Beijing, April 16 (IANS): Apple is helping to build a 40-MW solar power project in China's southwestern plateau to work toward its environmental and climate commitments, a senior company executive said on Thursday.

The project, which will be able to power 61,000 homes a year, will add 80 million kilowatt hours of clean energy to the grid annually, said Lisa Jackson, vice-president for environmental initiatives at Apple.

"We are excited about the amount because it will generate far more energy than is being used by all of our offices and retail stores in China," Jackson told Xinhua news agency.

Currently, Apple has 19 corporate offices in China, including 17 in the mainland and two in Hong Kong, as well as 21 retail stores in the country.

The project will contain two arrays of solar panels, which will be installed 85 miles apart in Hongyuan county and Zoige County of Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang regions of Sichuan province, Jackson said.

"We will put the clean energy onto the local grid in Sichuan and buy the power wherever the stores and offices are," she said. In the US, solar farms are often built near Apple's facilities.

The project, the first of its kind Apple has launched outside the US, will add China to the list of countries that power Apple's facilities entirely with renewable energy.

Those already on the list include the US, Germany, Britain, Australia, Spain and Italy.

Apple has been striving to power all of its facilities worldwide with 100 percent renewable energy, and it has achieved a level of 87 percent so far.

The company increasingly relies on solar power. In February, it announced an ambitious deal to pay $848 million over 25 years to buy electricity from a large solar power plant to be built in Monterey county, California, by First Solar.

Apple also has solar farms built near its data centres in Maiden, North Carolina, and Reno, Nevada.