While many companies have cited the ‘green’ virtues of moving towards the use of cloud computing over the past few years, it appears Greenpeace aren’t such big fans. In fact, the environmental campaigners are to release a report this week which claims that the cloud of data that is becoming the heart of the internet is creating an “all-too-real cloud of pollution” in the USA as Facebook, Apple and others build data centres powered by coal.

‘Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have at least some centres that rely heavily on coal power.’

A Reuters report on the story says that a Facebook facility being built in Oregon will rely on a utility whose main fuel is coal, while Apple is building a data warehouse in a North Carolina region that relies mostly on coal, the environmental organisation said in the study.

“The last thing we need is for more cloud infrastructure to be built in places where it increases demand for dirty coal-fired power,” said Greenpeace, which argues that web companies should be more careful about where they build and should lobby more in Washington for clean energy.

The Greenpeace report comes during a global debate whether to create caps or other measures to cut use of carbon-heavy fuels like coal and curb climate change. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft , Yahoo and Google have at least some centres that rely heavily on coal power, said Greenpeace.

Most of the companies declined to give details of their data centres to Reuters. All said, however, they considered the environment in business decisions, and most said they were “aggressively pursuing energy efficiency”. Examples include Facebook claiming to have chosen the location for its data centre to use natural means to cool its machines. Google said it purchased carbon offsets – funding for projects which suck up carbon – for emissions, including at data centres.

Data centre energy use already is huge, Greenpeace said.  The report is set to reveals that if considered as a country, global telecommunications and data centres behind cloud computing would have ranked fifth in the world for energy use in 2007, behind the United States, China, Russia and Japan.

The group based its findings on a mix of data, including a federal review of fuels in US zip codes in 2005 and a 2008 study by the Climate Group and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, which Greenpeace updated in part with US Environmental Protection Agency data.