Greentech Lead Asia: Greenpeace activists have concluded
a protest at an Apple store in Australia, the final in a series that spanned 8
countries and asked Apple to “Clean our Cloud” as part of a campaign to get the
company to power its data centers with renewable energy instead of
coal.
Greenpeace activists visited eight stores worldwide in
Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Hungary, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and
the United States.
In London, Greenpeace activists distributed apples made
of reclaimed coal dust in the store with a leaflet highlighting the dirty
energy polices of Apple.
In Hong Kong, New York, and San Francisco, they filled
Apple stores with floating black balloons to symbolize the dirty energy
powering the iCloud. In Hungary, they staged a “cloud cleaning” outside the
story by cleaning a black-colored giant Apple outside the store’s front
door.
By the end of the day, 140,000 people had signed the petition to the CEOs of
Apple, Amazon and Microsoft to power the cloud with clean energy, not coal.
Over 44,000 people had viewed Greenpeace’s spoof video highlighting the coal
used to power Apple’s iCloud.
Greenpeace is requesting Apple to become more transparent about their energy
usage and carbon footprint, and to share innovative solutions so that the
sector as a whole can improve.
According to Greenpeace, Apple should commit to powering
the cloud with renewable energy, and make access to renewable energy a key
factor in deciding where to build future data centers.
Apple should invest in or directly purchase renewable
energy, according to Greenpeace.
Greenpeace is also demanding that governments and
electric utilities increase the amount of renewable electricity available on
the grid.