Greenpeace has upped the ante in its fight to get Apple to commit to using more renewable energy in its data centers.
Or at least it tried to up the ante.
About a dozen protesters hit Apple’s store in downtown San Francisco at just after 11 a.m. Pacific on Tuesday. Some of them were dressed as janitors or window washers, others carried black bouquets of helium balloons which they unleashed inside the store, letting them float up to a hard-to-reach second-floor skylight. The environmentalist organization also unleashed a new video, dinging Apple for using dirty energy to clean its cloud.
They also hit stores with similar protests in New York and Toronto as part of an ongoing public-relations campaign against data center operators, dubbed “Clean Our Cloud.”
After being dinged in a 2011 Greenpeace report, Apple has taken steps to present itself as a serious clean-energy user. The company says that its brand-new Maiden, North Carolina, data center will soon use 60 percent renewable energy — thanks to a state-of-the-art solar array and biogas plant. And just last week, Apple vowed to power a brand-new Prineville, Oregon, data center with 100 percent renewable energy.
But Greenpeace wants more. They want Apple to commit to powering their Maiden facility with more renewable energy, even as it continues to expand. Maiden is where Apple powers its iCloud, the fast-growing service that lets Apple users store their photos, videos and other files in a centralized place. Greenpeace wants Apple to sign long-term contracts for renewable energy in North Carolina, similar to deals that Google set up as it brought data centers in Iowa and Oklahoma online. “If Apple had something like that … that would be something that would give us a lot more confidence in their intentions,” said Gary Cook, an IT analyst with Greenpeace.
Greenpeace’s big problem with Apple is the fact that it’s using Duke Energy in North Carolina, a utility that gets 46 percent of its power from coal and another 52 percent from nuclear facilities. The environmental activists are worried that without a commitment to renewables, Apple will simply draw more coal and nuclear energy as it expands its Maiden facilities. Apple has spent $500 million on Maiden to date, but it is expected to invest another $500 million there over the next 10 years.
Apple had no comment on Tuesday’s protests, held on the same day the company announced its quarterly earnings. Company spokeswoman Kristin Huguet referred us to an earlier statement where Apple said that its Maiden data center will be “the greenest data center ever built, and it will be joined next year by our new facility in Oregon running on 100 percent renewable energy.”
Greenpeace protesters clean up Apple's iSidewalk and paper the downtown San Francisco Apple store's front window. Photo: Jon Snyder/WiredIn San Francisco, the in-store protest was a low-key event. Some store patrons didn’t even realize that a protest was happening. Under a cloud of black balloons, the Greenpeacers stuck posters on the store’s front windows, pretended to clean the store, and handed out stickers and chatted with store patrons as Apple staffers looked on.
Greenpeace volunteer Jessica Serranti put in a good 30 minutes of mimed window washing and Apple-store cleaning (get it: “clean our cloud”?) before Apple Store Leader Jason Veilleux pulled down the Greenpeace posters and asked her to clear out. She complied. “It was super cordial,” Serranti said outside the store.
Veilleux said he welcomed the opportunity to “engage in dialogue,” with Greenpeace, but declined to comment further.
A half-hour after they’d released their balloons, the activists had left the building.
Last week, Greenpeace activists launched slightly more dramatic protests, hiring professionals to scale Amazon’s Seattle headquarters and hang an 800-square-foot “Clean Our Cloud” banner on the side of the building.
Greenpeace’s new video — its second targeting Apple — plays like one of the company’s slick ads. An announcer touts the benefits of the iCloud, saying that it lets you download an app on the go, so “it’s there when you get home, along with some other stuff.” That other stuff is a pile of coal dirtying out an otherwise immaculately white living room couch.
Check out the ad here:
