A screen shot of Greenpeace`s Dirty Energy report page
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) –- Environmental organization Greenpeace (www.greenpeace.org) announced on Thursday it has released a new study that highlights the rapidly growing environmental footprint of the online world and evaluates both good and bad energy choices made by top IT companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple, and Yahoo!.
Titled “How Dirty is Your Data?,” the report details the large amount of electricity required to power cloud offerings.
The report argues that despite significant advances in energy efficient data center design, the IT industry is “both largely ignoring the importance of using renewable power as a top criterion for locating new infrastructure and is not transparent in disclosing its energy use.”
“We expect these companies to play a pivotal role in ensuring we move to clean, safe renewable energy system and avoid future disasters like Fukishima,” says Gary Cook, IT policy analyst at Greenpeace. “But the IT industry’s failure to disclose basic information on its rapidly growing energy footprint has hidden a continued reliance on 19th century dirty coal power to power its 21st century infrastructure. We think consumers want to know that when they upload a video or change their Facebook status that they are not contributing to toxic coal ash, global warming or future Fukishima’s.”
In the study, Greenpeace evaluated 10 cloud companies on their transparency, infrastructure siting decisions, and mitigation strategies.
Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, and others receive failing marks in one or more categories.
Despite the fact that data centers currently consume 1.5 to 2 percent of all global electricity and are growing at a rate of 12 percent per year, companies in the sector do not typically disclose information on their energy use and its associated global warming emissions.
Some companies have a coal intensity greater than the US grid average. In this respect the report targets social media network Facebook as being the main perpetrator, with 53.2 percent of its data centers being generated by coal-powered electricity.
The environmental organization previously criticized Facebook for its dependence on coal-powered electricity. Last month Greenpeace released an ad that urged Facebook to “unfriend coal” power in its data centers by Earth Day, which takes place on April 22.
The report also shows that Yahoo! and Google both understand the importance of a renewable energy supply, with Yahoo! using sources of renewable energy, and Google is directly purchasing clean power.
Greenpeace argues that these models should be employed and improved upon by other cloud companies.
Of the ten brands graded, content delivery network firm Akamai earned top of the class recognition for transparency, Yahoo! had the strongest infrastructure siting policy, and IBM and Google demonstrated the best overall approach to reduce their current footprints.
Cook argues that “green IT should not be a choice between energy efficiency and clean electricity,” and instead, companies òught to give equal importance to both aspects when considering green data centers.
The full report, along with a map of data centers of the evaluated companies and other information can be viewed here.
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