Apple plans to power its main data centre entirely with renewable energy
by the end of this year, taking steps to address longstanding
environmental concerns about the rapid expansion of high-consuming
computer server farms.
The maker of the iPhone and iPad said on
Thursday it was buying equipment from SunPower Corp and startup Bloom
Energy to build two solar array installations in North Carolina, near
its core data center.
Once up, the solar farm will supply 84m kWh
of energy annually. The sites will employ high-efficiency solar cells
and an advanced solar tracking system.
The two solar farms will
cover 250 acres, among the largest in the industry, the Apple CFO, Peter
Oppenheimer, told Reuters. Apple plans on using coal-free electricity
in all three of its data centres, with the Maiden facility coal-free by
the end of 2012.
"I'm not aware of any other company producing energy onsite at this scale," Oppenheimer said in a telephone interview.
"The
plan we are releasing today includes two solar farms and together they
will be twice as big as we previously announced, thanks to the purchase
of some land very near to the data centre in Maiden, which will help us
meet this goal."
Shares in SunPower leaped more than 10% to close at $5.59 on Thursday.
Concerns
about the ever-expanding power consumption of computer data centres
have mounted in recent years, as technology giants build enormous
facilities housing servers to cater to an explosion in internet traffic,
multimedia use and enterprise services hosting, via cloud computing.
"Our
next facility will be in Prineville, Oregon. This is still in the
planning stages and we have already identified plenty of renewable
sources nearby," Oppenheimer said.
"We haven't finalised our plans
for on-site generation, but any power we need to run our centre in
Prineville that we get from the grid will be 100% renewable and locally
generated sources," he said.
Several activist groups have expressed their concerns over the use of "dirty" power by Apple's data centres. Several members of Greenpeace staged a protest this week at Apple's Cupertino campus using a giant "iPod."
Greenpeace, which has also targeted Amazon and Microsoft with clean energy campaigns, saluted Apple's decision.
"Apple's
announcement today is a great sign that Apple is taking seriously the
hundreds of thousands of its customers who have asked for an iCloud
powered by clean energy, not dirty coal," Greenpeace International
senior IT asnalyst Gary Cook said in a statement.
Reuters
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