Apple gets an Upgrade from Greenpeace

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Apple gets an Upgrade from Greenpeace

Greenpeace recently gave Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) a slight boost in ratings. The tech giant originally graded F, but their grade was recently upped to D. These grades are for data center design.

The official report was released on Thursday. In the report regarding Apple, it’s stated that the company announced their plans to make iCloud service utilize 100% renewable energy in their power centers. This includes doubling the amount of solar power attached to the North Carolina facility. Peter Oppenheimer (Apple’s chief financial officer) says that his company plans to make all data centers completely coal free by 2013. Unfortunately, that’s not enough for Green Peace as they want to know more about Apple’s plans to make it happen.

The most important plan  is one of the centers in North Carolina is plugged into the Duke Energy power grid which isn’t the cleanest source. Apple is currently building a solar array that measures 100 acres and a biogas plant, but there are concerns that it won’t be enough to fully power the large facility.

Apple has yet to make an official response.

David Pomerantz, spokesman for Greenpeace, says that Apple Inc. is on the right track with their plans but, “when you get into the analysis and actually look at it, there are some big holes in what they’re doing and how they’re going to get there that they haven’t revealed yet. Without that, there are some pretty big issues that they’re going to have to resolve, and we’re wondering how they’re going to do that.”

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) isn’t the only tech company Greenpeace has their eye on. They’ve also been closely monitoring Google and Amazon, as both have expanded their company infrastructure with cloud data services. Greenpeace must measure these data centers and configure how they impact the environment. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) earned top spot on Greenpeace’s “Cool IT Leaderboard”.

So what will Apple have to do if they want to score a higher grade with Greenpeace? Show their plans to go completely 100% renewable and make more efforts to green up their company. Obviously, I doubt this low score will have that much of an impact on Apple’s success but I do think that as a big corporation, it is their responsibility to leave a positive impact on the environment.  Perhaps they should have a meeting with Greenpeace to share ideas, as well as proving their active interest in maintaining a greener image.

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