Greenpeace

Greenpeace demands a cleaner iCloud at Apple's corporate campus.

Since April, the environmental organization Greenpeace has had a bull’s-eye on Apple in its campaign to clean up the Internet “Cloud” that stores our music, apps, and photos. It’s accused Apple of using high-carbon “dirty fuels” like coal to power its new data center in North Carolina and has used dramatic pranks and slick videos to get consumers involved.

Last week, members of Greenpeace barricaded themselves in a giant iPod at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters and dressed as giant iPhones to demand a cleaner iCloud. Two days later, in a rare demonstration of transparency, Apple released a detailed statement explaining how its new data center would be 100% green. The whole drama made me curious to learn how the Cloud’s power source and growth could impact the environment.

So I paid a visit to Dennis Symanski at the Electric Power Research Institute (or EPRI) in Palo Alto. He’s an expert in energy efficiency and power delivery. He described the Cloud as a giant system of servers in remote data centers that store your electronic data, and estimates the Cloud uses between 2-3% of electric power consumed in the United States.

That may not sound like much but Symanski says that “small” percentage amounts to about 92 Billion kilowatt-hours per year – enough to power 7.6 million homes, double that of sprawling L.A. County.

He says it’s impossible to say exactly what the Cloud’s carbon footprint is, but some experts say that consolidating data in vast data centers can result in greater efficiencies and a smaller footprint than traditional computing.

Alison van Diggelen

EPRI's Dennis Symanski shows how fans work hard to keep the servers and the chips inside from overheating inside a data center.

Symanski invited me to visit a small data center he oversees at EPRI and I saw what energy hogs these “server farms” can be. Fans run 24/7 to keep the pizza box shaped servers, and the chips inside them, from overheating. There are so many fans in this 187 kilowatt data center, even Symanski doesn’t have an accurate count.

This one is a tiny fraction of the 20 megawatt data center Apple recently built in North Carolina to house its iCloud.

But it’s more than the energy guzzling that concerns Greenpeace. It accuses Apple of relying too much on “dirty” energy like coal from local utility Duke Energy and says Apple is misleading the public about its future iCloud power demands. The campaign is a lesson in effective social media and includes upbeat Apple-inspired videos featuring trendy young people doing cool things with their Macs and iPhones and then getting showered with coal dust.

I spoke with Greenpeace senior IT analyst, Gary Cook who explained the rationale of its “Clean our Cloud” campaign.

“If Apple, along with other IT companies, went to Duke (Energy) and said what you’re selling isn’t good enough…we don’t want to be buying coal from mountaintop removal, we want clean energy,” he says. “Duke would have to listen and that would actually drive green power on the grid for everyone.”

But not everyone is thrilled about the Greenpeace campaign and publicity stunts. Some Apple fans have accused Greenpeace of “doing a Mike Daisey” on Apple. Daisey is the commentator who invented stories to highlight dangerous working conditions at Apple’s Chinese factories.

Some say Greenpeace is asking too much of the world’s most valuable company.

“Before you know it we’ll be asking them to feed the hungry also,” says Sandeep Grag, a Silicon Valley engineer.

Gary Cook says Greenpeace has no interest in misrepresenting the facts. “We’re just trying to shine a light on who’s doing well and who needs to do better as they grow their cloud,” he says.

Alison van Diggelen

Just a few of the fans that help cool the pizza box shaped servers at EPRI's data center in Palo Alto. Photo: Alison van Diggelen

And the cloud is growing rapidly. The more we share online, the faster the cloud must expand. According to research by Cisco Systems, by the end of 2011, 20 households created as much Internet traffic as the entire Internet in 2008. IT energy experts say the cloud will double in the next 3 to 7 years.

That’s one of the reasons Greenpeace is targeting companies that rely on the cloud. Its “Unfriend Coal” Campaign against Facebook led the social network to commit to clean energy for its future data centers. The environmental group also praises Google’s clean energy leadership for investing millions in solar and wind power. In recent weeks, Greenpeace has also targeted Microsoft and Amazon, demanding they use renewable energy to power their Clouds.

Yet despite Apple’s announcement last week, Greenpeace says the smartphone maker can still do more to ensure the cloud gets cleaner as it grows and wants to see a data center siting policy that prioritizes clean energy.

“They have been transformational in almost every other sector they’ve touched and now we need them to accept that challenge …and drive transformation in the energy sector,” says Cook.

On May 17, Apple explained how its new data center will be 100% clean powered by the end of 2012. It will produce 60% from onsite Sunpower solar arrays and Bloom Energy fuel cells, said to be the largest private installations of their kind in the U.S. The remainder will come from local renewable energy purchases. It promises: no more coal.

