A new data center belonging to Apple will be built in Maiden, NC, says GigaOM’s Katie Fehrenbacher, quoting a local newspaper. Nothing fancy so far – they have lots of data centers.
The only difference is that Steve Jobs chose this one’s location personally and the center will be powered by solar panels instead of coal (61%) and nuclear (31%), the state’s current favorites.
Project Dolphin was the initial name, but now it has been renamed iDataCenter, because its main role will be hosting iCloud’s information.
So far, Apple had only averaged 6 percent of the power it’s using coming from renewable resources, and had been given an “F” mark by Greenpeace for that. They said that Apple’s (and others’) CSR program should take into account that if they build a huge electricity consumer such a data center and request that the energy should be cleaner, the utilities would comply. But Apple seems not having done that, so far.
Well, it looks like Steve Jobs did after all think of the environment and the “great products” he’d been making since the 70’s and maybe he’s had a glimpse that for products to be great, they also need to be green at heart. This wasn’t much of an issue 30 years ago, although it should have been.
[via gigaom]
