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Codebreaker

Greenpeace gives Apple a slight upgrade

John Moe Jul 13, 2012

On yesterday’s Tech Report, we told you about how Apple had pulled out of the environmental registry EPEAT, possibly to make more money, because Apple apparently doesn’t yet own all the money in the world. Today there’s new environmental Apple news as Greenpeace has upgraded Apple’s enormous cloud data servers from, and I’m paraphrasing, Horrible to Slightly Less Horrible.
Greenpeace upgraded Apple from Fs and Ds to Ds and Cs in light of the company’s promises to move data centers to more solar, wind, and hydro-electric power.

It’s still not clear exactly how Apple is going to pull this off, says Wired:

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in the past, it has said that its computing facilities will be powered entirely by renewable sources by early next year. The rub is that its $1bn data center in Maiden, North Carolina is currently plugged into the Duke Energy power grid, whose power sources are not exactly 100 percent clean.
Yes, Apple is already building a 100-acre solar array and a biogas energy plant on in Maiden, but it does not appear that these can power the entire facility.

I guess since Greenpeace uses grades for Apple, we can extend the analogy. If Apple is a failing student, it has now seen a slightly better progress report because of better work habits, although those habits haven’t translated to better test scores. Meanwhile, Google continues to be the brainiac teacher’s pet in the class:

Earlier this year, Google topped the Greenpeace “Cool IT Leaderboard,” which ranks the performance of the big IT players in this area.

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