Tech heavyweights Google and Yahoo are leading the sector when it comes to prioritising access to renewable energy as they expand their cloud-based services, says the latest report from Greenpeace.
Entitled 'How clean is your cloud?', the report examines the energy choices of 14 global IT leaders in how they power their data centres. As the world's top tech companies rely increasingly on cloud computing, the question of their energy sources has come under scrutiny, particularly as data streams continue to sky-rocket.
“The growth and scale of investment in the cloud is truly mind-blowing, with estimates of a 50-fold increase in the amount of digital information by 2020 and nearly half a trillion in investment in the coming year,” states the report.
Greenpeace notes that data centres consume a considerable amount of electricity; some the equivalent of nearly 180 000 homes, and that the energy-intensive nature of maintaining the cloud makes access to significant amounts of electricity a key factor in decisions about where to build these data centres.
F for fail
policies driving renewable energy investments, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft were criticised for building their business around cloud without adequate regard to their sources of electricity.
A little over a third of Amazon's electricity is generated from coal, while Apple relies on coal for 55%, and Microsoft for just under 40%. Amazon also got an F for energy transparency and renewables advocacy, while Apple got an F for infrastructure siting.
Apple has hit back at the claims of irresponsible energy use, however, stating earlier this week that its new data centre in North Carolina will see 60% of the energy coming from an on-site solar farm and biogas-powered fuel cells. The company also questioned Greenpeace's estimates for the amount of energy used at the site, saying the 100MW figure was inaccurate and that it was closer to 20MW.
Greenpeace comes out strongly in the report against companies that lead innovation in so many other sectors but couple their IT infrastructure to “some of the dirtiest sources of electricity, supplied by some of the dirtiest utilities on the planet”. It adds that a growing concentration of data centre investments in key locations is having a significant impact on energy demand and how the electricity grid is managed.
“If such concentrated expansion is allowed to continue, this will make it increasingly difficult to shift these investments and the surrounding community away from dirty sources of electricity,” states the report.
But there is good news as well, and Greenpeace points to increasing collaboration and sharing of best practices in hardware and software design to help accelerate the deployment of energy-efficient IT.
“There have been increasing signs that more IT companies are beginning to take a proactive approach in ensuring their energy demand can be met with available renewable sources of electricity, and will increasingly play a role in shaping our energy future.”
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