That’s about the most disingenuous and manipulative piece of advertising I’ve seen in years (about as bad as its Coal Can Do That site). While power grid and utility execs are still looking into what caused the blackout at the Superdome, there are much more likely causes of the blackout than a reduction of coal use including faulty grid architecture (feeder line from an external substation), issues with Superdome power architecture, or even the highly speculative discussions of grid hacking that were ample on Twitter during the blackouts. (Note, Peabody isn’t actually saying the blackout was caused but a reduction of coal use, but just weirdly slaps the two together).

The use of coal for electricity in the U.S. has been reducing and will continue to reduce. Natural gas for electricity is the new hotness — it’s cheap, provides power 24/7, and is cleaner than coal — and wind power was actually the largest source of new generation in the U.S. in 2012. That wind stat was a record, by the way. Of course, having a massive coal business, Peabody doesn’t like this shift in energy generation, so it creates advertising campaigns that look to promote coal.

It’s a sad approach, really. I would say this to Peabody: you can’t turn around a fundamental shift in energy technology by these types of PR methods. The only thing that will shore up the loss of the coal business is investment in new energy technologies.

Yes, you claim to be doing so with “clean coal” technologies, but clean coal tech at this point is far less commercially viable than natural gas, wind, solar and energy efficiency technologies. If you look at the winners and losers throughout the history of the business world, the same type of technology shifts have led to changes like brick and mortar booksellers and video rental companies going out of business in the face of their online counterparts (Borders, Barnes and Nobles, Blockbuster), or telecom companies going under by not embracing wireless technology and the Internet.

No one would argue that coal provides one of the cheapest and most reliable forms of energy. But the environmental ramifications — both greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, and dangerous work conditions — of coal are also well known. Coal is a non-renewable source and many of the coal plants in the U.S. are using very old technology. Natural gas is cleaner and also, like coal, can be used around the clock (wind and solar only provide power at certain times of day). And now with its low cost, it’s not surprising that utilities are turning to it now in droves. (Though, yes natural gas is non-renewable also).

As clean power — truly emissions free — becomes more mainstream, it’ll take over more of that new generation, too. Peabody, please join the modern technology age.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world
• The race for cost-effective and efficient solar power
• After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industry

But alas, this news isn’t true. If you pull back the curtain on the site a bit, the domain name is registered to a blocked private holder, and if you track back the IP address it takes you to . . . Greenpeace USA. The project appears to be an attempt by the environmental group to start a discussion around how it thinks AWS should concentrate more efforts on sourcing renewable energy for its services.

Greenpeace hasn’t been secretive about that it wants Amazon to figure out ways to add in more clean power to its mix. In a report earlier this year, Greenpeace gave Amazon (as well as Apple) failing grades for its failure to source more clean power, while the group gave other Internet providers like Google and Yahoo passing grades. Google, in fact, has been a pioneer in this space, and has invested close to $1 billion into clean power projects.

Greenpeace confirmed with me that the web site was created by them. Amazon’s communications team said the site didn’t come from Amazon. So there you go. Greenpeace also just sent me this link that explains the stunt.

This may be a prank but I do think Amazon should take clean power more seriously, considering its such a huge cloud provider and it provides services for so many cutting edge and pioneering web and mobile startups. Others in the data center sector have expressed similar sentiments to me this year.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world
• Microsoft Azure: What It Is, What It Costs and Who Should Care
• Cloud and data first-quarter 2013: analysis and outlook

First launched in 2006, Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics looks at environmental conditions for electronics manufacturers like if companies use toxic materials in their gadgets, if they take back old products for recycling, how much energy they use to produce and ship their gadgets, and how clean their energy sources are. Companies also score points by setting carbon emissions reductions goals and for advocating politically for sustainability. The top companies in the latest guide are Wipro, HP, Nokia, and Acer, while the bottom companies are Sharp, Toshiba and RIM.

This was the first time that Indian firm Wipro was on the list, and its debut at number one, was prompted largely by Wipro’s “climate leadership,” says Greenpeace. Wipro says it plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 44 percent by 2015 and achieve 85 percent of those emissions reductions through the use of clean power. Wipro also has worked closely with the Indian government on solar and clean power policies.

The Indian government has itself developed an aggressive clean power plan, which might be more aspirational than realistic. But India is hoping to install 3 GW of solar by 2016, compared with the 54 MW of solar installed in 2010. And to meet the growing demand for power — as the country’s economy grows — India plans to add 100 GW of power generation over the next five years, and that will be made up by mostly coal and clean power.

