We just launched a French-language facebook group -- Nous demandons 100% d'énergie renouvelable pour Facebook! -- to compliment the vibrant English- and Spanish-language ones we started a few weeks ago.

It all began when Facebook announced 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 the near-addictive social networking website. We all love connecting with friends, and the company's energy efficiency initiatives are commendable -- but Facebook plans to run the place on electricity made by burning coal.

We think the company can do better than that -- it must! Thousands more Facebook members add their voices to the call every day, swelling the groups we only started a few weeks ago to almost 400,000 members in total today.

Here's what we're asking of Facebook:

  1. Commit to stop using polluting coal power,
  2. Use its purchasing power to choose only clean, renewable sources of electricity,
  3. 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,
  4. Share this information publicly on its website so its millions of users know the company is a climate leader.