Greenpeace: Apple is least green tech corporation

This assessment does not include the dirtiest of all facts. It uses software to secretly collect information from users. What does Greenpeace want companies to use? Windpower?

UK Guardian
April 21, 2011

Apple has come bottom of the most comprehensive green league table of technology companies because of its heavy reliance on “dirty data” centres.

The list, which is compiled by Greenpeace and released in San Francisco on Thursday, shows that the company relies heavily on highly polluting coal power at the sites that house its banks of servers.

Greenpeace’s report, How Dirty is Your Data? reveals that the company’s investment in a new North Carolina facility will triple its electricity consumption, equivalent to the electricity demand of 80,000 average US homes. The facility’s power will be supplied by Duke Energy, with a mix of 62% coal and 32% nuclear. On Wednesday, Apple posted a large boost in quarterly earnings, which grew by 95% to $6bn (£3.65bn).

Gary Cook, Greenpeace’s IT policy analyst and lead author of the report, said: “Consumers want to know that when they upload a video or change their Facebook status that they are not contributing to global warming or future Fukushimas.”

Companies in the US are not required by law to disclose their energy use or carbon emissions. But Greenpeace drew on publicly available information on investments made in data centres, to estimate the maximum power these facilities will consume, and matched that information with data from the government or utilities.

The report estimated dependence on coal for Apple’s data centres at 54.5%, followed by Facebook at 53.2%, IBM at 51.6%, HP at 49.4%, and Twitter at 42.5%. Top marks in Greenpeace’s clean energy index went to Yahoo, followed by Google and Amazon. Greenpeace is also campaigning for Facebook to “unfriend coal” and use cleaner energy to power its servers.

Cook said: “Many companies treat their energy consumption a bit like the Coca-Cola secret formula, because they don’t want competitors knowing how much they spend on energy. The amount of electricity they consume would give some indication of what kind of arms race they were in. They don’t really want this story to be told.”

Cloud computing relies on large data centres, rather than in-house based IT services, to power internet-based services such as Hotmail or Gmail. Data centre energy demand already accounts for 1.5% to 2% of world electricity consumption and is set to quadruple over the next 10 years.

Molly Webb, head of smart technology at the Climate Group in London, said: “Greenpeace is calling for transparency from companies which rely heavily on data centres, and that would ideally highlight the need for investment and ambitious government policy to ensure enough clean power is available to green our tweets.”

Jonathan Koomey, a project scientist for the End-Use Forecasting Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whose work was cited in the study, said that the IT industry wrongly attracted criticism: “The use of IT often reduces environmental impacts. When we compared greenhouse gas emissions for downloading music to buying it on a CD, for example, we found downloads reduced emissions 40-80%.”

Apple declined to comment on the Greenpeace report. But at its last shareholder meeting, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said the company would have more to say on the new data centre in Maiden, North Carolina, in the spring.

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The Road to Serfdom: Globalists push to shut off Western World

Puppet presidents and top mega corporations sell out the people to bring about neo-feudalism and de-industrialization to the Western World

Infowars.com

Fury is building over rolling nationwide blackouts triggered by the Obama administration’s deliberate agenda to block the construction of new coal-fired plants, as local energy companies struggle to meet Americans’ power demands amidst some of the coldest weather seen in decades.

– As we reported yesterday, four hospitals in Texas reacted furiously after they were hit with planned outages despite being promised they would be spared even as power to Super Bowl venues remains uninterrupted.

– Thousands in New Mexico have been left without natural gas as Gov. Susana Martinez on Thursday declared a state of emergency. “Due to statewide natural gas shortages, I have ordered all government agencies that do not provide essential services to shut down and all nonessential employees to stay home” on Friday, Martinez said after meeting with public safety personnel in Albuquerque,” reports the Associated Press.

– Borderland residents have been asked to limit their use of natural gas as the Texas Gas Service asks that larger commercial facilities voluntarily close their doors to save supplies.

– People in Tucson have been asked to limit their use of hot water and moderate their thermostat levels to save on energy.

– Shortages of natural gas in San Diego County has forced utility companies to “cut or reduce the gas supplied to some of their largest commercial and industrial customers,” reports North County Times.

– In El Paso, “Hundreds of thousands of electricity customers continue to face periodic blackouts, and nearly 900 gas customers still have no heat,” reports the El Paso Times, with El Paso Electric resorting to using generators in a struggle to meet demand while still having to implement forced outages.

Coal-fired power plants are used to convert coal to synthetic natural gas. The Obama administration’s efforts to block the construction of new clean-burning coal plants has massively exacerbated this week’s outages.

Mexico has now announced that it will suspend supplying power to southern US states, underscoring how America has been left completely dependent and desperate as a result of the Obama administration’s war on the coal industry.

Cold weather is not the primary culprit behind the power outages that have hit many areas of the country this week. The real blame lies with the Obama administration’s deliberate war against the efforts of local power companies to meet America’s energy needs by building new plants, the vast majority of which have been blocked by judges, governors and the EPA over the last four years at the behest of the Obama administration in the name of preventing global warming.

State authorities in Texas have been engaged in a long-running battle with the EPA as the feds attempt to block the construction of new plants by enforcing adherence to new clean air permit regulations that cripple smaller companies’ ability to afford desperately needed new energy centers and plants. Twelve states are mounting a legal challenge against EPA restrictions that threaten to bankrupt the entire industry.

But it’s not just in Texas where the federal government has embarked on an all out siege against energy independence.

– Back in July 2008, a Superior Court judge in Fulton County blocked the construction of a coal plant in Georgia, citing global warming concerns and the need to limit CO2 emissions.

– In January 2009, the Obama EPA blocked approval for a coal-fired power plant in South Dakota, claiming the state, “didn’t meet requirements under the Clean Air Act in part of its proposed permit for the plant.”

– As Governor of Kansas, Obama’s current Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius slapped a de facto ban on the construction of all new coal-fired plants across the state.

– Last month, Senators in Obama’s home state of Illinois blocked the construction of a clean-burning coal gasification and power generating plant.

– As a result of the EPA’s recent remand of air permits, Shell Oil announced yesterday that it has “dropped plans to drill in the Arctic waters of the Beaufort Sea this year,” ensuring more shortages and higher energy prices for Americans already laboring under soaring food costs.

The federal government’s siege against independent power companies’ efforts to build coal-fired plants is part of the unfolding agenda to de-industrialize the United States even as China and Mexico build new power plants at ever accelerating speeds.

Global warming alarmists have consistently gone on record to openly voice their agenda to de-industrialize the United States in the name of saving the planet.

In his new book, author and environmentalist Keith Farnish called for acts of sabotage and environmental terrorism in blowing up dams and demolishing cities in order to return the planet to pre-industrial society. Prominent NASA global warming alarmist and Al Gore ally Dr. James Hansen endorsed Farnish’s book.

The global elite resolved to exploit contrived fears about climate change to de-industrialize the United States back in 1991 when the Club of Rome, a powerful globalist NGO committed to limiting growth and ushering in a post-industrial society, said in their report, The First Global Revolution, “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. All these dangers are caused by human intervention… The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”

In 1969, Dr. Richard Day, the National Medical Director of the Rockefeller-sponsored “Planned Parenthood,” asserted that a move towards a “unified global system” would necessitate the sabotage of American industry.

“Each part of the world will have a specialty and thus become inter-dependent, he said. The US will remain a center for agriculture, high tech, communications, and education but heavy industry would be “transported out,” Day stated.

In 2008 Obama openly stated his plan to bankrupt the coal industry.