Greenpeace offices across the globe released a new campaign video urging Facebook to stop using coal and nuclear to power its services and asked it to pledge to go green by Earth Day.
The video is part of a campaign by Greenpeace to turn Facebook green. It is subtitled in 14 languages and will be broadcast on television on many popular networks in California.
Facebook has dramatically changed the way the world communicates connecting people across the planet. Recently Facebook changed the governing of some countries when it highlighted the issues occurring in Egypt, and helped spark a national revolt which then spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East.
Greenpeace now calls on Facebook to help combat the current energy epidemic. IT is the fastest growing sector in the world for energy use, with an estimated 2pc of global emissions coming from IT services. Greenpeace launched the Cool IT Challenge in 2009 to call on IT companies to power technological solutions needed to tackle climate change.
Facebook’s new data centres in Oregon and North Carolina, run on coal power. Each of the centres requires power equivalent to about 40,000 US homes.
Facebook which reaches nearly 73pc of all US Internet users, accounts for 9pc of all Internet traffic in the US. This is almost as much as all of Google’s online products combined.
Greenpeace says it wants to see CEO Mark Zuckerberg commit to making Facebook coal free.
Over 680,000 people have joined the campaign to encourage Facebook to go green.
Five steps to make Facebook green
Greenpeace provides 5 steps to help transform Facebook into an eco-friendly company.
It asks Facebook to disclose energy and carbon footprint data making it available to the public to view.
Greenpeace urges Facebook to implement an infrastructure siting policy. It says that an “investment and siting policy that factors available renewable energy resources is critically important to achieving a coal-free Facebook”. Google prioritises renewable sources of electricity for its data centres and implements a carbon shadow price when purchasing electricity to discriminate against coal and encourage the purchase of cleaner energy.
Greenpeace suggests Facebook should increase the supply of clean energy by clean energy procurement, clean energy investment, and renewable/clean energy self-generation.
Greenpeace also asks Facebook to engage in clean energy advocacy. It believes, “Facebook and other large IT companies, such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, have the power to make real changes to the grid mix at a much faster rate than the present. If Facebook and other cloud services want to provide a truly green and renewable Internet, they must use their power and influence, not to only drive investments near renewable energy sources, but also to help set the policies that will rapidly deploy renewable electricity economy-wide.”
Greenpeace also calls on Facebook to educate and engage Facebook members on clean energy by creating awareness and discussion about the need for a clean energy transformation.