While Wipro is willing to be aggressive on clean power and greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals, the Greenpeace rankings find that in contrast almost all of the other electronics giants “are still heavily dependent on climate changing dirty energy sources in their supply and manufacturing chains.” A Greenpeace spokesperson writes:

Most consumers would be surprised to hear that many devices consume more electricity before they’re ever purchased just in their manufacturing than they do after we buy them and charge them every night. This “embedded energy” is the next big frontier for consumer electronics companies who want to be green.

Apple came in at the 6th spot on Greenpeace’s guide, down from its 4th spot in 2011, but up from a former ranking at number nine. Greenpeace has blasted Apple in the past, despite its massive solar and fuel cell farms being built in North Carolina.

Image courtesy of fraboof.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Wiens, whose job is to dissect gadgets and create easy-to-understand repair guides for users, is passionate about “sustainable technology” or the recyclability of products and their contribution to electronic waste, as I learned when talking to him for a story last month. His attitude is that when products are hard to repair or are not built to last more than two or three years, they are more easily tossed in the landfill, and contribute to e-waste. Hence his strongly worded opinion about EPEAT’s standards.

He’s suspicious of EPEAT’s investigation, which it outsourced to an independent lab, to reassess whether ultrathin laptops from Apple, Toshiba, Samsung and Lenovo, met the group’s standards for green electronics. The group’s rating is critical to large businesses’ and government agencies’ strict standards for purchasing green computers, so it wanted an outside opinion to back up its findings. It did find that the tools to take apart these notebooks are easy to buy, and that they can be taken apart in less than 30 minutes.

Wiens writes:

At best, the interpretation of the EPEAT Gold standard is laughably out of touch: it claims proprietary Pentalobe screwdrivers [which MacBooks require] are ‘commonly available tools’ and a USB thumb drive is an ‘upgrade.’ At worst, it may mean that recyclers a decade from now will be faced with a mountain of electronic waste they cannot affordably recycle without custom disassembly fixtures and secret manufacturer information.

Wiens isn’t the only high-profile voice to take issue with EPEAT’s recent findings. Greenpeace also voiced disapproval, saying in a press release on Friday, that the group’s decision “to include computers with difficult-to-replace batteries in its green electronics registry will result in less recycling and more e-waste.”

EPEAT did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the criticism.

Apple touched off this brouhaha over EPEAT standards when the company suddenly opted out of the EPEAT rankings earlier this summer. After an outcry from businesses and environmental groups, Apple backed down and admitted that opting out of the certification process that so many companies rely on was “a mistake.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The economics of clean-data-center innovation
• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world
• Smart Grid Apps: Six Trends That Will Shape Grid Evolution

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world
• Big Data, ARM and Legal Troubles Transformed Infrastructure in Q4
• Migrating media applications to the private cloud: best practices for businesses

However, Facebook is becoming very serious about tracking data about the energy consumption and carbon emissions of its data centers and facilities, and on Wednesday unveiled detailed numbers about the use of these resources to the public. Facebook says in 2011 its data centers and operations used 532 million kilowatt hours of energy, and emitted 285,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent.

In addition, about 23 percent of the energy that Facebook’s facilities consumed in 2011 came from renewables, including hydro, solar and wind power, with most of the rest coming from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. (Everything you need to know about clean power and data centers is in this article.) Facebook is looking to source 25 percent of its energy for data centers from clean power by 2015, which is just slightly better than it is now, and shows how hard it is for data center operators to find cheap AND clean power.

In comparison, Google, which released similar data last year, consumed 2 billion kilowatt hours of energy in 2010, and is looking to have a third of its power from clean energy by 2012. An average American household in 2010 consumed about 11,496 kilowatt hours.

It should be noted that Google and Facebook are pioneering the trend of sharing this kind of data, and for a long time Internet giants insisted on keeping this data secret for competitive reasons (if you know how much energy their operations consume, you can basically guess how many servers they have).

Facebook’s data center in North Carolina

Why do we care

Why does Facebook — and likewise do we — care about energy numbers? For Facebook energy is an expense. It takes considerable energy to operate its data centers, so by monitoring energy use and pushing for energy efficiency measures, Facebook can curb a rising cost. Facebook’s energy use — and likewise carbon emissions — will only continue to grow as the social network giant gets bigger, brings in more users, and builds more data centers.

Carbon emissions are also a possible expense for Facebook down the road. The company is now public and carbon intensive resources could one day be seen as a risk for investors coupled with the right legislation (down the road in the U.S., but increasingly today in Europe). Facebook didn’t say it plans to be carbon neutral, but other Internet firms such as Google and Microsoft are, and Facebook tells me being carbon neutral is something it could consider in the future.

