For the third year in a row, Greenpeace has declared Apple as the greenest tech company in the world. In its report titled Clicking Clean: Who is Winning The Race to Build a Green Internet, the organisation gave Apple an ‘A’ grade with a clean energy index of 83 percent.
The Cupertino company scored an A in key points on the scorecard including energy transparency, renewable procurement, and energy efficiency and mitigation, though it did get a B in advocacy. Apple’s clean energy index score of 83 percent was significantly higher than Google’s 56 percent and Microsoft’s 32 percent. The report does note that Apple, Facebook and other top tech companies have used their “influence to push vendors, utilities, and governments to create access to renewable energy where previously there was none.”
Apple retains its leadership spot for the third year in a row among platform operators. Both Apple and Google continue to lead the sector in matching their growth with an equivalent or larger supply of renewable energy, and both companies continue to use their influence to push governments as well as their utility and IT sector vendors to increase access to renewable energy for their operations.
The report also notes that Apple played an “instrumental role” in establishing a Green Tariff program in Nevada. It also notes that Apple is among the few companies which invested in renewable energy plants for its factories in China.
Apple has remained among the most aggressive in the sector in its efforts to power its online platform with renewable energy. Apple continues to play an important role in opening access to renewable energy new markets where it has located its data centers, such as the company’s most recent data center in Arizona. Apple has also played a catalytic role within its IT supply chain, pushing other IT data center and cloud operators who help deliver pieces of Apple’s corner of the internet to follow their lead in powering their operations with renewable energy, though with slower success than its own data centers thus far.
You can find the full report from Greenpeace here.