In a section entitled “Accountability and Transparency” Apple even invites the public to follow its clean energy production at the North Carolina Renewable Energy Tracking System.

It would be naive to conclude that the Greenpeace campaign forced Apple to be greener overnight. These clean energy plans have obviously been in development for many months. But it does look like the campaign helped nudge Apple towards greater transparency in its environmental leadership. That’s something that should please all environmentalists.

An Apple spokeswoman points to the company’s new LEED Platinum data center in North Carolina which she says will be the greenest in the world. Or as Steve Jobs might have said, “insanely green.”

Hear the entire radio story, airing May 23 on The California Report.

Christopher Penalosa / KQED

More than a thousand people marched down Market Street in San Francisco for the Moving Planet rally.

About a thousand people marched in San Francisco on Saturday, chanting slogans, carrying signs and wearing costumes. But unlike many demonstrations that frequent the City by the Bay, the Moving Planet rally was one of hundreds around the world, calling for action and awareness to halt global climate change.

Organized by 350.org, the non-profit founded by author and activist Bill McKibben, the San Francisco rally brought together some predictable allies, such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the Berkeley-based Ecology Center, but it also included groups with broader aims, such as the National Organization for Women, Food Not Bombs and 100,000 Poets for Peace. McKibben’s group is devoted to reducing carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere to 350 parts per million (from the current 390 ppm), a number that some scientists estimate could stave off catastrophic effects of climate change.

“Every country on Earth — except for probably, North Korea — is having rallies around this wonky data point, 350 parts per million CO2,” said McKibben in an interview after addressing the San Francisco gathering.

Chris Penalosa / KQED

Bill McKibben addresses the crowd at the Moving Planet rally in San Francisco

In the absence of national climate change legislation, McKibben told the crowd, it’s important to “put our bodies on the line.” The Vermont-based activist is one of about 1,200 people that was arrested August 20 for protesting in front of the White House the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring crude oil from Alberta, Canada to Texas.

Michael Brune, President of the national Sierra Club noted that his organization was the first to create “blue-green” alliances between environmental and labor groups.

“What we’re trying to do is find a way to make this an issue that brings us together, that doesn’t divide folks, so this doesn’t punish one industry and reward another,” said Brune in a separate interview.

Brune added that the Sierra Club is working with clean technology companies to ramp up renewable energy. “We firmly believe the road to a clean energy future is one that will make our country more economically resilient,” he said.

Chris Penalosa / KQED

Carl Anthony, a long-time Bay Area activist for environmental and social justice, addressed the crowd.

Another focus of the afternoon rally was the connection to environmental justice, the concept that poor communities and ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by pollution of all types. Carl Anthony, founder of Urban Habitat, one of the nation’s oldest environmental justice organizations, spoke to an energetic crowd packed into Civic Center Plaza. He emphasized that people, not just polar bears, are affected by climate change.

“Global warming is a climate justice issue,” he told the rally. “The people of color, the poor people, the indigenous people will bear the burden of climate change, even though they, less than anyone else, are responsible for our CO2 emissions.”

He continued, “This means that any solution we come up with for climate change must also be a solution for social and racial justice.”

“We have the opportunity in California, to take money away from suburban sprawl…to rebuild a public transportation system that works for poor people as well as rich people,” Anthony said, citing the Sustainable Communities legislation that would redirect $218 billion to rebuild public transportation.

Many people took public transit to the day’s event. Cassie Barr rode BART to the rally from Oakland with her six-year-old son, Philip. She said she wanted to make a statement that people should do more to avert climate change and that she supports an outright tax on carbon emissions. “I think it’s the only way to get businesses — corporations — serious about lowering their CO2 levels,” said Barr.

Jordan Pacheco also took BART from Moraga with his five-year-old daughter, Macy, “…because this is her planet too.” Pacheco works for the solar panel installation company Sungevity, on the firm’s design and engineering team.

In the future, he said, “I would like to see a more openness to any kind of alternative energy, whether its solar, wind, anything. I think the politics have taken over to the point where there’s no common sense anymore.”

Chris Penalosa / KQED

Employees from Sungevity hold a parachute painted with a depiction of the Earth.

Bill Carney, president of Sustainable San Rafael helped to organize participation from Marin county. In recent years, activists there won state approval for a community-owned energy company, after much resistance from the investor-owned Pacific Gas & Electric, he said.

“There are many sources of renewables: hydro, solar wind, or methane and with the funding to our local power provider, they are able to buy that energy but [also] create a local marketplace for additional generators of that clean electricity,” said Carney.

Falling back on a familiar metaphor with a global warming theme, Carney said, “Events like this really are the tip of the iceberg of public awareness that is really growing by leaps and bounds.”

Check out this slideshow for more photos from the demonstration.

(Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

Today McKibben dropped by KQED for a discussion on Forum with entrepreneur and fellow environmentalist Paul Hawken about the fight for a coherent national climate policy.  McKibben is the founder of the environmental group 350.org and was among the hundreds of people arrested near the White House last week during a protest over a controversial oil pipeline that has been proposed to run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Afterward, I sat down with McKibben and asked him about the role of civil disobedience in the fight against climate change.

Q: So, hundreds of people arrested outside the White House recently. Has it come to this? In your view is this what needs to happen to motivate action?

A: Well, it’s not the only thing we need to do. I think it’s pretty clear that being willing to put your body on the line sometimes is important.  Here’s the problem: we’re up against the richest industry in the history of the world. The fossil fuel industry is the most profitable thing that there ever was, and that means they can bring literally endless amounts of money to any fight. Exxon made more money last year than any company in the history of money. That means that if we try to just match them there, we’re going to lose.   We have to find other currencies in which to work, and for the few weeks in Washington at the end of the summer, it was our bodies. That was the thing we were willing to spend, and it probably shouldn’t have to be that way.

Q: A pipeline is very concrete. Do you find it’s more of a challenge to get people motivated around climate change in general than it is about the specific Keystone XL pipeline?

Yep. It’s very true that when there’s a pipeline or something you can make an easy yes or no decision about, then people are able to visualize it and fight over it. It gets harder when we talk about legislation, say, or the price of carbon. We’ve had a tendency to let these pieces of legislation become so complicated and difficult to understand, that they’re easy for the demagogues on the other side to pick apart and rally opposition against. It’s one of the reasons why going forward, I think legislation needs to be as straightforward as possible. We’ve got to start talking about taxing things we don’t want, like pollution, instead of taxing things we do want, like income.

Q: Here in California, we’re moving ahead with cap and trade.  What are your thoughts on that?  Is it worth it?

I don’t know all the details about California, but I do know there have been some good objections raised from the environmental justice community. It’s pretty important to make sure that communities that have already been badly hurt don’t get badly hurt some more, but the general principle is correct. We need to make carbon pay the price for the damage that it does in the atmosphere. If that price is high enough and steadily applied enough, then we will use less of it. We need to do that in ways that don’t damage particular communities, and we need to do it in ways that don’t bankrupt people, because we don’t have all that much money right now. That’s why nationally, it’s good to see that there are people stepping up to introduce these cap-and-dividend bills that collect money from the oil companies and refund it to human beings.

Q: Do you have hopes for this climate action movement, that it will succeed?

I have given up trying to decide on given day whether I am optimistic or pessimistic. I get up in the morning and do all the things I can to change the odds of this wager some. I don’t know how it’s going to come out. There are scientists who think we’ve waited too long to get started, that the momentum of global warming is irreversible, and there are political scientists who think the odds are simply too high, that there’s too much power on the other side.

But, I know that there are good-hearted people all over the world. I know it because at 350.org we’ve rallied people in literally every country on earth except North Korea. I know that we’re building a movement that can change those odds. I don’t know how it’s going to come out, but I know that for a morally-awake person, when the worst thing that ever happened in the world is happening, your job every day has got to be to change those odds, and to do it without any assurance that its going to be all right.

Young activists are taking to the streets to call for immediate action against climate change.

Young people rallied for climate action on Mothers' Day in San Francisco and ten other California cities and towns. (Photo: Chris Penalosa)

Youth turned out in eleven cities across California over the weekend in a series of coordinated demonstrations.

Dubbed the i-Matter marches, youth from Eureka to San Diego and from grammar school to college, demanded “climate justice” for their generation. The marches follow a recent lawsuit filed by young people against the Federal government and all 50 states, to force more aggressive reductions of greenhouse gases.

“In terms of climate change, the US has basically failed us,” said sixteen-year-old Ventura native Alec Loorz one of the lead plantiffs in the suit.

Sixteen-year-old Alec Loorz is one of the organizers of the iMatter youth rallies. (Photo: Chris Penalosa)

“I’m involved in this lawsuit where young people are suing the government for not protecting our right for a livable future and for not protecting our right to grow up in the planet that has sustained all civilization.”

This past weekend’s marches might’ve been trumped by Mothers’ Day, as turnout was generally light around the state. Estimates put the San Francisco rally at between 100 and 200 people, while The Sacramento Bee reported that fewer than 100 turned out in Sacramento.

But the youth activists aren’t done yet.

“I’ve found that our entire generation has this inherent sense of calling towards climate change,” said Loorz, at the San Francisco event. “We know that it affects our generation most and we are ready to do whatever we can to change it.”

More than 150 marches are currently planned in 25 countries, worldwide.