Clean Our Cloud

Apple reveals new progress in path to 100% renewable energy

David Pomerantz — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:25:00 +0100

There’s more good news to report from the clean energy revolution that’s spreading like wildfire among the biggest technology companies in the world: Apple released an environmental report today showing that it has made real progress in its effort to power the iCloud with renewable energy, and not coal.

Apple is growing its facilities that store your music, photos and videos at a rapid pace, and those buildings, called data centers, use massive amounts of electricity. Because of pressure from hundreds of thousands of Greenpeace supporters and Apple customers, Apple committed last year to providing 100 % of the power to those data centers with renewable energy. Greenpeace released a report in July mapping out the pathway Apple should take to meet its ambitious goals.

Today, Apple’s report disclosed some new details about how it has made real progress in many of the ways that we laid out then:

Apple has increased the amount of renewable energy it is generating from solar panels and fuel cells at its data center in North Carolina. Apple is now reporting an increase in the percentage of renewable energy from 35% to 75% over the last three years;

Apple disclosed more details about its energy policy and the principles guiding its renewable energy efforts, including its belief that its renewable energy should displace coal power from the grid, and should bring brand new renewable energy to the grid.

Perhaps most importantly, Apple disclosed significantly more information about how exactly it’s acquiring renewable energy, which allows its customers to have faith that Apple is meeting its ambitions with real action.

Of course, there’s still plenty of work left for Apple to do. As it keeps growing the cloud, Apple still has major roadblocks to genuinely meeting its 100 % clean energy commitment in North Carolina, where renewable energy policies are under siege and electric utility Duke Energy is intent on blocking wind and solar energy from entering the grid.

Duke Energy is Apple’s only option for buying electricity in North Carolina, and it makes electricity primarily from dirty sources of energy that cause global warming, like burning coal and gas, as well as dangerous nuclear power plants. Duke has shown no signs of changing, and organizations allied with Duke like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are trying to change state laws to make it even harder for forward-thinking companies like Apple to buy clean energy there.

To show how it can help remove those roadblocks in North Carolina, Apple has an opportunity to work together with Google, accepting its challenge to the sector to develop a consortium among IT companies to help green the grid. Apple, Google, and Facebook working together in North Carolina would be a potent force in asking Duke Energy and state government officials to help bring more renewable energy on the grid in North Carolina for everyone.

We’ll keep urging Apple to do those things, just as we’ll keep pushing other, slower technology companies like Amazon and Microsoft to follow the good example that companies like Google, Facebook, Salesforce – and now more every day, Apple – are setting by their adoption of renewable energy.

Salesforce the latest company to commit to clean energy

David Pomerantz — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:44:00 +0100

The effort to build a world powered by clean energy needs champions in every arena of our economy: activists on the streets, politicians in government, engineers in labs, and corporate leaders in boardrooms.

Today, we’re happy to recognize that Salesforce has joined the ranks of a growing club of global technology companies that agree that a green cloud is important to their growth, and that a truly green cloud must be powered by renewable energy.

Despite the impressive gains in energy efficiency achieved by data center operators in recent years, data centers remain among the fastest growing users of electricity; they grew at nearly 14% in 2012, and are projected to grow at least another 10% in 2013.

Salesforce is likewise growing rapidly, as are its greenhouse gas emissions – its absolute emissions are up nearly 50% over the past year. The expected growth of the Salesforce cloud means that it will need more data centers soon to store its clients’ data. That means using more electricity, which is why it’s so important that Salesforce has committed to grow using renewable energy.

Salesforce’s goal to power its cloud with renewable energy sends an important signal to the rest of the sector that energy efficiency is important, but not enough. Salesforce has been an early pioneer in the sector’s shift to the cloud, and other major data center operators should follow the example that Google, Facebook, and now Salesforce have set by being more transparent about their energy and making a renewably powered cloud an explicit goal. While the transformation of Salesforce’s cloud to renewable electricity will not happen overnight, the commitment and initial steps in Salesforce’s announcement show that the company intends to play a leading role in shaping a truly green cloud.

Salesforce’s leadership stands in sharp contrast to other cloud computing companies, most notably Amazon Web Services (AWS), which does not provide even basic information to its customers on the environmental impact of the AWS cloud or the extent to which it is powered by renewable energy.

Greenpeace will work with Salesforce to monitor its progress and ensure that it takes steps to meet its goal of fully powering its data centers with renewable electricity. We will also continue to call out the companies that have yet to see the light, like Microsoft and Amazon, which continue to lag behind the rest of the technology sector by refusing to take steps to curb their use of coal, gas and nuclear power for their data centers.

If those companies want to remain on the cutting edge, they should follow the lead of Salesforce and others by embracing clean energy as a core part of doing business in the 21^st century.

Google grants over $2 million for energy policy reform

David Pomerantz — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:45:00 +0100

Google has begun 2013 with announcements of two significant investments to advance the future of renewable energy and energy efficiency in the United States.

Marking a significant new milestone in its clean energy advocacy efforts, Google’s philanthropic arm, google.org, issued a grant of $2.65 million to the Energy Foundation on Monday to “support policy reforms that will lead to more intelligent energy use.”

