Overcoming Cisco, the winner from the last year, Google has taken the top spot as the leader in advocacy for clean energy. Greenpeace applauds Google for their dedication to using cleaner and renewable energy.

“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,” Greenpeace International IT analyst Gary Cook said. “The IT sector might like to consider itself forward-thinking, but it is keeping far too quiet while the dirty energy industry continues to exert undue influence on both the political process and financial markets.”

Google scored 53/100 for their efforts in conservation and reducing their carbon footprint. The report goes on to say that Google scored so high because they disclosed their energy footprint, have plans to increase its renewable energy use from 25 percent in 2011 to 35 percent in 2012. They were also applauded for investing $915 million in renewable energy projects.

Like any company, however, Google did have a few areas where they could improve according to the report. Greenpeace was disappointed with the company’s decision to shut down its RE

The two companies with the lowest scores at 11 each are TCS and Telefonica. Both companies are taken to task over their renewable energy programs not being detailed. The companies don’t provide evidence to show that they’re moving towards better efficiency.

Microsoft dropped in the leaderboard for the second time in a row with a score of 23. They say that Microsoft, while distancing itself from organizations that promote bad energy policies, needs to set an example by pushing the IT industry towards cleaner energy.

Notable exemptions from the report are Apple and Facebook. Greenpeace has said that Apple was not included because it does not meet “the Leaderboard criteria:”

It [Apple] has not demonstrated leadership or elected to pursue market opportunities to drive IT energy solutions that many of its competitors have, despite record profits and large cash reserves.

Facebook was not included in previous reports due to similar reasons, but they note the company’s recent commitment to a “renewably powered Facebook” and their partnership with Opower to use the Facebook platform to let its users compared their energy usage. For these reasons, Facebook will be included in next year’s report.

The overall trend from this year’s report, however, seems to be mostly negative. Greenpeace calls on the IT sector to act on their promises of cleaner energy:

“The IT industry must use its influence, innovative spirit and technological know-how to overcome the dirty energy companies who are holding on to the status quo, and holding us back from a transition to a renewable energy economy,” Cook said. “What we’re seeing is a lot of talk from companies about moving toward clean energy, but so far, not much of action.”

You can read the full report here.

That’s just what Greenpeace did with a pair of videos, painting Volkswagen as the Empire for their failure to improve its poor environmental record. Over at the GreenpeaceUK site, they have a page devoted to the movement, asking users to “Join the Rebellion” against the Empire that is Volkswagen.

From the site’s description:

Our home—Earth—is in trouble. VW opposes key environmental laws we need if we’re going to stop our planet going the way of Alderaan (bye bye). But all is not lost. We feel the good in Volkswagen.

All of us in the Rebellion are calling on Volkswagen to turn away from the Dark Side and give our planet a chance.

The page even has a link to Greenpeace’s full report on Volkswagen’s track record with the environment. A snippet of the introduction text gives readers an idea of where Greenpeace is going with their protestations:

The Volkswagen Group is the largest car maker in Europe. It has repeatedly claimed that it wants to be a‘green’ company, but has so far failed to live up to its green ambitions. It has been slow to make its fleet more efficient, despite having developed the technology to do so, and has actively worked to impede strong European climate policies. The company must change.

The highlight of Greenpeace’s Volkswagen protest comes from the videos they made to get their point across. To do so, Greenpeace mocked the incredibly-popular Darth Vader kid commercial (over 40 million views on YouTube) with not one, but two satirical videos:

Currently, the number of people who’ve joined Greenpeace’s anti-Volkswagen movement is up to 89,112 people.

The most surprising aspect of Greenpeace’s movement is the liberal use of Star Wars material. The protest page is littered with things like “Your Jedi training page,” and “FAQ / FQA with Yoda;” leading this particular writer to believe George Lucas is on board with the protest. Considering just how protective he is over the “Star Wars” brand, and anything related to it, if Greenpeace doesn’t have Lucas’ permission, these pages won’t last very long at all.

Furthermore, the fact that Lucas allowed Volkswagen to use likenesses from the Star Wars universe casts doubt on the idea he’d let Greenpeace use the same kind of look and feel to protest Volkswagen. At some point, we’ll get to find out just how strong the Force in Greenpeace really is.

Greenpeace is calling on Facebook to “unfriend” coal by Earth Day on April 22. The Greenpeace Unfriend Coal Facebook page has over 98,000 likes.

“Just as Facebook has revolutionised the way the world communicates, so it can revolutionise the IT sector’s current reliance on coal,” Greenpeace said in a blog post. “Facebook’s reputation for innovation means that wherever it goes, other IT companies will follow.”

Greenpeace is asking Facebook to develop a plan by 2021 to be entirely coal free. It is also calling on Facebook to educate its users about how it powers its services and its carbon footprint.

“At current growth rates, data centers and telecommunication networks – two key components of ‘the cloud’ that Facebook depends on – will consume about 1,963 billion kilowatts hours of electricity in 2020,” Greenpeace says on its Unfriend Coal Facebook page.

“That’s more than triple their current consumption and more than the current electricity consumption of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined. Facebook has a real opportunity to lead by example by extending this spirit of innovation to the environment.”

A campaign to "get Facebook to unfriend coal" has been building momentum for some time, and it appears to have reached a critical mass of sorts today.  Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, actually published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg this morning.

In it, Naidoo stated, "Greenpeace and over half a million Facebook users have expressed significant concerns with your decision to power this data center with dirty coal-fired electricity from PacificCorp, which runs an electricity mix that is disproportionately powered by coal, the largest source of global warming pollution."

Naidoo would prefer it if Zuckerberg and Facebook would "[c]ommit to a plan to phase out the use of dirty coal-fired electricity to power your data centers" and "[u]se your purchasing power to choose locations that allow you to rely on only clean, renewable sources of electricity," instead.

These requests aren’t likely to have much effect in the short term; the Prineville data center is already under construction and Facebook hasn’t announced plans to build anything else.  Still, it’s possible Greenpeace and its supporters will influence the social network to be a little more Google-y in the future, turning to solar and wind power.

Also, in fairness to Facebook, the company’s already taken the issue of energy conservation into consideration to some degree.  On August 20th, a post on the Prineville Data Center page detailed several power-saving technologies that the facility will employ.

UPDATE: Barry Schnitt, director of policy communications at Facebook, left a comment further describing his company’s stance on environmental responsibility and energy conservation.

“For a company that claims to lead on production design, Apple scores badly on almost all criteria,” one Greenpeace page asserted. “Apple performs poorly on product take back and recycling, with the exeption of reporting on the amounts of its electronic waste recycled.” In a CNET article, an Apple spokesperson had the opportunity to refute those charges.

“Apple has a strong environmental track record and has led the industry in restricting and banning toxic substances such as mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium, as well as many BFRs (brominated flame retardants),” the representative maintained. “We have also completely eliminated CRT monitors, which contain lead, from our product line.”

Lenovo, which actually ranked numerically lower than Apple, was granted a kinder wording: “needs to do better on all criteria.” But none of the companies had cause to rejoice over the report. Even Nokia and Dell, which tied for first, “scraped a barely respectable score” of 7.

“With a [sic] average score of only 4/10 it is clear that the electronics industry has a long way to go before it can make any claims to being a green industry,” the Greenpeace site stated.

Of course, the organization’s reputation is, um, subject to debate. And by its own admission, “companies are scored solely on information publicly available on their global websites,” so if Apple has a secret recycling program, it didn’t receive any credit for the effort. Still, the Guide to Greener Electronics is an interesting assessment of some of the leading names in the industry.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.