Amazon got F grading for energy transparency, renewable energy commitment & siting policy, and renewable energy deployment and advocacy in Greenpeace’s grading for most popular websites last year. The company also scored a ‘D’ under the head energy efficiency and mitigation.
In this year’s Greenpeace grading of 110 companies based on the utilization of renewable energy sources by the websites, things are looking up for Amazon. This year the company has ‘D’s for renewable energy commitment and siting policy and renewable energy deployment and advocacy and a C for energy efficiency and mitigation.
Greenpeace’s clicking clean scorecard allows users to assess the site owners’ approach to sustainable energy use.
The non-governmental environmental organization has assessed sites including the likes of Buzzfeed, Tumblr, and WordPress for their commitment to using green energy sources and how open they are with users about the source of the electricity they use. Efforts are graded in a descending order of magnitude from A to F.
And Greenpeace has pledged to expand the number of sites listed on the scorecard
“As people move more of their lives online, they deserve to know which companies are working to power their favourite sites and services with renewable energy, so they can choose to stream and share with companies that are helping to build a greener internet,” Dave Pomerantz, senior climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace USA, has been quoted by Computerweekly as saying.
ALSO READ: Apple, Google, Facebook ranked high, Amazon among the worst in Greenpeace rating
The latest Greenpeace report has come down hard on Amazon Web Services as a large number of other companies depend on it for hosting their websites.
“In the sample of 110 websites included in this report, at least 35 use AWS for a significant portion of their hosting, with many others likely using their services to some degree,” the report stated.
“A massive portion of the internet would be on the road to becoming greener if Amazon moved to power with renewable energy.”
Chrome extension
Google Chrome has made the Click Clean Scorecard report of Greenpeace available to its use in an interactive format. A browser extension allows users to pull up data relating to the energy footprint of these 110 sites when web users pay them a visit.
The extension displays the status of the site owner’s use of renewable energy in green, yellow or red cloud in decreasing order of utilization.
The extension will be continually updated to include latest information and additional versions of the plugin to suit different browsers are being worked upon.
Ajith Kumar S