Greenpeace report on IT
By Asha

Greenpeace has released a study that highlights the rapidly growing environmental footprint of the online world and offers an evaluation of both good and bad energy choices made by leading Information Technology (IT) companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo! and others.

“How Dirty is Your Data?” showcases the enormous amount of electricity required to power “the cloud” and finds that the IT industry, despite significant advances in energy efficient data center design, is both largely ignoring the importance of using renewable power as a top criterion for locating new infrastructure and is not transparent in disclosing its energy use.

“We expect these companies to play a pivotal role in ensuring we move to clean, safe renewable energy system and avoid future disasters like Fukishima,” Gary Cook, Greenpeace IT Policy Analyst said. “But the IT industry's failure to disclose basic information on its rapidly growing energy footprint has hidden a continued reliance on 19th century dirty coal power to power its 21st century infrastructure. We think consumers want to know that when they upload a video or change their Facebook status that they are not contributing to toxic coal ash, global warming or future Fukishima's.”

Greenpeace evaluated ten cloud companies on their transparency, infrastructure siting decisions, and mitigation strategies. Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, and others receive failing marks in one or more categories.

Key findings:

•Despite the fact that data centres, which house the explosion of virtual information, currently consume 1.5-2% of all global electricity and are growing at a rate of 12% per year, companies in the sector, as a whole, do not release information on their energy use and its associated global warming emissions.
•Some companies have a coal intensity greater than the US grid average. One of the most popular social media companies, Facebook, is among the most dependent on coal-powered electricity at 53.2%.
•Yahoo! and Google seem to understand the importance of a renewable energy supply. Yahoo! has sited near sources of renewable energy, and Google is directly purchasing clean power. Their models should be employed and improved upon by other cloud companies.
•Of the ten brands graded, Akamai, a global content distribution network, earned top of the class recognition for transparency; Yahoo! had the strongest infrastructure siting policy; IBM and Google demonstrated the best overall approach to reduce their current footprints.

“Green IT should not be a choice between energy efficiency and clean electricity - companies need to give equal attention to both for green data centers,” Cook said. “As Yahoo! and Google are demonstrating, forward thinking companies can help lead us towards energy security and safety by stating a preference for renewable power and supporting strong policies that move us to a low carbon economy.”

The Greenpeace report pays special attention to the Indian telecom sector and urges it to move to clean energy

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The Indian telecommunications industry is one of the fastest growing in the world, adding between 8 and 10 million mobile subscribers every month. At current rates of growth, this would translate into 800 million mobile subscribers, the second largest telecom market globally by 2012. Much of the growth in the Indian telecom sector is from India's rural and semi-urban areas. By 2012, India is likely to have 200 million rural telecom connections at a penetration rate of 25%13. Buoyed by the rapid surge in the subscriber base, huge investments are being made into this industry. The booming domestic telecom market has been attracting huge amounts of investment, which is likely to accelerate with the entry of new players and launch of new services, and has attracted 8% of the cumulative foreign direct investment (FDI) over the last two years.

Out of the existing 300,000 mobile towers, over 40% exist in rural and semi-urban areas where either the grid-connected electricity is not available or the electricity supply is irregular14. As a result, mobile towers – and, increasingly, grid-connected towers - in these areas rely on diesel generators to power their network operations. The consumption of diesel by the telecom sector currently stands at a staggering 2bn litres annually, second only to the railways in India. This consumption is responsible for 5.2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually and is growing, exceeding 2% of the country’s total GHG emissions.

As much as the mobile telecommunications network is enabling India to leapfrog the traditional wired telecommunication network, the Indian telecoms sector must look to solar power to break the telecoms sector’s current addiction to diesel, and begin the transition to a clean energy powered telecommunications network.
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