Facebook unfriends coal, friends Greenpeace in clean energy campaign

Macworld.com ^

[matt04]

Greenpeace International has ended a long-running campaign calling on Facebook to “unfriend coal” as a source of energy for its data centers, after Facebook agreed to promote clean and renewable energy, the two organizations said.

In late October, Facebook announced plans to build a new data center in Lulea, Sweden, using hydroelectric power for the servers and relying on the local climate to cool the data center for free. At the time, though, Facebook made no commitment to use clean and renewable energy in its other data centers.

Greenpeace rated Facebook’s existing data centers as among the dirtiest on the planet in its April report on cloud-computing services, “How dirty is your data?”

Back then, the campaign group estimated Facebook’s reliance on coal at 53.2 percent, second only to Apple’s (at 54.5 percent) and far higher than Google’s (34.7 percent) or Amazon’s (28.5 percent). Greenpeace based its estimates on published figures for data-center power consumption and electricity utilities’ reports of their energy sources.

Because the local utility, Pacific Power, obtains 63 percent of its energy from coal, even Facebook’s newest data center in Prineville, Oregon, was rated badly—and this despite its industry-leading PUE (power usage effectiveness) score of just 1.07, indicating that almost all the power it consumes is used for computing rather than ancillary functions such as cooling or lighting.

The company should become less reliant on coal, though, as in the future Facebook will favor data-center sites with access to clean and renewable energy, it said Thursday.

[matt04]

Nothing is ever good enough for these liberals. Build a efficient data center, not good enough because power is generated from coal or some other "bad" source of power.

[basil]

I think I will “unfriend” Facebook......

[RetroSexual]

[Mears]

Why bother,Facebook most likely will be gone in 5 years.

[Windflier]

Facebook has become one of the premier patriotic/conservative networking sites on the internet.

I had an account there for two years before I actually began using it. For the longest time, I just didn't get it. Eventually, I decided to search for a few boyhood friends, and soon discovered that I could make new 'friends' who shared my political and philosophical orientation. I've now got hundreds of them.

Heck, even FR has a Facebook page, and articles are regularly posted there by Freepers.

[Harley]

Too bad the coal powered electricity couldn’t unplug Facebook.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Leftists exporting American jobs to Sweden, the home of the Islamic jihadist center city Malmo, where Jews are attacked and the police can’t even enter certain Moslem parts of the city.

Yes, Sweden. It has some great people, like the late Count Wallenberg and one of my friends, but has also been the surrender monkey of Scandinavia re Vietnam.

Right now it is heading to be “Mosque Central” for Scandinavia.

[docbnj]

What an empty gesture by Facebook!

Using the local climate for cooling is no problem if you live at a high latitude like Sweden. I bet Alaska could do the same thing. In fact, I can use NJ for cooling in the winter. I also use NJ for warming in the summer. That means half the year I am using “green energy.” Whoopey!