Finally, tracking energy and carbon can also be powerful marketing and branding tools. Or put in a different way, not focusing on environmentalism could have some serious negative PR effects, like Facebook’s previous controversy with Greenpeace.

Greenpeace responded to today’s data disclosure announcement by saying: “Facebook has today set an important benchmark for the company to fulfill its goal to be fully powered by clean and renewable energy.”

Facebook’s unveiling of this data is also part of its overall push for more openness and transparency, which it kicked off with its Open Compute project last year. Facebook’s energy efficiency and sustainability team leader Bill Weihl — who originally helped Google whip its carbon emissions and energy footprint into shape — tells me that Facebook’s energy consumption figure would have been significantly higher were it not for the inherent efficiency measures designed into the Open Compute hardware Facebook has built.

By the way, Facebook is #11 on our paidContent 50 list, which ranks companies based on their digital media revenues.

For more info on this subject, check out my series on data centers and energy:

• The ultimate geek road trip: North Carolina’s mega data center cluster
• 10 reasons Apple, Google & Facebook chose North Carolina for their mega data centers
• The controversial world of clean power and data centers
• The story behind how Apple’s iCloud data center got built

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world
• Content monetization: News licensing and syndication still need marketplaces and infrastructure
• Where the next-generation console fits in today’s video game market

Apple’s solar farm in Maiden, North Carolina

In an update to a controversial report, environmental activist group Greenpeace partly applauded Apple for taking more steps to add clean power to its data center, yet also said Apple should both be more transparent about its plans and should also be doing more.

Back in April Greenpeace slammed Apple, giving it failing marks in its ranking system, for not considering clean power enough when deciding where to locate its data centers (for more on clean power and data centers, read this detailed feature on the controversial world of clean power and data centers). In that report Greenpeace gave Google, Yahoo and Facebook higher marks than Apple.

Yet since that report came out, Apple has announced some major new clean power data center initiatives. Apple has recently said it will double the size of the solar farm at its data center in North Carolina (from 20 MW to 40 MW), and that the entire facility will eventually be run by 100 percent clean power. Apple has also said that its data center in Oregon will be run off of 100 percent clean power, and that all of its data centers will be coal-free by 2013.

Workers building out the power lines around Apple’s data center

On the face of it, Apple’s steps are huge news in the world of data center operators, which for a long time have not been willing to pay a premium for clean power. Instead, most data center builders seek out locations that have cheap (and often times coal-based) power — like North Carolina, which has a grid that runs largely off of coal and nuclear. North Carolina has been able to attract a cluster of some of the largest data centers in the world whose owners want to buy its cheap and reliable power.

But Greenpeace still says that Apple isn’t being transparent about how it will reach those clean power goals. Greenpeace didn’t raise Apple’s score on “transparency” at all, and it kept its “D” grade in the update to the report. Greenpeace did raise Apple’s score for “infrastructure siting” to a D (from an F), “energy efficiency and green house gas mitigation” to a C (from a D) and “renewable energy investment and advocacy” to a C (from a D). Apple has now basically “passed,” but still trails behind companies like Google and Facebook in the ranking system.

Greenpeace says it didn’t raise Apple’s scores more because Apple has not disclosed how it will power the rest of its data center in North Carolina (beyond the solar and fuel cell farms) with clean power considering the local utility has little clean power. Greenpeace says it looks like Apple will be buying Renewable Energy Credits to offset the rest of the power, which is a somewhat controversial practice.

Stay out! Of Apple’s solar farm

Greenpeace also says it’s unclear if Apple will be using the clean power from its solar and fuel cells farms onsite in North Carolina, or if it will be selling the power back to the utility Duke Energy and using the dirty grid energy instead to power the data center. Apple could earn money by selling the solar power and associated Renewable Energy Credits to Duke. It’s also not yet clear how Apple will reach its clean power goal in Oregon, as it hasn’t said which utility it will buy power from, says Greenpeace.

Part of the reason the original report back in April was controversial was because Greenpeace used an estimate for the power consumption of Apple’s data center in North Carolina that Apple says was way too high. While Greenpeace had estimated that Apple’s data center in North Carolina would consume 100 MW, Apple said it will only consume 20 MW. But in this latest report, Greenpeace still isn’t buying Apple’s figure as being transparent. Greenpeace revised its estimate that Apple’s data center in North Carolina will consume 81 MW.

