If Greenpeace had its wish your #1 criteria for where your data center goes is the renewable energy content. But, as we all know anyone who would do this wouldn't have a job in the data center business. Renewable energy is important, but it is not the the #1 criteria. #1 issues are Energy availability and cost, Bandwidth, and Ease of doing business.

Cushman&Wakefield just released their 2012 data centre risk index that provides a perspective in line with current data center thinking. Here is a data center risk mapped to the world.

Here is the criteria that Cushman&Wakefield used to rate countries. Note the sustainable energy is in Tier 2 which is 35% and 10% of the area is for sustainable energy, equalling 3.5% out of the total.

Should Greenpeace be protesting Cushman? Will they? Most likely not.

Greenpeace's criteria for what makes a good data center site is here.

Cushman's study shows the following as the top 10 countries for data centers on page 7 of their report.

It is good to see Cushman added more countries to its report for 2012.