Apple, Google and Facebook have made significant progress in adopting renewable energy sources to power their Web services, the environmental group Greenpeace said in a report on Wednesday.
But energy-hungry data centers operated by some of the Internet industry's top companies remain overly reliant on carbon-emitting coal and gas, the report said.
Apple, which built an on-site solar panel farm and fuel-cells at its North Carolina data center and has procured renewable energy directly at its other three facilities, earned the highest marks on the "scorecard" of Internet company data centers that Greenpeace issues every two years. Greenpeace rated Apple's efforts in transparency, renewable energy policy and renewable energy deployment with an A grade in each category, compared with a mix of D and F grades two years ago when the group released its last report.
At the other end of the spectrum, Amazon's Web Services business, which Greenpeace said operates at least 18 data centers around the world, was singled out for being among the least committed to renewable energy, earning F grades in three out of Greenpeace's four categories.
Some Internet companies "have refused to pay even lip service to sustainability and are simply buying dirty energy straight from the grid," said the report. "Those companies, most notably Amazon Web Services, are choosing how to power their infrastructure based solely on lowest electricity prices."
Amazon disputed Greenpeace's assessment of its data center operation, saying that the report's data and assumptions were inaccurate. Amazon said in an emailed statement that data centers in two regions in which it operates use "100 percent carbon-free power" without elaborating.
Data centers, multibillion-dollar facilities stuffed with racks of tightly-packed computers, are the heart of the fast-growing Internet industry. The facilities store consumers' email and other personal data, and help deliver popular online offerings such as Netflix's streaming video service and Facebook's photo-laden social network.
A large Internet data center requires energy capacity of as much as 80 megwatts, which would be enough to power about 65,000 U.S. homes, according to Greenpeace spokesman David Pomerantz.
The increasing prevalence of Internet services means growing demand for electricity in the coming years, Greenpeace said.
