Apple, ranked the least green of the big tech companies earlier this year, is moving quietly to repair its reputation by switching its vast east coast data center from coal to solar power.
Officials in North Carolina say the company is preparing to build a solar farm next to its US$1 billion data center in Maiden.
The facility could help Apple recover from a Greenpeace report earlier this year which said its cloud-computing operations — run from centers such as the one in North Carolina — were heavily reliant on dirty energy such as coal.
Tech companies are notoriously secretive about their data centers and the energy that powers them. A spokeswoman for Apple would confirm only that the company was preparing the ground next to its center.
However, the project became public knowledge in the town when work crews began burning the cleared brush from the 50 hectare site in the middle of last month.
Neighbors complained about the smoke billowing into their homes.
“They decided after that since it was annoying the neighbors to bring in a chipper and shred and mulch all the wood,” said Toni Norton, an engineer for Catawba County.
With the expansion of cloud computing, companies such as Apple have invested heavily in large data centers for their Web-based services — often in areas promising cheap electricity, such as North Carolina.
Google, American Express and Facebook have also built data centers in North Carolina. Apple’s is one of the largest, occupying about 46,000m2 Maiden planning director Sam Schultz said.
Data centers currently consume about 3 percent of US power supply, according to Greenpeace. North Carolina gets most of its electricity from coal and nuclear plants.
It’s not even clear when Apple intends to break ground on the solar facility. Todd Herms, Maiden’s town manager, said the company had yet to approach the town for a building permit.
“The plans say solar farm, but for all the permits show they could be putting a big mobile home park there,” Norton said.
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