“How Dirty is Your Data?” showcases the enormous amount of electricity required to power “the cloud” and finds that the IT industry, despite significant advances in energy efficient data center design, is both largely ignoring the importance of using renewable power as a top criterion for locating new infrastructure and is not transparent in disclosing its energy use.
“We expect these companies to play a pivotal role in ensuring we move to clean, safe renewable energy system and avoid future disasters like Fukishima,” Gary Cook, Greenpeace IT Policy Analyst said. “But the IT industry's failure to disclose basic information on its rapidly growing energy footprint has hidden a continued reliance on 19th century dirty coal power to power its 21st century infrastructure. We think consumers want to know that when they upload a video or change their Facebook status that they are not contributing to toxic coal ash, global warming or future Fukishima's.” (1)
Greenpeace evaluated ten cloud companies on their transparency, infrastructure siting decisions, and mitigation strategies. Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, and others receive failing marks in one or more categories.
Key findings:
- Despite the fact that data centres, which house the explosion of virtual information, currently consume 1.5-2% of all global electricity and are growing at a rate of 12% per year, companies in the sector, as a whole, do not release information on their energy use and its associated global warming emissions. (2)
- Some companies have a coal intensity greater than the US grid average. One of the most popular social media companies, Facebook, is among the most dependent on coal-powered electricity at 53.2%. (3)
- Yahoo! and Google seem to understand the importance of a renewable energy supply. Yahoo! has sited near sources of renewable energy, and Google is directly purchasing clean power. Their models should be employed and improved upon by other cloud companies.
- Of the ten brands graded, Akamai, a global content distribution network, earned top of the class recognition for transparency; Yahoo! had the strongest infrastructure siting policy; IBM and Google demonstrated the best overall approach to reduce their current footprints.
“Green IT should not be a choice between energy efficiency and clean electricity - companies need to give equal attention to both for green data centers,” Cook said. “As Yahoo! and Google are demonstrating, forward thinking companies can help lead us towards energy security and safety by stating a preference for renewable power and supporting strong policies that move us to a low carbon economy.”
The full report, along with a map of data centers of the evaluated companies and other information is available at www.greenpeace.org/coolit
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Notes
1. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/cool-it/leaderboard/
Greenpeace’s Cool IT Leaderboard is an iterative measurement of climate leadership from the IT sector. The next Leaderboard (Version 5) will be published in September 2011.
2. The report analyzed publicly available information to put together, for the first time, a comparison estimate of the amount of clean and dirty energy being driven by investment decisions and energy choices by the major brands that are racing to build the cloud. The estimates of data centre growth comes from a study by Jonathan Koomey: Worldwide Electricity Used in Data Centers, 2008.
As an example of the implications of data center growth, the Apple iData Center in North Carolina, when opened, will consume an estimated 100 MW, which is equivalent to the electricity usage of approximately 80,000 US or over a quarter million European Union homes. Apple has not yet announced how the data center will be powered.
3. US grid info is http://www.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm page=electricity_in_the_united_states
Estimates of coal intensity of cloud infrastructure based on information currently available, by brand: Apple 54.5%, Facebook 53.2%, IBM 51.6%, HP 49.4%, Twitter 42.5%, Google 34.7%, Microsoft 34.1%, Amazon 28.5%, Yahoo 18.3%
Along with 700,000 supporters, Greenpeace has called upon Facebook to "unfriend coal", and last week set a Guinness World Record for most comments on a Facebook post in 24 hours. With events in Italy, the US, and Ireland, Greenpeace has given Facebook an Earth Day deadline to commit to a plan to phase out of coal and commit to powering its infrastructure with renewable power over the next decade. For more information visit www.greenpeace.org/unfriendcoal.