“Policy reforms” is a key phrase here: Google isn’t content to buy renewable energy for its data centers – it actually wants policies that mean consumers and businesses can use more clean energy and be smarter about the energy they use.

Google’s grant comes on the heels of a $200 million investment it made last week in a wind farm, the Spinning Spur project in the Texas panhandle. That put Google’s to-date investments in clean energy projects at over $1 billion.

“We’re also proud to be the first investor in an EDF Renewable Energy project that is not a financial institution, as we believe that corporations can be an important new source of capital for the renewable energy sector,” Google said of the investment.

Additionally, Google worked with organizations like ACORE to support extension of the Wind Production Tax Credit that barely eked through the U.S. Congress at the end of the year. While a one-year extension is hardly enough stability for the growing but still young U.S. wind industry, the extra 12 months will be crucial to getting more wind projects started in 2013.

Last year, Google’s willingness to advocate for clean energy, and to put its money where its mouth is, earned it the top spot in Greenpeace’s Cool IT Leaderboard, which ranks technology companies for their climate and clean energy leadership. Other US companies, like Microsoft, AT&T, and IBM, lagged far behind.

Greenpeace will release its next Cool IT Leaderboard at the end of February – check it out to see how other companies compare to Google’s clean energy leadership.

Does Apple’s commitment to a 'coal free' iCloud have a passport?

David Pomerantz — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:10:00 +0100

Apple promised in May – thanks in part to pressure from its customers and Greenpeace supporters – that all of its data centres would become “coal-free” and powered by 100% renewable energy. However, rumours are circulating about a new data centre that Apple is said to be building in Hong Kong.

Apple has not yet confirmed the investment, but the Hong Kong Economic Times, citing three unnamed sources, is reporting that Apple will build its first data centre outside of the US there. This raises questions about what kind of energy Apple will use to power such a data centre.

While we have heard some recent news of more fuel cells for the iCloud facility in North Carolina, we’re still eagerly awaiting a proper update from Apple about how it intends to meet its commitment to provide coal-free energy to its US-based data centres in North Carolina, Oregon and Nevada.

The news of a Hong Kong iCloud data centre raises a new challenge for the company’s clean energy plans, and potentially a thornier one for Apple to solve.

Similar to the dirty energy mix provided by Duke Energy in North Carolina, the electricity grid in Hong Kong is a troubling mixture of fossil fuels: 54% coal, 23% nuclear and 23% natural gas. Renewable energy makes up less than 1% of the grid.

In sharp contrast to its ambitious plans for importing more nuclear power, the Hong Kong government has shown a lack of commitment in developing the renewable energy sector, and is currently proposing to expand renewable energy to only 1-2% of the total energy mix by 2020. (See page 28 of the How Clean is Your Cloud? report for more information on Hong Kong.)

Apple is not the only IT company, however, that’s setting up shop in Hong Kong. Data centre floor space grew 18% in 2010-2011 (Ming Pao News, 9 February 2012) with both household-name internet companies and lesser-known co-location facilities entering the fray.

Some investigative reporting from Wired suggests that Amazon Web Services is headed to Hong Kong as well, and Rackspace already operates a data centre there. Google has announced plans to invest US$300 million in a Hong Kong data centre, to be completed in 2013.

While Google has set the pace for the industry’s adoption of renewable energy in the US, the company’s new Hong Kong data centre represents a critical challenge to its impressive track record of steadily increasing the amount of renewable energy powering its data centres.

Procuring clean electricity in Hong Kong will also be challenging for Apple, but not impossible. There are ample wind resources in Hong Kong, and Apple could spur investment in new wind projects.

Apple and the other major IT brands that have built data centres in Hong Kong could work together to use their considerable influence to lobby the utilities there, Hong Kong Electrics and China Light and Power, to increase their planned use of renewable energy so that the grid powering their data centres becomes cleaner over the long term.

If Apple worked collaboratively with other major cloud brands in Hong Kong, it would wield massive influence on the electricity sector. Hong Kong’s electricity demand has become static in recent years, so new data centres are a major driver for new electricity capacity.

It’s crucial that industry leaders such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace and Google – all of which have set sustainability goals (except for Amazon)– start setting a clear bar for the utilities and a clear example for other data centre operators in Hong Kong.

They should demand that utilities bring renewable energy to the Hong Kong grid to at least keep pace with their electricity appetite as data centre investment there rapidly expands.

Amazon Web Services goes green? Unfortunately, not yet

David Pomerantz — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 09:00:00 +0100

When most people think of Amazon.com, they think of e-books or online shopping. But Amazon is also responsible for storing and delivering the data behind a massive portion of the Internet via its Amazon Web Services (AWS) business, including Netflix, Pinterest, Spotify, and Smugmug. Amazon won’t say exactly how many servers it has keeping the Internet humming, but a recent study estimated that one third of all daily internet users will access an Amazon AWS cloud site on average at least once a day.

Unfortunately, much of the massive AWS cloud is powered by dirty sources of energy like coal, which is why Greenpeace has asked AWS to follow other leading Internet companies, like Google and Facebook, to switch from dirty to clean energy.

