Google is a much much larger energy consumer, has been carbon neutral since 2007, and is going to use 100% renewables globally within the next year.

Also, Google made its energy company play back in 2010. Apple made theirs in 2016.

https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/10/22Apple-Launches-Ne...

From Google's 2016 energy report: "And in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations..."

http://qz.com/342240/apple-is-building-a-massive-farm-of-sol...

That seems implausible. The electrical requirements of Aluminum production are extreme. Obviously there's a lot of issues about where one draws the line between the company and its subcontractors and so on, but it seems hard to believe Apple's global energy footprint is not higher than Google's

When we measure our carbon footprint, we include hundreds of suppliers, millions of customers, and hundreds of millions of devices. And we’re always looking for ways to make the biggest difference in five major areas: manufacturing, product use, facilities, transportation, and recycling.

[1] http://www.apple.com/environment/climate-change/

Then lets do a back of the envelope calculation for energy consumption for Apple's aluminum use.

Very roughly Apple sells ~25 million macs and ~200 million iphones per year. Again lets assume that it needs 2kg of aluminum for macbooks and 100g for phones (not all iphones are aluminum and this might be lower), that makes ~70 thousand metric tonnes of aluminum.

Modern smelters use 13KW/h to produce 1 kilogram of aluminum, but their production involves recycled aluminum (and possibly shavings from milling?) so number should be lower, lets say it is 10KWH per kilo.

This makes 70M*10KWh = 700GW/h year

Google's datacenter energy consumption, is difficult to guess, if there are 1 million servers, and assuming each server consumes 10KWH per day, then it makes ~3.5 TWH per year.

This is apples to oranges of course, aluminum vs server running energy costs, but still kinda implies that Google uses more energy, at least directly.

FWIW, the linked article mentions

> The 5.7 terawatt-hours of electricity Google consumed in 2015 “is equal to the output of two 500 megawatt coal plants,” said Jonathan Koomey

though they don't mention the source

Likewise, you couldn't just keep buying big batteries from third parties to power all your needs, and claim to have no carbon footprint because you didn't make the batteries.

USGS has online reports.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/rec... 40% ~2001

For 2015, it looks as of 30% of supply came via recycling: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/mc...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...

But the energy used, carbon emitted, is fairly small for the 1000 or so flights they take relative to the aggregate benefit they're making by buying so much "cleaner" power.

You really ought consider the relative perspective, I don't think their 757 carbon impact compares to the output of a 5MW data center running 24/7.

"A Boeing 747 jet has an average power consumption of 140 megawatts."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)

You can use this link to see San Francisco's power usage in 2015: http://ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbycounty.aspx

It was almost exactly 140 megawatts/hour * 24 hours * 365 days.

I highly doubt Google's worldwide data centers use more power than all of SF.

So, not silly!

MW/h doesn't make any sense. A unit of power would be MW, a unit of energy would be MWh (megawatt times hour, not divided by hour). MW/h would be a power increase over time, which is surely not what the parent means.

[1] Unless they're in the US, Liberia or Myanmar. :)

Google is purchasing 2600GW of renewable energy as of Nov 2016, while Apple is purchasing around 150GW.

For example, Apple's global power consumption definitely includes power used in manufacturing, a problem that Google externalizes from this sort of computation.

Every other phone or tablet sold in the E.U. has a sensible power adaptor, usually the mini USB flavour. Apple though, they don't think the law applies to them, or at least not the spirit of the law, so they keep churning out these Apple only power adaptors complete with the cables that fray and break a lot easier than normal cables.

Sure the data centres may be green but the landfill is not. Meanwhile, Google (who have far larger and more useful data centres) have been providing E.U. compliant power adaptors (or lack of) since the first Nexus phones, if not a long time before.

Nonetheless, framing ones' opinion of Apple's sustainability practices on this one pet issue seems quite myopic. The actual sustainability complaint stems from the alleged poor durability, not the choice of connection; but even if we accept that criticism, replacing charging cables occasionally seems like small drop in the bucket vs. the company's environmental impact as a whole.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Mini_and_micro_connectors