The environmental activist group Greenpeace named Amazon, Apple and Microsoft as relying on ‘dirty’ fuel such as coal to run their data centers. The report commends Google, Facebook and Yahoo! for their location choice and commitments to renewable energy.

The report : “How Clean is my Cloud” ranks 15 companies (see table below) according to their energy policies, data center site locations and Greenpeace’s own calculations of energy requirements and renewable energy use.

Apple issued a statement saying: "Our data center in North Carolina will draw about 20 megawatts at full capacity, and we are on track to supply more than 60% of that power on-site from renewable sources including a solar farm and fuel cell installation which will each be the largest of their kind in the country. We believe this industry-leading project will make Maiden the greenest data center ever built, and it will be joined next year by our new facility in Oregon running on 100% renewable energy."

Greenpeace used its own calculations for a clean energy index based on estimated power demand and the percentage of renewable or clean energy used. This was based on data submitted to Greenpeace and public PUE numbers and media reports, Greenpeace said.

It admitted that Amazon and Apple said the figures it presented to them for comment were not correct and proceeded with its own calculations.

The group wants the IT industry to lobby so called dirty utilities and governments to provide clean energy.

Ian Bitterlin, CTO of Ark Continuity, and DCD blogger, said: “In most countries in the world for every ‘clean’ Watt consumed in a data center someone else has to burn  a ‘dirty’ one – the utilities fuel-mix is a zero-sum game over the short-term.  Greenpeace will drive every large data-center out of the USA because the US grid can’t expand its renewables capacity as fast as data-centers are growing.”

(a) Clean Energy Index and Coal Intensity are calculated based on estimates of power demand for evaluated facilities [http://www.greenpeace.org/cloudcomputingfacilities]
(b) Akamai’s global network of server is highly distributed and not possible to individually evaluate as we have done for other brands. However, Akamai is the only company that is reporting a fleet wide and regional Carbon Utilization Effectiveness (CUE), as noted in the data center facility table.
(c) Both AWS and Apple were provided facility power demand estimates to review, both responded they were not correct, but neither provided alternative estimates. Using conservative calculations, Greenpeace has used best information available to derive power demand, and has decided to publish and invite AWS and Apple to be transparent and provide more accurate data for their facility power demands. Source: Greenpeace

FOCUS Comment: It is hard to see how Greenpeace is comparing Apples with Apples. Or in this case Apples with Amazons and IBMs. The energy profile of data centers depends on so many factors that this report has too many technical gaps.  Comparing IBM with Twitter is like comparing an Elephant with a Gnat.
The report, while noble in its intent is lacking in its execution. It falls down on the technical detail which would validate any ranking of companies.
We agree that energy strategy transparency is to be encouraged, and policy influence from the IT industry should be coordinated to pressure utilities and governments on sustainable energy production. But saying one company has good clean data center energy while another has bad dirty data center energy lacks credibility. 

See: Mixed reactions to Greenpeace 'dirty energy' report