Climate change awareness is a trend that is taking root here in Pakistan as well. Naturally 1st world countries are at the forefront with this issue and are leading the pack. However you will be surprised to find out that tech companies are actually leading the fight against climate change.
Greenpeace has announced its annual list of the greenest companies on the planet, and once again it is the tech companies leading the chart. The companies were graded and given a clean energy index score out of 100%.
The score is given by the company’s current share of energy produced by renewable energy, as well as its willingness to turn completely to renewable resources in the future and make its current consumption public.
The list for 2016 was topped by Apple, which earned an “A” grade and had a score of 83 percent. It was helped by the fact that its new headquarters will feature around 700,000 sq. feet of solar panels. This is the third straight year that Apple has topped the list.
Other technology companies included in the list include Facebook at 67 percent, and Google at 56 percent. Greenpeace also listed Apple, Google, Facebook and Switch (a telecom company, which had a perfect 100 score) as making genuine efforts towards using 100% renewable energy.
It highlights Samsung, Netflix and Amazon Web Services as lagging behind the pack in implementing more eco-friendly energy solutions. Microsoft and Oracle also need to get their heads together after they were given scores of 32 and 8 percent, respectively.
Companies in developing markets are also lagging in the sector as the usage of fossil fuels is quite the norm there. Unexpectedly, these include services like Alibaba and Baidu.
Overall, the IT industry had a share of 7% in the overall global energy footprint, and is expected to grow to 12% as technology’s penetration grows and global internet consumption set to increase threefold by 2020.