Oracle has placed last in Greenpeace’s annual ranking of enterprise IT companies based on their green credentials. Greenpeace said the software and systems giant received a low ranking due to its failure to disclose its use non-renewable energy sources.

Google topped the table, overtaking last year’s leader Cisco, thanks to its support of stronger US clean energy policy and the EU’s more stringent carbon reduction plans, Greenpeace said. "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.

Casey Harrell, an IT analyst at Greenpeace who worked on the report, told Information Age that the leaderboard candidates were selected for their potential to help enterprises become more energy efficient through, for example by reducing the travel for executives through video conferencing.

Technology giants Apple and Facebook were not included in the table as they were not deemed to affect business emissions, Harrell said. "Apple’s cloud isn’t driving enterprise CO2 savings at the moment, it’s mainly streaming movie and music to consumers," he said.

Greenpeace noted that Google, Cisco and Dell all sourced more than 20% of their energy needs with renewables, contributing to their higher scores.

Fujitsu ranked top for ‘climate solutions’ – a measure of greenhouse gas emissions saved through its technology – while Japan’s Softbank received the highest score in the ‘political advocacy’ category for its demand for a rapid shift towards renewable energy and away from nuclear power in Japan following the Fukushima disaster.