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Which IT Companies Are the Greenest, Asks Greenpeace? Google, Yes, Apple, No.
Greenpeace, as part of an aggressive push to get tech companies to clean up their act, environmentally speaking, has been ranking companies based on their commitment to green energy.
From their press release today:
Greenpeace today released the 5th version of its "Cool IT Leaderboard," which finds internet search engine giant Google in the lead, followed by Cisco and Ericsson. Google scored particularly well for its political advocacy work and for sourcing renewable energy to its infrastructure.Google, Cisco, and Dell all stand out for sourcing over 20% renewable energy globally for each of the company's infrastructures.Oracle received the lowest ranking overall for failing to disclose renewable as well as dirty energy use.
The rapid expansion of the telecom infrastructure and the data centers that power the 'Cloud' is driving significant energy demand in many areas, much of it from dirty sources, such as coal and diesel. The Cool IT Leaderboard evaluates global IT companies on their leadership in the fight to stop climate change as this sector possesses the innovative spirit, technological know-how, and political influence to bring about a rapid clean energy revolution.
"Google's commitment to transparency, new investments in clean energy solutions, and success in powering a significant percentage of its operations with renewable energy is what we expect to see from leading IT companies," said Greenpeace International IT analyst Gary Cook.
But there were some prominent IT sector names notably absent from the list:
Apple and Facebook, two of the sector's most influential brands, were not included in this year's Leaderboard. Apple has not demonstrated leadership or elected to pursue market opportunities to drive IT energy solutions that many of its competitors have, despite record profits and large cash reserves. Facebook was not included for similar reasons, however they will be considered next year due to their recently-announced committment to a renewably powered Facebook and a partnership with Opower to use the Facebook platform to help users compare their energy usage. Both companies' energy use will be evaluated in April in the second annual Greenpeace report "How Dirty is Your Data?" which looks at the impact of the sector's rapidly growing infrastructure.
Greenpeace is working with Facebook to help the network "unfriend coal." Read more about the "Cool It" project here.
As for these companies' commitment to privacy and against censorship--that's another story.
