Page - January 26, 2011
We are campaigning for Facebook to drop coal and commit to 100 percent renewable energy, cutting its carbon footprint and helping to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Facebook's relationship to coal
Facebook announced in February that it will build a massive data centre in Oregon, U.S., packed full of the latest energy efficient computers to serve the hundreds of millions of friends connecting on their near-addictive social networking website. But the company plans to run the place on electricity made by burning coal -- Yes, the dirtiest source of energy and largest single source of global warming pollution in the world. Read more...
Facebook can control where it builds its infrastructure; the power purchasing agreements it enters into; and how it uses its brand's power to advocate for strong policies that promote clean energy. Given all of the control Facebook does have, it can make a commitment to phase out coal and show the rest of the IT sector that it can be done.
Facebook's Green Page
Facebook launched an official "Green" page late last year, highlighting what they're doing to be greener - from energy efficiency measures in their data centres, to auto/dual flush toilets in their offices.
Those efforts are all good, but surely we can expect better from the internet heavyweight. We want to see Facebook announce a plan to drop coal power, and use and promote renewable energy instead.
Over 600,000 people, almost all of them members of Facebook, have joined our campaign since February calling on the company to go green. You can still get involved and engage with the company to support renewable energy instead of coal.
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What steps does Facebook need to take?
- Commit to stop using polluting coal power,
- Use its purchasing power to choose only clean, renewable sources of electricity,
- Advocate for strong climate and energy policy changes at the local, national and international level to ensure that as the IT industry's energy demand increases, so does the supply of renewable energy,
- Share this information publicly on its website so its millions of users know the company is a climate leader.
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Ultimately Greenpeace would like Facebook to publicly acknowledge that it has chosen the most polluting form of power -- coal. Without a strong policy statement on these issues any claims Facebook makes about how very green its new datacenter is will ring hollow.