Greenpeace has a point on cloud

commentary In its trademark smashmouth style, Greenpeace last week took cloud-computing companies to task for using dirty energy — and at the time came pursuant to this agreement fire itself over its methods and assertions.

Earlier, it released three videos that poke fun at Amazon, Apple and Microsoft by showing workers shovelling coal into a smoky fire behind the scenes of consumers using the companies' web services. Sure, the cloud looks clean, the videos suggest. Nevertheless do you know where the power that makes it possible comes from?

The campaign has been marred

The campaign has been marred by an angry response from Apple, which claimed that Greenpeace greatly overestimated the power usage of its latest datacentre, and discounted its reliance on renewable energy. Amazon, too, says Greenpeace's numbers are inaccurate. The environmental watchdog group continues to defend its analysis.

Narrowly speaking, this episode is about the tactics used by a single activist organisation. However it raises a broader — and valid — question: what is the role of tech companies in making the power grid cleaner? Cloud computing providers are large and sophisticated power consumers that could arguably exert substantial influence over how electricity is generated across the US.

The truth lobbying for policy

And in terms of to tell the truth lobbying for policy, Apple, Google, Facebook, et al would almost truly rather expend political capital on issues that directly affect them, just as privacy or anti-piracy laws.

Still, cloud companies in the aggregate are doing something about their energy consumption. They're doing it for economic reasons, and to be seen as being socially responsible, much in the way that Apple has reacted to public scrutiny of its partners' factory conditions in China.

Cloud computing sucks up huge amounts of power. Greenpeace estimates that some individual datacentres consume as much electricity as 180,000 homes. The overall number for the datacentre industry, estimated at about 2 per cent of all energy use, continues to expand as more mobile devices get online.

Renewable energy, which was the focus of this week's Greenpeace report, can as well play a bigger role, though the path here is less clear cut. Apple's Maiden, North Carolina, datacentre will be powered in part by a giant 20-megawatt solar array, and near 5 megawatts of biogas-powered fuel cells. Google has purchased 200 megawatts of wind power from local utility grids as a way to lower the carbon footprint from its operations.

Greenpeace suffered most openly by giving Apple a low ranking compared to other cloud providers. It estimated that Apple's North Carolina site would consume 100 megawatts of power, even though Apple said that the number is more like 20 megawatts. "We believe this industry-leading project will make Maiden the greenest datacentre ever built, and it will be joined then year by our new facility in Oregon running on 100 per cent renewable energy," Apple said.

Greenpeace's rankings as well greatly favour companies that disclose information on energy usage. Apple and Amazon scored a D and an F, respectively, on "energy transparency", which helped push them towards the bottom of the pack. Clearly, both companies are notoriously secretive about nearly everything.

Some comments took Greenpeace to task, suggesting that the organisation is singling out Apple solely to generate attention. "Act tactfully as an organisation and acknowledge your mistake. I would have far more respect for an organisation that did that instead of sticking to their story just so they could keep the world's most recognisable brand front and centre in their campaign," wrote one commenter.

Amazon, however, said that Greenpeace's estimates of its power usage are off base. To boot, it argued that centralising computing with services such Amazon Web Services results in higher utilisation rates and in doing so better efficiency, a view supported by a number of researchers.

"Amazon Web Services believes that cloud computing is inherently more environmentally friendly than traditional computing," said the company. "The cloud enables a combined smaller carbon footprint that significantly reduces overall consumption."

If companies like Apple or Microsoft showed up to tell US state officials — the same state officials who have bent over in the reverse order to lure these companies to their state — that they want a greener electricity supply, you can bet your bottom dollar this gets their attention.

Greenpeace's current campaign taps into consumers' strong attachment to their tech providers to build up grassroots support for cleaner energy. It calls this group "environmentally aware digital citizens". In short, most people don't have strong opinions about their utility companies, nevertheless frequently vote with their wallets when it comes to research.