Greenpeace released a study (PDF) Thursday which gives some top tech companies low marks for energy efficiency. According to the study, Google and Yahoo made the grade while others still have some work to do.
“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,” Gary Cook, Greenpeace IT Policy Analyst, said in a statement. “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.”
You would expect a company like Apple to score high in this department given their attention to detail, but they actually did the worst. The Cupertino company scored a 54.5 percent for its “coal intensity,” which was just slightly worse than Facebook at 52.8 percent.
Twitter was the worst student in the class, getting F’s across the board. This is in part because of their new data center in Salt Lake City, which Greenpeace says ” is a huge step backwards for Twitter” and that Twitter’s total electricity load in Utah could “easily be met by clean sources of energy.”
Apple ran into similar issues with their decision to build a $1 billion data center in North Carolina. Dubbed the iDataCenter, Greenpeace says it would be built in “an electrical grid among the dirtiest in the country” and Apple’s location choice “indicates a lack of corporate commitment to clean energy supply for its cloud operations.”
Google, while earning points for their announcement of a second power purchase agreement for wind energy in Oklahoma, still got an F in transparency for not disclosing information on energy use or GHG emissions.
Yahoo earned a D in transparency, but was praised for their energy-efficient “chicken coop” data center in Lockport, NY. This is the first center to use Yahoo’s green data center design, known as the Yahoo Computing Coop (YCC).
Facebook, who has had run-ins with Greenpeace before, was said “to lack the vision to become a company powered by clean energy.” Greenpeace says Facebook has selected data centers that rely heavily on coal and nuclear and has made no significant investments into renewable energy.
Does it bother you that updating your Twitter status, poking your friends on Facebook, or playing Angry Birds on your iPhone could contribute to toxic coal ash, global warming or future Fukishima’s?
via PCMag.com.