Facebook's Quest to Unfriend Coal Will Take Time
08/02/2012
SustainableBusiness.com News
Facebook still uses more coal than renewable energy, but it is on track to procure 25% of its energy from renewable sources by 2015.
The world's biggest social networking company has disclosed that 23% of the energy for its data centers and offices in 2011 came from renewable energy; 27% comes from coal-generated electricity, 17% from natural gas, 13% from nuclear and 20% from "other" spot purchases that may or many not include any of those sources.
Facebook's carbon footprint from those facilities, employee travel and other factors was 285,000 metric tons (about 628.3 million pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalents, according to a report posted by the company on its Web site.
“We’re releasing this data because we believe in the power of openness, and because we hope that adding another data point to our collective understanding of our industry’s environmental impact will help us all keep improving,” the company says on its site. “We recognize that this data is just one slice of our overall environmental footprint, but we think it’s an important starting point.”
Facebook hopes to by at least 25%, a "stretch" goal that is made harder by its fast growth rate – the social network now has more than 950 million members. Indeed, the energy mix may get “worse before it gets better."
Projects such the massive server farm it is building near the Arctic Circle in Sweden will help, because the severe cold will keep the servers cool naturally seriously reducing the amount of energy needed to cool the equipment. That facility is scheduled to come online in 2014.
Facebook has become a leader among cloud computing services companies when it comes to clean energy sourcing, but only after enormous pressure from Greenpeace. The two announced a partnership in late 2011 that to work together toward that goal.
"Facebook looks forward to a day when our primary energy sources are renewable, and we are working with Greenpeace and others to help bring that day close," said Marcy Scott Lynn, one of Facebook's sustainability directors, when that deal was announced.
Greenpeace praised Facebook's disclosure this week, calling it rare.
“Facebook has committed to being fully renewably powered, and today’s detailed disclosure and announcement of a clean energy target shows that the company means business and wants the world to follow its progress,” says Gary Cook, a Greenpeace International analyst. “Unfortunately, the transparency Facebook exhibited today is still rare among companies who are racing to build our online world.”
Facebook used about 532 million kilowatt-hours of power last year. Aside from its commitment to renewables, it has created the Open Compute Project, an organization that advocates the creation of more energy efficiency technologies for servers and data centers.
The amount of energy used by massive data centers -- along with the generating sources behind them -- is scrutinized closely by Greenpeace in regular reports.
There's reason to watch this closely. Data centers to house the explosion of virtual information currently consume 1.5-2% of global electricity, growing at 12% a year.
For more about Facebook's footprint:
Website: http://newsroom.fb.com/News/Sharing-Our-Footprint-19c.aspx