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This commodity originally appeared in Grist and is republished here equally function of the Climate Desk collaboration.

"It'southward not easy beingness green" is a tired cliché, just information technology'southward still particularly true if you are a giant technology visitor. Even Apple, Facebook, and Google—the best of the bunch, according to a new study from Greenpeace—will have to put in serious additional effort to fully shift to clean energy, specially in terms of lobbying at the land and local level. And the manufacture laggards, which include Amazon and eBay, accept that much farther to become.

Hither's how Greenpeace categorizes the tech giants:

Greenpeace

Energy efficiency in traditional appliances keeps improving, but our demand for free energy is additional past new technologies. In particular, companies that manufacture mobile devices and provide services like email, social networking, cloud storage, and streaming video have to contend with constantly escalating demand for data storage.

At the same time, existence eco-friendly is important to many of those aforementioned companies—or at to the lowest degree of import to their public paradigm. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft all dropped out of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) concluding year considering of bad publicity effectually the right-fly corporatist group's opposition to activity on climate change. Merely tech giants will demand to do a lot more than quit dirty lobbying groups, Greenpeace argues; they'll need to really get involved in the political sphere on behalf of clean energy solutions.

First, the good news is that some tech companies are making respectable efforts to power their operations through clean energy sources. Google has invested heavily in solar energy, and Apple appear just yesterday that it's expanding its renewable programs to manufacturing facilities in Communist china. Just in many cases, the consequence is not whether companies have good intentions just whether clean free energy is available to them.

Here are a few cardinal quotes from the Greenpeace report:

• Apple continues to atomic number 82 the accuse in powering its corner of the net with renewable free energy even as it continues to rapidly expand. All three of its information center expansions announced in the by year will be powered with renewable energy.

• Google continues to match Apple in deploying renewable energy with its expansion in some markets, only its march toward 100 per centum renewable energy is increasingly under threat by monopoly utilities for several data centers including those in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Singapore and Taiwan.

And here are some challenges the report lays out:

• Amazon'south adoption of a 100 percent renewable energy goal, while potentially pregnant, lacks bones transparency and, unlike similar commitments from Apple, Facebook or Google, does not yet appear to be guiding Amazon's investment decisions toward renewable energy and abroad from coal.

• The rapid rise of streaming video is driving significant growth in our online footprint, and in power-hungry data centers and network infrastructure needed to evangelize it.

• Microsoft has slipped farther behind Apple and Google in the race to build a light-green net, every bit its deject footprint continues to undergo massive growth in an attempt to catch up with Amazon, but has non kept pace with Apple and Google in terms of its supply of renewable electricity.

The underlying problem in many cases is that muddied energy-dependent utility monopolies are providing the electricity for massive, and growing, information centers. If these utilities use coal or natural gas, so by extension so practice the tech companies with data centers in their service areas. Meeting data-storage need without burning more fossil fuels will non be easy. Greenpeace writes:

Large information'due south massive growth is expected to continue with the emergence of inexpensive smartphones: virtually fourscore percent of the planet's adult population volition be connected to the internet past 2020, and the total number of devices connected to the internet will be roughly twice the global population by 2018. Internet traffic from mobile devices increased 69 percent in 2014 alone with the rapid increase of video streaming to mobile devices, and mobile traffic will exceed what is delivered over wired connections by 2018.

At that place are unlike means to increase renewable energy supply at data centers. The beginning, of course, is only to generate clean power on site with solar panels or current of air turbines. Apple tree is already doing this and other companies are post-obit its lead. But data centers require so much free energy that they won't generally be able to cover near of their needs that way. Other free-market approaches include power purchase agreements, in which the tech companies can make a deal with a make clean energy supplier, and "green tariffs," in which they agree to buy 100 per centum make clean ability from the local utility at a cost premium.

To get all their energy from renewables, though, will crave tech companies to engage in policy debates. Greenpeace writes:

In many markets, companies' power to power with renewable free energy volition remain severely express without policy changes. Even in more liberalized markets, information technology behooves companies to advocate for policies that will green the broader grid, narrowing the ground that they need to comprehend to power with 100 percent renewable energy. Companies tin and must become advocates with the regulators and policymakers who ultimately have the power to change markets in ways that will allow companies to achieve their renewable energy goals. State policymakers covet data center investments, offering significant tax incentives to companies to lure them into their borders. Companies could hogtie a similar race to the top on renewable energy.

There were a few instances last year of tech companies lobbying for make clean energy policies—Google submitted comments in favor of the EPA'south Clean Power Programme, and several major tech firms signed the "Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers' Principles" calling on state regulators and utilities to aggrandize access to renewable energy.

Greenpeace argues that tech companies especially need to get engaged in state and local politics, forming an constructive counterweight to the fossil fuel and right-fly interest group money that has swayed country legislative races and outcomes in contempo years. Last year, Facebook and Microsoft submitted comments to the Iowa Utilities Board in favor of distributed electricity generation, but that was a relatively isolated effect. That sort of activism needs to go routine.

In North Carolina, for example, Greenpeace notes that information technology's illegal to buy renewable free energy from a third party instead of ownership whatsoever dirty energy is offered past state monopoly Duke Free energy. The same state legislature that is offer revenue enhancement incentives to attract data centers is considering changing that constabulary. Tech companies should tell N Carolina that doing so is a precondition to getting whatsoever information centers located there, Greenpeace argues. Similarly, Virginia has a harsh cap on tertiary-party clean ability purchases, and the State Corporation Committee is due to review that rule this year.

You lot can exist certain that the utilities, the Koch brothers, Fine art Pope, and Americans for Prosperity will be involved in these fights. If clean energy supporters are not, they will exist over before they have begun. To really be green, tech companies need to put their muscle into this fight.

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Source: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/05/apple-facebook-google-microsoft-amazon/

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