Update: May 2012 — Greenpeace is organizing activists to urge major tech companies, including Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, to get off coal and use clean energy sources to power data centers.
Greenpeace International recently released a report, “How Clean is Your Cloud?”, that graded tech companies on their electricity sources. The report’s findings led Greenpeace to question the power that Apple’s iDataCenter in North Carolina is drawing from Duke Energy, a utility company that uses coal from mountaintop removal mining processes. The “Clean Our Cloud” campaign is calling out Apple’s “coal problem” and hopes to send the message that the tech giant’s 19th Century energy choices don’t match their cutting-edge image. In late April, protesters gathered at Apple stores in the US and Canada to clean the glass of the store windows in an effort to raise awareness of the dirty energy that powers the cloud.
The campaign also organized a blockade on the train tracks outside a Duke Energy power plant near Apple’s data center in North Carolina to protest coal-fired power and mountaintop removal. In a related direct action, British Columbians for Climate Action are urged activists to occupy train tracks in White Rock, British Columbia to block coal shipments to China.
February 2012 — Activists “occupy” the Duke Energy headquarters to call for safe, clean energy.
Greenpeace has launched a campaign against the third largest emitter of CO2 in the U.S., Duke Energy. Six activists in Charlotte, North Carolina erected and climbed a pair of two-story high tripods in front of the company’s headquarters (while wearing T-shirts that said “Be a good neighbor”). They hung a banner across the tripods with the message, “Duke Energy: no dirty rate hikes.” A few days before the action, protestors also ascended a smokestack at a coal-fired power plant in Asheville to raise awareness of the proposed merger between Progress Energy and Duke Energy.
The Quit Coal campaign aims to make “Duke Energy the clean energy company that North Carolina and the United States deserve.” At the moment, North Carolina residents are experiencing rate increases to invest in harmful coal projects rather than renewable energy alternatives. The campaign is asking Duke Energy not to renew mountain top removal contracts, to deliver a third of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 and quit coal entirely by 2030.
View photos of the Duke Energy action on Greenpeace’s Flickr photostream.
Learn more about the Quit Coal campaign.
