• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 10, 2017

Apple, Google, Facebook, and Switch have scored the highest marks in Greenpeace’s annual renewable-energy ranking, while Baidu, Oracle, Samsung, and Tencent have received among the lowest.

The Greenpeace Clicking Clean: Who is Winning the Race to Build a Green Internet report, released Tuesday, ranks companies on their efficiencies to build a green Internet.

Apple's rating earned the company a clean energy index score of 83%, followed by Facebook at 67% and Google at 56%.

Specific to search, company scorecards show that Google received a final grade of A, followed by Bing and Yahoo with a B rating. Daum.net received a C rating, followed by Naver with a C rating and Baidu, Nate, and Zum with a rating of F.

To earn an A rating, Google received an A in renewable energy committing and siting policy, energy efficiency and mitigation, renewable procurement, and advocacy. The company earned a B rating in energy transparency.

The report also shows that data center provider Switch, which is new to the Clicking Clean report this year, scored among the highest -- 100% -- for any class of company and is the definitive leader among colocation operators for its efforts to rapidly transition its data centers to renewables through a combination of renewable energy procurement and aggressive advocacy.

And the report also calls out cloud computing and video streaming as two technologies that are driving demand for resources.

YouTube was the only video streaming company to receive an A rating -- following in the footsteps of its parent company Google with an A rating for everything except transparency in which it received a B rating. Amazon Prime received a C rating, followed by HBO, Netflix, and Vimeo, which all received a D rating. Afreeca.com, Hulu, Pooq.co.kr, and Vevo took a beating with an F rating.

Greenpeace gave iTunes an A rating, but it also gave Spotify a D, and NPR, Pandora, SoundCloud and Podbbang an F rating.

In the report, Greenpeace also calls out Amazon for the lack of transparency around Amazon Web Services, "the world's biggest cloud computer company remains almost completely non-transparent about the energy footprint of its massive operations."

The study goes on to report that among the global cloud providers, only "AWS refuses to make public basic details on the energy performance and environmental impact associated with its operations."