Social networking website Facebook has angered at least 500,000 people with its intention to run a giant new data centre mainly on electricity produced by burning coal powder.
Facebook will not say how much electricity it uses, but industry estimates suggest that at their present rate of growth all the data centres and telecommunication networks in the world will consume about 1,963bn kilowatt hours of electricity by 2020.
Facebook’s new data storage centre will be based in Portland, Oregon and although it will include some of the world’s most energy-efficient computers, the scale of the Facebook operation will almost certainly use more electricity than many developing countries.
The main source of electricity for the centre will come from Pacific Power, a provider who produces 67% of their electricity from coal power, the dirtiest form of power generation, and less than 12% of their electricity from renewable sources.
In a response to criticisms, Facebook said, “It is true that the locality for the region we chose has an energy mix that is weighted slightly more toward coal than the national average. However, the efficiency we are able to achieve because of the climate of the region and the reduced energy usage that results will minimise our overall carbon footprint.”
In a letter to Facebook, Kumi Naidoo, director of Greenpeace International, urged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to commit his company to a plan to phase out the use of dirty coal-fired electricity. Mr Naidoo stressed, “No global business leader, particularly not one who reaches so many people daily, could deny that in this time it is both a threat to a company’s reputation and financial health risk to ignore their company’s environmental impacts."
