IT giants using green energy – The Engineer

IT-giants as Apple and Google are well on the way to their data centers to feed with renewable energy, according to the new Clicking Clean-scorecard of Greenpeace.

Apple scores, for the third year in a row, the best when it comes to make maximum use of renewable energy. In addition, it encourages the company to its suppliers to make greater use of greener energy. Google follows on the foot. Both companies use, like for example Facebook and eBay, their influence also to governments and utilities are more active on the trail of a green energy supply, so judge Greenpeace in the latest edition of its Clicking Clean-score list.

Clear laggards are, as yet, the Chinese internetreuzen Baidu and Alibaba and the Korean elektronicagiganten as Samsung and LG, although even there, according to Greenpeace, a beginning of a cover up.

Until this year limited to Greenpeace, research into the energy consumption of the internet companies in the United States. This year, for the first time, the Asian firms involved in the study. European companies are not in the research.

User

Special attention for the IT companies is justified. According to estimates puts the sector seized 7 % of the wereldenergiegebruik. That is just a little less than half of the energy used by the U.S. as a whole requires, and, for example, three times as much as Germany. Given the expected further traffic growth will be that proportion will only grow.

Since 2012, put data centers and networks, and an ever greater attachment to the it energy consumption.

The growth is especially in the ever larger data centers and networks, which is now half of the total IT energy consumption to account for. A third goes to the energy use of devices such as pcs, and a sixth is needed for manufacturing. Especially video streaming and social media drive the data usage.

Contracts

The internet companies that renewable energy use to do that is mainly through contracts with suppliers of wind and solar power. So were there last year in the U.S. by the tech for some 2.2 GW of signed contracts. According to the Greenpeace-overview have Apple, Google and Facebook in the past six years, such contracts also in Europe closed for a total of over 1 GW.

Fossil

These optimistic findings according to Greenpeace, the fact that there is still much to be done. In the U.S., for example, by Amazon data centers placed that are fully dependent on fossil energy. Amazon provided according to Greenpeace, also a lack of transparency about its energy resources. In addition, there are companies that claim that they are renewable energy use, but that turns out to go to gas and biomass plants, hydroelectric power plants, or nuclear power. Greenpeace appreciates that resources are not as green energy.

the scorecard looks at Greenpeace to such matters as the use of wind and solar energy, transparency about energy consumption, energy efficiency, and the degree to which the company advocate is the use of renewable energy.

The list of companies, where A is the highest score.Click for a larger image.

click here to Download the new Clicking Clean edition of Greenpeace.

Openingsfoto: impression of the new headquarters of Apple.

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