Daniel Novta/Flickr/CC BY 2.0

Microsoft may have retired Clippy five years ago, but on 25 October, the annoying Office icon popped up -- unwanted of course -- at the company's Palo Alto, California retail store.

It's message to Microsoft: use cleaner energy to power your data centres.

This Clippy was actually a Greenpeace activist, protesting the way Microsoft sources the power for its data centres. Like many big internet companies, Microsoft locates its massive computer facilities in places that have cheap land, good internet connectivity, and inexpensive power.

The company buys renewable energy credits to offset its energy use, but that isn't good enough for Greenpeace. Greenpeace wants it to make a long-term commitment to powering its data centres with renewable energy sources like solar or wind.

"Microsoft's most recent data centre announcements show that is it continuing to build in locations such as Wyoming and Virginia in the United States that are attached to dirty energy," Greenpeace said in a press release. "Microsoft has yet to put forward a plan to power its data centres with clean and not dirty energy."

The environmental activist organisation says that Google and Facebook are doing a good job on this front because they've adjusted corporate policy to make renewable energy a priority whenever they pick a new data centre site. But Greenpeace  has problems with other internet giants, including Apple and Amazon. In the past year, it's sent window-washers to Apple stores and scaled the side of Amazon's headquarters, trying to pressure the companies to change their ways.

And the protests have worked. In May, following pressure from Greenpeace, Apple said that it was going to dump coal power.

Microsoft, which launched its Windows 8 operating system 25 October, was unable to comment immediately on the protest.

Source: Wired.com

Latest on wired.co.uk