Facebook 'friends' renewable energy. Thumbs up!
Facebook's message to energy producers is clear: invest now in renewable energy, and move away from coal power.
In addition, Greenpeace and Facebook will collaborate in the promotion of renewable energy and encourage major utilities to develop renewable energy sources. (See the agreement here)
Facebook has also committed to develop programmes with Greenpeace so that Facebook users can save energy and engage their communities in clean energy decisions. The possibilities for helping to empower and mobilise people around the world to launch an energy revolution are staggering!
You can see the campaign timeline here.
From today, Facebook has a siting policy that states a preference for access to clean, renewable energy supply for its future data centres – the places where its computers live. Coal power is still a feature of Facebook for now, but as they say in the IT sector -- it's been deprecated.
Congratulations and thank you to everyone who helped us get here. Now please announce it to the world! Go on, boast about how you helped our Facebook campaign to success - on Facebook -- you deserve it! The good people at Facebook also deserve our thanks for rising to the challenge and setting the bar for Internet companies with its data centre siting policy.
You can see Facebook's announcement of our collaboration on their Green Page. And don't forget to let them know if you 'like' it!
Mobilising to green Facebook
The campaign to green Facebook took off in February 2010, just after the company announced its plan to build a data centre that would run on electricity made primarily by burning coal.
Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world got involved. Celebrities and students joined Greenpeace volunteers and activists from Argentina to Zimbabwe, and in every city where Facebook has offices.
We demonstrated with photos, humour, petitions, videos, music, and dance -- and an airship flying over Facebook's HQ in Palo Alto, California.
Campaign supporters even set a Guinness world record (for the most Facebook comments in 24 hours).
What colour is your cloud?
The energy used to power data centres, such as those which run the websites and online services of Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter and other major IT companies is enormous, totalling more than 2 percent of US electricity demand, and is projected to grow 12 percent or more each year.
Videos, pictures and other data are stored in this high tech “cloud” to deliver data to homes and offices in real time. If the cloud was a country, it would be the 5th largest in terms of electricity use, worldwide.
This cloud is often powered from locations that are heavily dependent on electricity from a variety of sources, including coal, which is the dirtiest source of energy and largest single source of global warming pollution in the world.
If all the Internet giants would unfriend coal, it would send a message to utilities and investors that couldn't be ignored. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has shown today what other IT leaders should be doing.
Energy efficiency is important, but for an energy revolution to save the planet we also need to upgrade to green energy. Who will be next?
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