Since AWS has failed to seize this opportunity, Greenpeace launched a hoax “Green AWS” website last week at re:Invent, Amazon’s biggest conference for its customers, in Las Vegas.

Throughout the conference Greenpeace set up a wireless network to divert conference attendees’ attention to www.greenaws.com, a web site that declared that AWS would be rolling out cloud options powered by renewable energy, and that customers could sign up there to host their data in a special pilot edition of the program. If only.

So far, Amazon has ignored the growing movement toward providing a cloud powered by renewable energy – that movement includes some of its biggest competitors, as well as its customers.

Unlike competitors Google, Microsoft and Rackspace, Amazon will not even tell its customers how much energy it is using or what its sources are.

According to Greenpeace International’s analysis (see page 4 of that report) of major cloud companies’ energy supply, the AWS cloud gets only 13.5% of its electricity supply from renewable sources overall. For those AWS customers who rely on AWS’s US East Region in Virginia, which is estimated to hold 70% of the servers in the AWS cloud, the picture is far worse; more than 75% of the electricity supply in that region comes from coal and nuclear power, including coal that comes from highly destructive mountaintop removal mining. Only 4% of energy there comes from renewable sources.

Here is how AWS stacks up against other leading cloud companies:

	Energy Transparency?	Claimed Renewable Energy Commitment	Clean Energy Index	Dirty Energy %
AWS	No	None	14%	57%
Google	Yes	Carbon Neutral, $1B invested in renewable energy	40%	44%
Facebook	Yes	Renewable powered Facebook	38%	48%
Rackspace	Yes	Factors renewable energy in data center investments	32%	51%
Apple	Yes	100% renewable energy & coal-free iCloud	23%	45%
Microsoft	Yes	Carbon Neutral	22%	57%

Energy Transparency?

Claimed Renewable Energy Commitment

Clean Energy Index

Dirty Energy %

AWS

None

14%

57%

Google

Yes

Carbon Neutral, $1B invested in renewable energy

40%

44%

Facebook

Yes

Renewable powered Facebook

38%

48%

Rackspace

Yes

Factors renewable energy in data center investments

32%

51%

Apple

Yes

100% renewable energy & coal-free iCloud

23%

45%

Microsoft

Yes

Carbon Neutral

22%

57%

AWS competitors like Google and Rackspace are already making the switch to clean energy. Google has invested almost one billion dollars in renewable energy, and is increasingly powering its data centers with renewable energy like wind power.

Amazon could make the same bold moves, but the company’s leadership seems intent on continuing to use 19^th century energy to power its amazing 21^st century cloud. Amazon’s customers deserve to store their data in a cloud that’s powered by clean energy, and if Amazon does not want to provide that, those customers may want to start looking at other, cleaner options out there.

Clippy’s back with a message for Microsoft: Give us a clean cloud

David Pomerantz — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:50:00 +0200

Remember Clippy? You know, that little paper clip that always popped up at the most annoying times when you were trying to write something in older versions of Microsoft Word?

Well, Clippy’s back, and poised to pop up at Microsoft stores around the country with a message for his makers.

Clippy’s advice: If Microsoft wants the new Windows 8 and Surface tablet to be modern, innovative products that appeal to young customers, they need to power their cloud with 21^st-century clean energy.

Microsoft has great products that help us connect with our friends and have fun. All of them – whether it’s the new Surface tablet, Windows 8, Skype, or an Xbox – connect to the Internet, or Microsoft’s “cloud.”

Connecting to the cloud is a great feature of Microsoft’s stuff. We love the Internet! But as the Internet grows, it needs more electricity, and unfortunately, Microsoft’s getting the electricity for its cloud from old, dirty sources. The massive data centers that store and compute the data for Microsoft’s cloud use a lot of electricity, and much of it comes from dirty, dangerous old sources like coal and nuclear power. Microsoft’s most recent data centre announcements show that is it continuing to build in locations such as Wyoming and Virginia in the United States that are attached to dirty energy. Despite over 250,000 messages to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft has yet to significantly invest in clean energy.

Today’s release of Windows 8 and the Surface – both products that will be heavily integrated into the cloud – mean more and more electricity use by Microsoft. Microsoft’s launch today is a great opportunity for them to bring us the greenest tablet and software out there, but Microsoft can only do that if it embraces clean energy.

Other Internet companies are leading the way for Microsoft. Google has invested almost a billion dollars in renewable energy, and is buying energy from wind farms to power its data centers.

If you want Windows 8 and the Surface to be connected to clean energy, and you want Microsoft to be as green as Google (or greener!), make sure Microsoft gets the message, and tweet Clippy’s advice to @Microsoft. Using the link on the left, tweet this post, along with the message: “Hi, I am Clippy, your office assistant. @microsoft, would you like help building a #cleancloud for #windows8?”

Or post a comment on one of the posts on Microsoft’s Facebook page asking Microsoft to move us toward a clean energy future like Google is doing.

Microsoft can be a clean energy leader, but only if they hear from you!