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Greenpeace Features Apple as 'Green Energy Innovator' in New Report

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Environmental activist group Greenpeace, which has in the past taken Apple to task over environmental issues, has released a new report entitled "Clicking Clean: How Companies are Building the Green Internet" which classifies Apple along with Google and Facebook as "green energy innovators". The report praises Apple for its commitment to renewable energy, awarding the company three "A" grades and a "B" grade in the group's four rating categories.
Apple's aggressive pursuit of its commitment to power the iCloud with 100% renewable energy has given the company the inside track among the IT sector's leaders in building a green Internet. Apple has made good on its pledge by building the largest privately owned solar farms at its North Carolina data center, working with its utility in Nevada to power its upcoming data center there with solar and geothermal energy, and purchasing wind energy for its Oregon and California data centers. Apple's commitment to renewable energy has helped set a new bar for the industry, illustrating in very concrete terms that a 100% renewable internet is within its reach, and providing several models of intervention for other companies that want to build a sustainable Internet.
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greenpeace_clicking_clean.jpg
The full report (PDF) highlights Apple's strong performance in transparency, its commitments to renewable energy and siting of facilities in areas with access to renewable energy, and its deployment of and advocacy for renewable energy. The only area where Greenpeace gives a slight downgrade to Apple is in energy efficiency and mitigation, where the group believes that Apple could do more to share details on its energy efficient facility designs to help the industry in general become more environmentally friendly.

Greenpeace was initially quite sour on Apple's renewable energy plans for its flagship North Carolina data center, believing the company to be relying mostly on coal-powered energy sources. Apple took issue with Greenpeace's claims, but the publicity seemed to have encouraged Apple to become more open about its commitments to renewable energy as it publicly stated its intentions to run all of its data center on 100% renewable energy. While Greenpeace continued to overestimate Apple's energy needs for the North Carolina facility for some time, the group appears to now be satisfied with Apple's disclosures and is on board with the company's energy policies.

Article Link: Greenpeace Features Apple as 'Green Energy Innovator' in New Report
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/04/02/greenpeace-apple-green-energy-innovator/
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bullamakanka

macrumors newbie
Apr 2, 2014
23
10
This is perhaps off-topic, but I'm always irked by the use of cooling towers with "smoke" used to symbolize the "bad" side of energy. This is not smoke. They are cooling towers, and it's steam/water vapor that is seen coming out. Not smoke.

I worked at a design firm in Sydney a while back, and one of the clients was the NSW Energy Association (the exact name eludes me), and one of the biggest problems they had from a PR perspective was this very thing: people think it's smoke coming out of those big towers, which obviously looks bad. The real smoke is coming out of the super-tall chimney stacks, which is almost invisible these days.
 
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bzero

macrumors member
Apr 1, 2014
42
0
And what is so environmentally-unfriendly about Zynga? Their apps being trash doesn't count.
 
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Unggoy Murderer

macrumors 65816
Jan 28, 2011
1,151
3,983
Edinburgh, UK
Greenpeace are hypocritical, corrupt to the top liars motivated by politics above anything else. Was it not Greenpeace that were protesting outside Apple's Irish HQ a couple of years ago?

That organisation disgusts me to my core.
 
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everything-i

macrumors 6502a
Jun 20, 2012
827
2
London, UK
bullamakanka said:
This is perhaps off-topic, but I'm always irked by the use of cooling towers with "smoke" used to symbolize the "bad" side of energy. This is not smoke. They are cooling towers, and it's steam/water vapor that is seen coming out. Not smoke.

I worked at a design firm in Sydney a while back, and one of the clients was the NSW Energy Association (the exact name eludes me), and one of the biggest problems they had from a PR perspective was this very thing: people think it's smoke coming out of those big towers, which obviously looks bad. The real smoke is coming out of the super-tall chimney stacks, which is almost invisible these days.
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The cooling towers still represent a colossal wast of energy. There are energy recovery systems that can be employed which can heat whole towns from a single power stations waste heat. Having said that I do think , as you say, these are too often represented in the context of pollution, rather than energy efficiency, which is ridiculous.
 
Porco

Porco

macrumors 68040
Mar 28, 2005
3,315
6,909
bullamakanka said:
This is perhaps off-topic, but I'm always irked by the use of cooling towers with "smoke" used to symbolize the "bad" side of energy. This is not smoke. They are cooling towers, and it's steam/water vapor that is seen coming out. Not smoke.

I worked at a design firm in Sydney a while back, and one of the clients was the NSW Energy Association (the exact name eludes me), and one of the biggest problems they had from a PR perspective was this very thing: people think it's smoke coming out of those big towers, which obviously looks bad. The real smoke is coming out of the super-tall chimney stacks, which is almost invisible these days.
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You make a good and valid point, but at least they put what appears to be a mine cart full of coal next to it, indicating the cooling towers are at least part of the process of burning fossil fuels to produce energy, which is surely the point they are aiming to illustrate.
 
