Green Data Makes Gains but More Needed

As covered in this blog in November, it's a matter of time before more people start asking How Green is Your Data?  Apple can answer with a resounding affirmative as the company now runs its data centers on 100% renewable energy, according to Data Center Knowledge.  

Google and Yahoo?  They're working on it, which is good news.  Google alone was estimated to have nearly a million servers in 2011.  Although these servers are not all in one place, their data centers across the world are massive clusters of servers that can use the same amount of juice as a small American city.

If that power is dirty, these progressive companies that give us some great things are also giving us a great deal of pollution.

Thanks to Greenpeace, this issue has been brought to light.  The top four findings from Greenpeace's report, How Clean is Your Cloud, published in April 2012 show there is more work to be done (and being done) across big name technology companies:  

"1. Three of the largest IT companies building their business around the cloud – Amazon, Apple and
Microsoft – are all rapidly expanding without adequate regard to source of electricity, and rely heavily on dirty energy to power their clouds.

2.Yahoo and Google both continue to lead the sector in prioritizing access to renewable energy in their cloud
expansion, and both have become more active in supporting policies to drive greater renewable energy investment.

3. Facebook, one of the largest online destinations with over 800 million users around the world, has now
committed to power its platform with renewable energy. Facebook took the first major step in that direction with the construction of its latest data center in Sweden, which can be fully powered by renewable energy.

4. A growing concentration of data center investments in key locations is having a significant impact on energy demand and how the electricity grid is managed; if such concentrated expansion is allowed to continue, this will make it increasingly difficult to shift these investments and the surrounding community away
from dirty sources of electricity."

Take Action by telling these companies to clean up their data.

image: dwhs.net