(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In a study issued Tuesday, environmental organization Greenpeace said the computing “cloud” powering the Internet is becoming a major source of pollution, as companies build data centers powered by coal, according to a Reuters report from Monday.
The study (available in PDF form) singles out a Facebook facility that relies on a coal-powered utility, along with Apple’s North Carolina data center, also powered by coal.
According to Reuters, in the report Greenpeace concludes that “the last thing we need is for more cloud infrastructure to be built in places where it increases demand for dirty coal-fired power.”
The organization also points to Microsoft, Yahoo and Google as having data centers that rely on “heavy” use of coal power.
While Greenpeace’s study is pretty evidently designed to bring popular attention specifically to Internet data centers as a massive consumer of power, and of the enormous popularity of coal-powered energy utilities in the United States. It very likely picks up on the “cloud” term because of the hype, in much the same way that many hosting companies have.
In a piece covering the study, Rich Miller of Data Center Knowledge points to the fact that the study continues on Greenpeace’s past criticism of Facebook for placing its Oregon data center in a region without access to renewable power.
While it recognizes that energy efficiency is a major design concern in the data center business, Greenpeace suggests in the report that energy efficiency is driven more by the bottom line than by environmentalism.
“For most companies, the environmental benefits of green data design are generally of secondary concern,” writes Greenpeace. “Facebook’s decision to build its own highly-efficient data centre in Oregon that will be substantially powered by coal-fired electricity clearly underscores the relative priority for many cloud companies. Increasing Key trends that will impact the environmental footprint of the cloud the energy efficiency of its servers and reducing the energy footprint of the infrastructure of data centres are clearly to be commended, but efficiency by itself is not green if you are simply working to maximise output from the cheapest and dirtiest energy source available. The US EPA will soon be expanding its EnergyStar rating system to apply to data centres, but similarly does not factor in the fuel source being used to power the data centre in its rating criteria. Unfortunately, as our collective demand for computing resources increases, even the most efficiently built data centres with the highest utilisation rates serve only to mitigate, rather than eliminate, harmful emissions.”
The Greenpeace reports concludes by stating that, as an industry that is one of the major users of power in the United States, the data center business ought to be advocating for climate change in Washington, citing a number of clean energy and emissions-regulating initiatives the organization is championing., the full list of which is outlined in the report.
Data Center Knowledge’s Miller points out that Greenpeace’s own hosting services don’t meet the environmental standards to which it aims to hold the data center business accountable. The point isn’t necessarily to highlight any particular hypocrisy at Greenpeace, but perhaps to illustrate that Greenpeace’s target is the power industry, rather than the data center business.
Greenpeace’s objective seems to be to get the data center business on board as a potentially influential ally in advocating for environmental regulation on the power industry. One of the big questions, says Miller, is whether the availability of renewable power sources will become a factor in the selection of locations for data centers.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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