San Francisco / New Delhi – Greenpeace released an international study on April 21 that highlights the rapidly growing environmental footprint of the online world and offers an evaluation of both good and bad energy choices made by leading Information Technology (IT) companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo! and others.
“How Dirty is Your Data?” showcases the enormous amount of electricity required to power “the cloud” and finds that the Information and Communication Technology sector (ICT), despite significant advances in energy efficient data center design, is ignoring the importance of using renewable power as a top criterion for locating new infrastructure and is not transparent in disclosing its energy use.
From an Indian perspective, the report highlights the reliance of the Indian telecommunication industry on diesel to power its exponential growth, inspite of existing cost-competitive renewable opportunities. Currently, the industry consumes over 2 billion litres of diesel at subsidized rates, emitting over 5.6 Mt CO2e of carbon annually, which is 2% of country’s overall GHG emission (1). Considering that 40% of the over 300,000 existing mobile towers are located in rural areas, and significant expansions projected, a switch-over to renewable energy sources adds economic robustness and long-term profitability for Telecom companies.
“We expect the ICT sector to play a critical role in accelerating a shift to a low-carbon economy through the development of solutions and driving their operations with large-scale use of clean renewable energy, avoiding high carbon lock-ins,” said Greenpeace campaigner Abhishek Pratap. “But it is clear that the ICT and in particular the Telecom sector’s failure to address their growing carbon emissions hides a continued reliance on dirty diesel to power its current and future infrastructure. Consumers certainly would like to know that when they use mobiles or change their Facebook status, they are not contributing to toxic coal ash, global warming or future Fukishimas.” (2)
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 centers, which house the explosion of virtual information, currently consume 1.5-2.0% 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. (3)
- Some companies have coal intensity greater than the U.S. grid average. One of the most popular social media companies, Facebook, is among the most dependent on coal-powered electricity at 53.2%. (4)
- 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 sitting policy; IBM and Google demonstrated the best overall approach to reduce their current footprints.
- In India, where there is limited reliable grid electricity, there is a tremendous opportunity for telecom operators to show leadership by investing in renewable energy, but many are relying on heavily polluting diesel generators to fuel their growth.
“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,” Greenpeace IT Policy Analyst Gary 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.
Notes:
(1) TRAI’s recent approach paper on Green Telecommunication, which clearly stresses on need to take proactive steps in disclosure of carbon emission and setting of target for clean energy purchase for mobile towers particularly in rural off-grid area where most of telecommunication expansion happening: http://www.trai.gov.in/Green_Telecom-12.04.2011.pdf
(2) http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/cool-it/leaderboard/
(3) 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.
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 come 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 U.S. or over a quarter million European Union homes. Apple has not yet announced how the data center will be powered.
(4) U.S. grid info is available at:
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 U.S., 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.
Source: Greenpeace.
