Here’s everything you need to know about it.
Clean Energy Charging is a new setting Apple introduced in iOS 16.1, designed to ensure your iPhone is being charged with cleaner energy sources.
With it turned on, iOS will only recharge the iPhone’s battery when the electrical grid uses cleaner energy sources like solar or wind. Apple says Clean Energy Charging helps lower your electricity bills and carbon footprint.
The feature requires that additional location settings be enabled, including Significant Locations. You can turn off Clean Energy Charging if it’s unavailable in your area, which may help increase your privacy, and we’ll show you how.
iOS 16 Adds a New iPhone Charging Setting
Clean Energy Charging works in the background alongside Optimized Battery Charging—another battery-related feature in iOS that learns your charging habits.
When you connect your iPhone to a charger, iOS downloads a carbon emission forecast automatically in the background and relies on your device’s location to find the nearby energy grid.
Having retrieved this forecast from the load balancing authority for your region, iOS has the knowledge it needs to automatically restrict charging to lower carbon emission electricity.
How Clean Energy Charging in iOS 16 Works
Apple has designed Clean Energy Charging to only kick into action at the most frequently visited locations such as your home, work, and other places where you ‘spend the most time and regularly charge your iPhone for long periods of time.’
According to an Apple support document, Clean Energy Charging won’t engage ‘if your charging habits are variable or you’re in a new location,’ such as while traveling.
To help people make climate-smart choices and turn Clean Energy Charging into a reality, Apple has joined CoolClimate Network, a research partnership with the University of California, Berkeley.
3 Settings Needed for Clean Energy Charging
Three specific location settings must be turned on for Clean Energy Charging to work because iOS needs certain location information to determine when your phone is actually being charged at a supported location. Here’s how to ensure those additional settings are toggled on.
On your iPhone, venture into Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services and make sure that the Location Services toggle has been turned on. Now, scroll to the bottom of this screen and hit System Services, then make sure that System Customization is turned on.
As the last step, touch Significant Locations on the same screen and make sure that the Significant Locations toggle is also switched on.
Privacy advocates can rest assured that none of the locations used for Clean Energy Charging and other charging features gets uploaded to Apple! If any of the three required privacy toggles hasn’t been turned on, you might still be permitted to turn on Clean Energy Charging, but the feature may not function as expected or work at all.
Is Clean Energy Charging Available in My Country?
As of this writing, Clean Energy Charging is only available in the United States. If you live elsewhere, the Clean Energy Charging switch may not show up in your Settings app (this is how you know that Clean Energy Charging is unsupported in your country). Watch this space, as we’ll update the article when the feature expands to other countries.
Who Should Use Clean Energy Charging?
You shouldn’t turn on Clean Energy Charging if it’s unavailable in your country or the local grid doesn’t support sending forecasts of carbon emissions. Right now, this feature only works in the United States.
Are you the type of person who wants to ensure their iPhone is reliably charged to 100% whenever plugged into a power source? If so, you should avoid using Optimized Battery Charging and Clean Energy Charging.
Optimized Battery Charging vs. Clean Energy Charging
Please don’t confuse Clean Energy Charging with Optimized Battery Charging. If you’d like to learn more about the latter, feel free to peruse our dedicated tutorial, which dives deep into what Optimized Battery Charging is and how it works.
In a nutshell, Optimized Battery Charging has been designed to prevent over-stressing the battery by learning from your charging routine to charge past 80%, which is one of the ways to maintain your iPhone’s battery health and prolong the device’s lifespan.
You’ll know Optimized Battery Charging is active if your iPhone waits to charge past 80%. There’s nothing worse than hopping on a plane or entering an important meeting only to discover the battery in your iPhone is half-dead or stuck at 80%.
Should you feel guilty for turning off Clean Energy Charging, you can probably find some comfort in the fact that only 15% of the lifetime emissions for the iPhone 14 Pro comes from actually using the phone, according to Apple’s product environmental report.
How to Turn Off Clean Energy Charging on iPhone
Clean Energy Charging is turned on by default after updating your iPhone to iOS 16.1 or setting it up. To turn the feature off, go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging and set the Clean Energy Charging toggle to the OFF position. Then, choose Turn Off or Turn Off Until Tomorrow, depending on your preference, when you get the prompt.
After turning Clean Energy Charging off, your iPhone will continue charging even if demand on the power grid is high and cleaner energy is unavailable.
How to Override Clean Energy Charging
With the Clean Energy Charging setting turned on, you may receive a notification on the Lock Screen of your iPhone saying charging has been temporarily suspended until cleaner electricity is available again.
To override the prompt and resume the charging process, touch and hold the notification and then choose Charge Now from the notification banner.
Greener iPhone Charging Is Now a Reality
Anything that helps reduce your carbon footprint is good for the planet and the human species. However, you’ll need to determine whether Clean Energy Charging makes sense for your typical iPhone usage scenarios.
Apple has designed this feature with a clear goal in mind—to help reduce the carbon footprint of its customers—and that’s why it’s turned on by default!
The power of software can help us avoid charging our iPhones when it may not be the best time to do it—without having to do anything manually.
Reference: https://www.makeuseof.com/apple-clean-energy-charging-explained/
Ref: makeuseof