What's this about?
We want Facebook to unfriend coal. Specifically, we want the company to:
- Increase the use of clean energy to make Facebook coal free
- Develop a plan to make Facebook coal free by 2021
- Educate your users about how Facebook powers its services and its carbon footprint
- Advocate for clean energy at a local, national and international level
Basically, we are campaigning to get Facebook to drop coal and commit to 100 percent renewable energy, cutting its carbon footprint and helping in the struggle to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Facebook's relationship to coal
Facebook announced in February 2010 that it is building 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.
Our IT sector climate campaign
Greenpeace has been working in the IT industry for half a decade to get companies to be greener. Facebook's coal problem is representative of the IT sector's growing demand for energy. At current growth rates data centers and telecommunication networks, the two key components of the cloud Facebook depends on, will consume about 1,963 billion kilowatts hours of electricity in 2020. That's more than triple their current consumption and more than the current electricity consumption of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.
Facebook responds to public pressure. We can get facebook to unfriend coal, and show the rest of the IT sector what we're made of.
Join the campaign by clicking the a Facebook Like button on this page and share it with your friends.