Greenpeace has issued renewable energy report cards for some of the country’s largest tech firms and both Amazon and Twitter have failed in that report.
According to the agency, Amazon and Twitter have both received “Fs” for their inadequate commitment to renewable energy.
The report is especially hard on Amazon, which powers only 15% of its massive Internet traffic with green energy sources. Twitter, while not as energy hungry as Amazon, has also failed to focus on green energy sources.
In a strongly worded statement, Greenpeace writes that some companies “have refused to pay even lip service to sustainability and are simply buying dirty energy straight from the grid … Those companies, most notably Amazon Web Services, are choosing how to power their infrastructure based solely on lowest electricity prices.”
Firing back at the report, Amazon explained in a public statement that the report “misses the mark by using false assumptions,” and operates”efficient and highly utilized data centers” in 10 AWS regions across the globe. Amazon says two of its data centers are utilizing “100 percent carbon-free power.”
Twitter scored an “F” for transparency, energy efficiency mitigation, and renewable energy deployment and advocacy. The company also scored a “D” for renewable energy commitment and sitting policy. In its attack against Twitter, Greenpeace writes that the company’s “lack of transparency makes it impossible to know what, if any, notable efficiency measures the company employs.”
Not all tech agencies fared as bad. Apple, Google, and Facebook, all scored high with Greenpeace. Those company’s have focused their efforts on renewable energy sources. Facebook, for example, is utilizing cold storage systems for archived user photos, a system that reduces the need for high energy levels for underserved resources. Natural cooling and other technology has also assisted those companies in their efforts to reduce energy consumption.
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