Apple touts its shrinking carbon footprint in an annual environmental progress reportMar 21 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Patrick May San Jose Mercury News
Apple (AAPL) on Thursday gave itself an A-plus for what it calls a dramatically improved environmental performance, boasting that its corporate facilities around the world now get 75 percent of their power from renewable sources such as solar and wind, up from 35 percent two years ago. While the company acknowledged that much work remains in the greening of its various products' life-cyles, its focus in the report was on the great strides it's made in harnessing renewable energy to power its offices and server farms. And at the top of that list is the massive data center in Maiden, North Carolina, which Apple says is now operated solely on renewable energy either created by the company on-site or obtained from a local source. "Several of our largest and most energy-intensive locations are now running entirely on renewables, including our offices at One Infinite Loop, in Austin and Cork, Ireland, " said Scott Brodrick with Apple's worldwide product marketing group. "We're especially proud of our progress at our data center in Maiden, which we said at the start would be a model of green building and we've followed through on that. So when you download an iTunes song, for example, it's coming from a facility that's powered 100 percent on renewable energy." Apple has been criticized in the past by environmentalists who felt the iPhone maker was not doing enough to keep its product line as clean and green as it should. Last year, for example, Greenpeace went so far as to call Apple the "dirtiest" of the technology giants now because of the way it powers its vast data centres. Greenpeace spokesman Dave Pomerantz at the time said "Apple right now is falling behind companies like Google (GOOG) and Facebook, who are taking a leadership role on this issue. It's a shame that a company that built its reputation on thinking differently is now behind the curve." Greenpeace could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday. But after the criticism, Apple defended itself, saying Greenpeace had its figures wrong. And with this week's report, the company went even further to tout its clean-energy record. "We said last year that we'd met our goal of using renewables for 60 percent of our energy needs and we're now at 100 percent," Brodrick said, referring to the Maiden plant, in an interview Thursday with this newspaper. "And in December we turned the switch on two renewable energy sources (in Maiden) that we've created ourselves on-site, including a solar photovoltaic array and a fuel-cell installation. And both of these are now the largest non-utility-owned renewable energy sources of their kind in the United States." And while Apple talked mostly about its progress with its facilities, saying the performance of its rivals pales by comparison, Brodrick said the company has also made much progress in reducing its carbon footprint by doing things like making products thinner and lighter to reduce the amount of packaging required. "We've said for years that making the most energy efficient products is the best way to innovate," said Brodrick, "and we've managed to lower our carbon footprint by lowering the power consumption of customers using our products across the board by 40 percent since 2008. Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689 or follow him at Twitter.com/patmaymerc http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=27998985 |