Greenpeace said that its campaign to pressure Facebook to decrease the carbon footprint of its data centers was a success. The social network’s data centers store the data that supports the relationships and marketing campaigns of 800 million users all over the world.
Greenpeace’s Unfriend Coal campaign managed to get 700,000 supporters to like its Facebook page. It also got a Guinness world record for the most Facebook comments in a period of 24 hours. In the past, most electricity that powers Facebook’s data centers comes from coal power plants.
Facebook and Greenpeace issued a statement last Thursday stating that the two organizations came up with a solution to use clean and renewable energy. The agreement showed several Facebook initiatives, including the Open Compute Project. It is an industry coalition that aims to promote and share specifications for energy-efficient data centers.
Facebook would also adopt a siting policy for new data centers where it would prefer sites with access to clean and renewable energy. In the recent Greenpeace Clean Cloud Power Report Card, Facebook received an F on infrastructure siting.
Facebook’s deal with Greenpeace would also include research into clean energy for data centers and to engage in dialog with its utility providers with regards to the supply of clean energy to the data centers. Facebook promised to work with Greenpeace to use its social network to promote clean energy issues and energy conservation.
