Apple has come in last place among a list of tech companies in the latest Greenpeace tech report How Dirty is Your Data? [PDF]. While Apple has made some pretty big strides over the last few years in trying to eliminate environmentally unfriendly chemicals from their products, Apple placed last in this list due to its heavy reliance on coal power at its data centers.
The report compares energy consumption and sources made by Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Akamai, Amazon and Yahoo. In it Greenpeace points out that Apple’s new North Carolina data center, which is set to open this year and will be supposedly be primarily used for cloud-based computing services, will triple Apple’s energy usage and use the same amount of energy as 80,000 US homes. Of that energy, 62% will be provided by coal (one of the dirtiest energy sources) while 32% of it will be provided by nuclear power.
This isn’t the first time Greenpeace has expressed concern over Apple’s energy footprint regarding cloud computing. In March of last year, Greenpeace also expressed concern about the North Carolina data center that runs on “dirty coal power.“
Apple has the “least green” data centers originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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