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ChrisCW11

macrumors 65816
Jul 21, 2011
1,037
1,433
if Greenpeace actually cared

Then they should be outraged over the amount of energy required for Bitcoin to exist. The "mining" operations that increase the complexity of the Bitcoin security are consuming hundreds of megawatts of power 24/7 around the world.

However Greenpeace probably doesn't want to be outraged about Bitcoin because they most likely use this currency to anonymously fund their less desirable, terrorist like activities.
 
roadbloc

roadbloc

macrumors G3
Aug 24, 2009
8,784
215
UK
Looks like Microsoft and Yahoo might be attempting to follow suit. Good on all the companies who are putting in effort to be greener.
 
Will do good

Will do good

macrumors 6502a
Mar 24, 2010
666
391
Earth
I don't believe in or trust Greenpeace. Their history of actions has speak more than enough for me not to listen to them.
 
Lesser Evets

Lesser Evets

macrumors 68040
Jan 7, 2006
3,527
1,294
I'd like to see how much each of these companies kick back to Greenpeace to keep them at bay. That would be telling. Apple is probably a little more "charitable" than Google or Facebook.
 
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H2SO4

macrumors 603
Nov 4, 2008
5,651
6,937
portlandia said:
That's because Samsung doesn't really have a need for a massive data centers. This infographic shows companies using green technology with their data centers.
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Data centres are terrible places for green credentials too. The bigger ones have so much Power supply and data redundancy it's criminal.
 
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hexor

macrumors 6502
Nov 26, 2002
271
88
Minnesota
Something still seems wrong if you cut down a large swath of forest in order to install photovoltaic panels.
 
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Tiger8

macrumors 68020
May 23, 2011
2,479
649
Amazon are the reason why we talk 'cloud'

Here we go dissing amazon without giving context.

Part of the reason why Amazon is so not green is because they prioneered the whole software as a service, server as a service, and platform as a service technologies (the cloud) that Google then Apple replicated. Amazon have been doing this for well over a decade, and they have (wait for it) the biggest cloud footprint.. EVER. You can't compare them to newcomers like Apple.
 
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hexor

macrumors 6502
Nov 26, 2002
271
88
Minnesota
Will do good said:
I don't believe in or trust Greenpeace. Their history of actions has speak more than enough for me not to listen to them.
Click to expand...

Yeah.. especially when they listed Dell as "greener" for so long simply because Dell "said" they were going to do stuff and ended up not doing it.
 
T-Will

T-Will

macrumors 65816
Sep 8, 2008
1,042
433
Shame on Dupont, Amazon, Twitter, for using that dirty dirty extremely polluting nuclear power!!!

:p
 
L

LastQuadrant

macrumors member
Sep 22, 2013
94
0
jctevere said:
Funny - I didn't happen to see Samsung listed as an "Innovator" here. :apple:
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This is just a DataCenter report card in terms of the use of Green Energy.

Samsung doesn't have any major DataCenter's that are big enough that I'm aware of in this country. That's what this report card is based on. It's not based on technology innovation with product design or who has the most technologically advanced DataCenter in terms of functionality, it's just how the DataCenters are constructed and operated from a energy standpoint.

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T-Will said:
Shame on Dupont, Amazon, Twitter, for using that dirty dirty extremely polluting nuclear power!!!

:p
Click to expand...

Nuclear power isn't quite there from a Green energy source since they haven't perfected it yet. They are still running older generation Nuclear power which the byproduct isn't that safe. Eventually they hope to make it so there isn't any negative aspects of Nuclear, but they have to perfect it first and then they have to actually build the plants. They are getting closer and closer, but it's still not 100% there.

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hexor said:
Something still seems wrong if you cut down a large swath of forest in order to install photovoltaic panels.
Click to expand...

Well, they put the DataCenter in an area that's not a desert.

----------

What's strange is that Greenpeace has always been attacking Apple over the others for many years and look who's at the top of the list of being Green, yet when is Greenpeace going to start attacking the others that aren't even close to where Apple was a few years ago when they were being attacked?

Talk about a hyprotical company, Greenpeace gets a D for their inability to go after these other people.

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jvacek said:
Surprise surprise, Zynga as low as it gets.
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Zynga doesn't have any money.
 
C

crsh1976

macrumors 68000
Jun 13, 2011
1,571
1,753
The amount of green-washing BS in that report is nothing short of stellar, and I say this about all tech companies, not just Apple.

I didn't know Greenpeace had sold out like this, but it's not really a surprise tbqh.
 
John.B

John.B

macrumors 601
Jan 15, 2008
4,193
705
Holocene Epoch
The Google data center near here gets all their power from a coal-burning power plant.

For the record, coal plants are the number one source of mercury contamination into the environment, more than all other sources combined.

But they claim to buy "credits" from a windfarm on the other side of the state, so... hey... Green. :rolleyes:

SMH
 
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