Earlier this year Apple opened the doors to their manufacturing plant, Foxconn, to the public for the first time. It wasn’t pretty. Now, they’re being dragged into the spotlight again by none other than Greenpeace. Apparently their amazing iCloud isn’t all that amazing for the environment.

The Cloud, as the cool kids call it, is a virtual storage network, giving users access to their data from anywhere at any time. Sounds great, right? It is, except that it’s not really virtual at all, it’s very much real. Digital storage, as intangible as it seems, can’t simply be fabricated out of thin air. The Cloud is actually a collection of massive data centers which physically store digital data which is then in turn made available online. The concept is simple enough, however it becomes more complicated when one considers that those energy-thirsty data centers run on good ol’ electricity. Unfortunately for Apple, their newest data center will receive electricity from Duke Energy, who still rely on coal for 59% of their production. Coal is dirty.

Maiden, North Carolina is the site of “what will soon be one of the world’s biggest data centers”. The town offers a unique benefit to energy-hungry establishments as they offer electricity at rate two-thirds of the national average, local tax incentives make it all more inviting.

It’s not just Apple that the town’s resident’s are counting on, as Scott Millar President, Catawba County Economic Development Corporation puts it,

“Just like you buying a car, chances are you’re going to shop around and look for the best deal for the purchase of that car, and these companies are no different. Having these companies come in, and take a part of our economy, is richly rewarding.”

“You’re going to use more data, and we’re betting on that future.”

But there are many people more concerned about the environmental impact that the new facility will have.

“The Apple cloud is heavily powered by dirty energy, particularly coal and coal that is coming from mountain-top removal in Appalachia,” said Gary Cook, who wrote the report, How Clean Is Your Cloud. “It is certainly not what you would expect from a company like Apple that challenged us to think differently. Here they bought into energy that is old industry and technology.”

Apple however, do not agree with the predictions about their new data center’s energy consumption. A spokeswoman for the company claimed that the new facility would only use one fifth the energy predicted by Greenpeace and that eventually 60% of its power would be drawn from renewable sources.

“Our data centre in North Carolina will draw about 20 megawatts at full capacity,” an Apple spokeswoman said. “We believe this industry-leading project will make Maiden the greenest data centre ever built.”

Watch Climate Desk’s informative short below for more.

[Source: Mother Jones, The Guardian]