'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.''
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The call by some to reduce the use of thermal coal (steam coal) that is mostly burnt for power generation and adds to the greenhouse effect is valid for western countries who may allocate resources and funds to alternative and more greener sources of power. Coal Terminals and additional infrastructure are required in the coal supply chain. Coal reports and coal statistics show developing economies are more likely to increase their investment into & their use of thermal coal & metallurgical coal in coming years because of its affordability and to meet increasing demands for electricity and steel. Ian www.coalportal.com
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