Greenpeace has released the 5th edition of its Cool IT Leaderboard, which evaluates IT companies on their leadership in three key areas — clean energy leadership, willingness to embrace clean energy solutions, and potential to influence energy decisions — and Google has landed on top.

Greenpeace launched the Cool IT Challenge in 2009 to call on Information Technology (IT) companies, a sector with enormous potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions, to promote technological solutions needed to fight climate change. The Cool IT Leaderboard is updated regularly to track the progress of the world’s largest IT companies towards the goal of economy-wide GHG emission reductions of 15% by 2020.

“Technology giants have a real opportunity to use their power and influence to change how we produce and use energy – Google tops the table because it’s putting its money where its mouth is by pumping investment into renewable energy,” said Greenpeace International IT analyst Gary Cook.

Google achieved a high score in advocacy for its support of both a stronger U.S. clean energy policy and strengthening the European Union’s current 20% greenhouse gas target by 2020. Disclosing its energy footprint and committing to increasing renewable energy use from 25% in 2011 to 35% in 2012 also contributed to them landing in the top position. Google is also the top scorer on the investment category under solutions, with $915 million invested in renewable energy projects.

Other Cool It Leaderboard 5 highlights:

● Cisco, Ericsson, and Fujitsu stand out in the solutions criteria for providing detailed case studies of how their unique technologies are creating pathways toward significant emission reductions.

● Softbank has set a new bar in advocacy leadership with strong statements and efforts to move Japan away from dirty energy dependence post-Fukushima.

● Google, Cisco, and Dell stand out for sourcing over 20 percent renewable energy globally for each company’s infrastructure.

● Six telecommunications companies were added in the latest version — AT&T, Telefónica, Vodafone, Softbank, Alcatel-Lucent, and NTT — as well as three major IT software and equipment brands from India and Japan — HCL, TCS and NEC.

● Greenpeace found a significant drop-off in policy advocacy leadership by IT companies. Of the companies that were evaluated for version 4 in 2011, only Wipro and Sharp saw their advocacy leadership scores improve.

To learn more about Greenpeace’s Cool IT Leaderboard, visit www.greenpeace.org/international/cool-it-leaderboard-5/

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