Apple Gets More of Its Power From Coal Than Any Other Big Tech Company

[Dead_Parrot]

The world's tech leaders all need large amounts of electricity to drive their data centers, but they don't all get their power the same way.

Some, most notably Google*, have made an effort to reduce the amount of coal that powers their data centers. Others, like Apple, HP, and IBM, have not. Those three companies get half or more of their power from the carbon heaviest fuel of them all, according to a new report from Greenpeace. Absent any kind of real energy policymaking in this country, people who care about climate and energy can only use their consumer dollars to influence the way that companies behave. So, this disparity in company strategy should be highlighted. There's just no reason that Apple can't locate its datacenters in places with a cleaner electrical generation mix. None. They're too profitable to pretend otherwise.

Without considering externalities, power is nominally cheapest in the southeastern United States, where coal reigns and the pacific Northwest, where hydropower helps keep prices down. So many companies have chosen to situate their datacenters in those two areas, though they have very different climate impacts.

More: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/apple-gets-more-of-its-power-from-coal-than-any-other-big-tech-company/256013/

[twitcher]

1. Last year…Current report shows improvement

Apple, last year’s worst offender, improved the amount of energy it draws from renewable sources from 6.7 percent in 2011 to 15.3 percent in 2012. Apple now has the fifth-lowest score in the report. It leapfrogged Microsoft, IBM and Amazon.

It sounds like big tech collectively needs to improve.

From: [link:http://www.environmentalleader.com/2012/04/18/salesforce-worst-of-dirty-cloud-companies-greenpeace-says/|