There was news last night reporting that Apple will couple its billion dollar North Carolina data center with a solar farm. Apple has skated by, using lots of cheap, dirty, coal based power and earning an F from Greenpeace for its power sourcing, despite the almost $80 billion in cash it’s sitting on. Maybe even Apple is realizing that it needs to hedge its brand against being labeled anti-environment. Apple picked up some bad press last summer after a slew of suicides at Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of much of Apple’s hardware. Now that Apple is the 800 pound gorilla of tech, managing negative publicity surrounding its sustainability practices will matter more.