How Dirty is Apple's iCloud?

April 17, 2012 from Climate Desk

You've heard about the Foxconn factory in China where iPads are assembled. But have you ever considered the energy required to store your emails, photos, and videos in the cloud? As worldwide demand for data storage skyrockets, so do the power needs of the servers where all our digital archives live. While some companies (like Facebook) have made great progress in ditching dirty fossil-fuel energy for cleaner renewables, a few internet giants lag far behind. Climate Desk visited Maiden, North Carolina, for a close-up view of what will soon be one of the world's biggest data centers, owned by Apple and powered by the coal-heavy power behemoth Duke Energy.

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Duke Energy

Duke Energy, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the largest electric power holding company in the United States; with assets also in Canada and Latin America. Explore this topic

Data center

A data center or computer centre is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls ... Explore this topic

Cloud storage

Cloud storage is a model of networked enterprise storage where data is stored not in the user's computer, but in virtualized pools of storage which are generally hosted by third parties. Hosting companies operate large data centers, and people who require their data to be host... Explore this topic

Coal-fired power station

No description provided Explore this topic

Maiden, North Carolina

Maiden is a town in Catawba and Lincoln counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Maiden is known as "The Biggest Little Football Town in the World". The population was 3,327 at the 2010 census. Maiden is also known for being home to Apple's "Cloud" Data Center, covering 5... Explore this topic

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, as with the electricity grid. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, Service-or... Explore this topic

iCloud

iCloud is a cloud storage and cloud computing service from Apple Inc. launched on October 12, 2011. As of April 2013, the service has 300 million users. The service allows users to store data such as music and iOS applications on remote computer servers for download to multipl... Explore this topic

Apple Inc.

Apple Inc., (NASDAQ: AAPL) formerly Apple Computer Inc., is an American multinational corporation which designs and manufactures consumer electronics and software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone. Apple s... Explore this topic

Fossil fuel

Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, and sometimes exceeds 650 million years. Fossil fuels contain high percentages... Explore this topic

iPad

The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., which runs Apple's iOS operating system. The first iPad was released on April 3, 2010; the most recent iPad models, the fourth-generation iPad and iPad Mini, were released on November 2, 2012. The user... Explore this topic

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Duke Energy

Data center

Cloud storage

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