Here’s a variety of things that Greenpeace wants Apple to do to improve its score:

• 1) Use its influence to push Duke Energy to add more clean power to its grid.
• 2) Choose a utility in Oregon for its data center that has a cleaner grid and not go with Pacific Power, which generates a lot of electricity from coal.
• 3) Use the clean power in North Carolina directly for the data center rather than selling it to Duke.
• 4) Use biogas, from a sustainable source, directly for its fuel cells in North Carolina.
• 5) Retire its energy credits from electricity generated in North Carolina. This is what energy service company PPL says about retiring RECs on its FAQ: “By retiring RECs using a certified REC tracking system, each REC may be issued and claimed only once. That way, you can be sure that the project owner selling the REC only did so once. In addition, as RECs are retired, new resources must be built to meet future renewable energy requirements.” Greenpeace says Apple could be counting its projects twice, which is a no-no in sustainability worlds.
• 6) Invest in more clean power for its facilities directly instead of potentially buying RECs to offset its fossil fuel use.
• 7) Adopt a clean power data center siting strategy.

For more on the mega data centers in North Carolina check out my four-part series this week:

• The ultimate geek road trip: North Carolina’s mega data center cluster
• 10 reasons Apple, Facebook & Google chose North Carolina for their mega data centers
• The controversial world of clean power and data centers
• The story behind how Apple’s iCloud data center got built

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world
• The economics of clean-data-center innovation
• Dissecting the data: 5 issues for our digital future

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industry
• Migrating media applications to the private cloud: best practices for businesses
• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1

• Get ready for snappy, overlapping dialogue and fast-paced walk and talks with Steve Jobs: The movie adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s Jobs biography will officially be penned by The West Wing and The Social Network writer Aaron Sorkin, reports Slash Film. (This is virtually guaranteed to be less awful than the competing Jobs project starring Ashton Kutcher.)
• Sprint CEO Dan Hesse did his best Honey Badger impression during Sprint’s earnings call this morning. Despite shareholder concern about the large investment necessary to sell the iPhone and knowing that it won’t be profitable until 2015, Hesse isn’t worried. According to AllThingsD, he said, “We believe in the long term. And over time we will make more money on iPhone customers than we will on other customers.”
• You know how Apple and China Mobile have been in talks for years about offering the iPhone on China’s largest mobile carrier? Well,  those talks are continuing, according to the carrier’s new chairman, Xi Guohua. “China Mobile and Apple both have the will to strengthen cooperation,” he said at a company meeting Wednesday, without offering any more specific details, Bloomberg reports.
• Greenpeace tries to get Apple’s attention on coal-powered server farms with protestors dressed as iPhones and a pod-like capsule that projected protest messages onto Apple’s Cupertino headquarters on Tuesday. Gizmodo has the (bizarre) pictures.
• Washington insiders may be miffed that Apple doesn’t follow standard D.C. practice in lining politicians’ pockets with donations, but the company isn’t a stranger to high-ranking officials. Here’s the latest proof: this photo, posted by Fortune, shows Apple CEO Tim Cook meeting with John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, on Tuesday.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• U.S. Wireless Data Market, Q1 2009
• 4G: State of the Union
• U.S. Wireless Data Market: Q4 and Year-End 2008

Fuel cells take fuel (natural gas or biogas) and combine it with oxygen and other chemicals to create an electrochemical reaction to produce electricity. Each of Bloom Energy’s next-generation fuel cells produces 200 kW of power right at a building.

Apple is planning to build a massive 4.8 MW fuel cell farm for a data center that will consume 20 MW, according to Apple’s latest figures. Apple is also building an adjacent 20 MW solar panel farm at the data center. While Greenpeace has given Apple low marks for building its data center in North Carolina, where the grid has a lot of coal power, Apple actually seems to be going to significant lengths to build its own clean power sources at the site itself.

On Monday morning Bloom Energy also held a ground breaking ceremony for its first factory on the east coast in Newark, Delaware, which could make some of the fuel cells that Apple will use at the North Carolina site. Update: Actually Apple’s fuel cell farm will be live by this Summer, and the Bloom factory won’t produce fuel cells until 2013. The east coast factory is expected to create hundreds of jobs and will make 1,000 Bloom boxes a year, reports CNET. The anchor customer for Bloom’s east coast factory is the local utility Delmarva Power & Light, which has about 500,000 electricity customers and plans to buy 30 MW worth of fuel cells from Bloom.

Apple’s fuel cell farm is supposed to run on biogas (gas emitted by decomposing organic waste). An increasing number of Internet companies, like Apple, Google and Microsoft, are experimenting with turning to biogas as an emerging source to power part of their data centers (see my primer on what you need to know about biogas and data centers). Bloom Energy recently launched a division specifically focused on providing reliable power for data centers.

Image courtesy of Bloom Energy at AT&T campus.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world
• Smart Grid Apps: Six Trends That Will Shape Grid Evolution
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010