Christy Ferguson, Greenpeace Canada's climate and energy unit head, told Postmedia News that Canada has the highest rate of Internet usage per capita in the world and that we are increasingly reliant upon cloud technology.
Cloud technology enables users to communicate, watch movies or TV, listen to music, work and share photos without saving information onto their hard drive or local network.
Instead, users access cloud data over the Internet via a provider, such as data centres that allow access to the cloud and its data servers around the world. These centres are located in countries such as Ireland, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and several U.S. states, the report said.
Greenpeace alleges these data centres are powered by the "dirtiest sources of electricity, supplied by some of the dirtiest utilities on the planet" such as gas, coal and nuclear power.
While Amazon contests the numbers used in the report, Google says, through renewable energy purchases and investments, carbon offsets and on-site green initiatives, the Internet giant has been "carbon neutral since 2007."
Still, Ferguson said Canadians should take note.
"When we're not using the Internet on our computer, we're very (much) relying upon Apple products, so it's particularly important for (Canadian) users that iPods can be powered not by dirty coal but by clean energy," said Ferguson.
Ferguson said about 83 per cent of Internet usage in Canada that's not happening on computers is happening on Apple devices, with 33.5 per cent of usage on iPad, 34.6 per cent on iPhone and 14.9 per cent on iPod Touch.
The report How Clean is Your Cloud? suggests that three of the largest Internet technology companies — Amazon, Apple and Microsoft — are "rapidly expanding without adequate regard to source of electricity, and rely heavily on dirty energy to power their clouds."
Ferguson said if a cloud were a country, it would rank fifth in the world in electricity demand, with some data centres using as much electricity as about 85,000 Canadian homes.
According to Greenpeace, this demand could triple by 2020.
The report said Amazon's cloud technology has relied upon coal (33.9 per cent) and nuclear power (29.9 per cent). It gave the company a grade of "F" for energy transparency, renewable energy and green advocacy.
However, Amazon's Tera Randall said the company "believes that cloud computing is inherently more environmentally friendly than traditional computing."
In an emailed statement, Randall — who called the report's data and assumptions about Amazon "inaccurate" — said, because the company combines hundreds of thousands of Amazon partners into a handful of data centres in the company's cloud, it makes for "a combined smaller carbon footprint that significantly reduces overall consumption."
This technique, she said, "eliminates the waste that occurs when datacenters don't operate near their capacity."
The report suggested that Apple relied upon coal (55.1 per cent) and nuclear power (27.8 per cent) and therefore received "D" grades in energy transparency, energy efficiency, renewable energy and advocacy.
As for Microsoft, Greenpeace said it used 39.3 per cent coal and 26 per cent nuclear power for its cloud technology, earning "C" grades for energy transparency and energy efficiency.
Microsoft declined to comment on the report.
Twitter used about 35.6 per cent of coal technology and 12.8 per cent of nuclear energy to power its cloud, the report suggested, grading the company an "F" in energy transparency and energy efficiency.
Carolyn Penner, a spokeswoman for Twitter, said the report "raises important considerations around energy efficiency."
"We continue to strive for greater energy efficiency as we build out our infrastructure," Penner said in an emailed statement.
In a statement on its website, Google said it uses a very small portion of global electricity.
"In an independent report, Stanford consulting professor Jonathan Koomey estimates that data centers use between 1.1% and 1.5% of global electricity," the company said.
Greenpeace said there is a "growing split" within the high-tech industry between companies taking steps to power their clouds with clean energy, such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo, and companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon "who lag behind by choosing to build their growing fleets of data centres using coal and nuclear energy."
Meanwhile, the report pointed to efforts by Yahoo and Google as leaders in "prioritizing" access to renewable energy in their expansion of cloud technology and lauded Facebook for constructing its latest data centre, in Sweden, that can be fully powered by renewable energy.
snonato@postmedia.com
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