Apple biggest user of coal and nuclear power

'Dirty data' centres put Apple last on green list:

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple has come bottom of the most comprehensive green league table of technology companies because of its heavy reliance on ''dirty data'' centres.

The list, compiled by Greenpeace and released in San Francisco on Thursday, shows the company relies heavily on highly polluting coal power at the sites that house its servers.

Greenpeace's report, How Dirty Is Your Data?, reveals the company's investment in a new North Carolina plant will triple its electricity consumption, equivalent to the electricity demand of 80,000 US homes.

Advertisement: Story continues below The power will be a mix of 62 per cent coal and 32 per cent nuclear.

The lead author of the report, Greenpeace's IT policy analyst, Gary Cook, said: ''Consumers want to know that when they upload a video or change their Facebook status they are not contributing to global warming or future Fukushimas.''

The report estimated dependence on coal for Apple's data centres at 54.5 per cent, followed by Facebook at 53.2 per cent, IBM at 51.6 per cent, Hewlett-Packard at 49.4 per cent, and Twitter at 42.5 per cent. Top marks in another table, Greenpeace's clean energy index, went to Yahoo, followed by Google and Amazon.

Greenpeace is also campaigning for Facebook to ''unfriend coal'' and use cleaner energy to power its servers.

Mr Cook said: ''Many companies treat their energy consumption a bit like the Coca-Cola secret formula, because they don't want competitors knowing how much they spend on energy … they don't really want this story to be told.''

Data centre energy demand already accounts for 1.5 to 2 per cent of world electricity consumption and is set to quadruple over 10 years.

But Jonathan Koomey, a project scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whose work was cited in the study, said the IT industry wrongly attracted criticism: ''The use of IT often reduces environmental impacts. When we compared greenhouse gas emissions for downloading music to buying it on a CD … downloads reduced emissions by 40 to 80 per cent.''

Guardian News & Media

Power bills going up AGAIN

Huge Rise In Your Bills Coming Again...

Household electricity bills in NSW are set to rise by up to 18.1 per cent, or $316 a year following price rises outlined today by the pricing regulator.

A year ago, IPART approved rises of up to 13 per cent to be implemented from the middle of this year, with another round of rises of up to 11 per cent approved from the middle of next year.

At that time, it anticipated the average power bill for residents in rural NSW would reach $1900 a year, compared with between $1500 and $1600 for those living in Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle.

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Electricity prices are being forced higher as electricity companies boost their networks to avoid further blackouts, and are set to rise much faster if the federal government succeeds in introducing a carbon tax, which will force up prices.

When reviewing electricity prices in the middle of last year, IPART allowed rises of up to 36 per cent over the three years to 2012, warning prices would rise by as much as 60 per cent if the earlier planned carbon tax under consideration by former prime minister Kevin Rudd was introduced.

The likely impact of the carbon tax being considered by Prime Minister Julia Gillard on power prices is not yet clear, since no decision has been taken on the likely carbon price.

The state government said earlier the electricity companies would not pass on the blow-out in the cost of the government's solar panel scheme to households, instead raiding money from the Climate Change Fund to pay for the impact of these costs.

Under the latest changes, residential customers of EnergyAustralia will face rises of 17.9 per cent from July 1 (or $1513 over a year), Integral Energy 16.4 per cent ( $1619 over a year) and Country Energy 18.1per cent ($2063 over a year).

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