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Greenpeace shifts datacenter carbon debate from efficiency to energy sources
Andrew Donoghue, analyst at 451 Research, examines Greenpeace’s latest report “How Clean is your Cloud”.
I
n April 2012, environmental campaign group Greenpeace published a report that calls on datacenter owners and operators to increase their use of renewable and low-carbon sources of energy. ‘How Clean Is Your Cloud’ is a follow-up to the organisation’s ‘How Dirty is your Data? A Look at the Energy Choices that Power Cloud Computing’, which was released a year ago.
The latest report argues that datacentre owners and operators should care more about the source of the energy they use. Cloud providers and other datacenter operators will no doubt reject this accusation (Apple has already hit back at some of the claims made by Greenpeace), and point to the increasing use of renewables such as solar, as well as energy-efficiency efforts in general.
Some of the suppliers mentioned in the report, as well as Greenpeace, are set to rub shoulders at the 451 Group’s annual Uptime Symposium in Santa Clara, California, in May 2012. The author of the Greenpeace report, Gary Cook, is due speak at the event and debate some of the findings. Greenpeace has been analysing the IT, datacenter and electronics industries for several years.
In Q1 2010, Greenpeace released a report about the sustainability of cloud computing to coincide with
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www.dcseurope.info I June 2012
the launch of Apple’s first iPad. The organisation took Apple to task on the energy and carbon efficiency of the datacentres supporting the iPad’s app store.
Greenpeace has also scrutinised
Facebook’s datacentre strategy. In a cyber-variant of its infamous
direct-action tactics, the organisation opted to use Facebook’s own platform to protest the company’s construction of a dedicated datacenter in Prineville, Oregon, in 2010. That action, as well as other activities, including the original datacenter report, contributed to the two organizations eventually reaching a de facto truce, and agreeing to cooperate on sustainability issues.
In Q4 2012, Facebook committed to make renewable and clean energy a bigger part of its future datacenter strategy. Facebook said it would work with Greenpeace, and others, to address issues such as siting datacenters in areas with access to renewable energy. In turn, Greenpeace said it would contribute to Facebook’s Open Compute project, and encourage other organizations and businesses to do likewise.
The decision by Facebook to build a European datacenter in Lulea, Sweden, that will take advantage of plentiful -and, crucially, cheap- hydroelectric power also helped to cement relations between the two organizations.
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