Greenpeace Skewers Zuckerberg’s ” So Coal” Network In Adorably Insulting Video [Facebook]

The edgy ecophiles at Greenpeace have placed Facebook in their crosshairs, bashing Mark Zuckerberg over what they allege is a reliance on coal to fuel his (substantial) data centers. A new video slams Zuck, and asks for a renewable alternative.

The video, plucking emphatically at your heartstrings with the narration of what seems like a cutesy British toddler, tells a children’s book version of the Facebook story, of a sad nerd who founded a mega-successful company so he could possibly be popular (Aaron Sorkin, whatup!) Now his social network behemoth companion lives in ” a significant box stuffed with computers” in Oregon-and this box needs loads of electricity. plenty of electricity. Like $1 million a month in electricity, and that was a year ago, before the ‘Book smashed the half a billion friends mark.

So, Greenpeace says, this box is being fueled by coal. And coal is rotten for our surroundings. Their suggestion? Unfriend coal, and tool Facebook’s data centers with a renewable source instead.

But is it so simple? TechCrunch points out that Facebook’s director of policy communications was quick to avoid wasting face, claiming:

It’s true that the local utility for the region we chose, Pacific Power, has an energy mix it’s weighted slightly more toward coal than the national average (58% vs. about 50%). However, the efficiency we will achieve due to the climate of the region minimizes our overall carbon footprint. Said differently, if we located the knowledge center most other places, we’d need mechanical chillers, use more energy, and be liable for an overall larger environmental impact-even though that location was fueled by more renewable energy.

So depicting Facebook’s data centers are some kind of 19th century, soot-belching smokestack tower may not be accurate. But then Greenpeace returns fire!

We appreciate your recognition that Facebook has a coal problem with its Oregon datacenter. However, where we disagree is your claim to be powerless to do anything about it as, like Greenpeace and others, Facebook simply must buy whatever electricity is on the market. That’s not the case for Greenpeace, and is definitely not the case for Facebook, who is an industrial scale consumer of electricity. Facebook is buying electricity in bulk to satisfy the wishes of 500 million+ users, and is becoming an exceedingly influential company both in and out the IT sector. The anticipated power consumption of the Oregon data center alone gives Facebook the purchasing power of 30,000-40,000 homes, which provides you the power and standing to shape how power is generated in Oregon and far beyond.

So what we now have here’s Facebook, on the only hand, saying coal is a reality they’ll’t avoid, and Greenpeace retorting they’ve got the clout (and cash) to head totally green. Coal is unquestionably low-priced than, say, wind or solar, so the business interest Facebook has in powering its servers on the cheap is obvious. However, Greenpeace points out the efforts IT giants like Google and Yahoo are putting forth to increase their juice efficiency-that is certainly something we’d desire to see from Facebook too. Ogling photos of women I went to middle school with is guilt-spurring enough-the very last thing I would like on my conscience is a heavier carbon footprint. [ Greenpeace via TechCrunch ]

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This post is tagged: environmental impact, knowledge center, renewable energy, substantial data, successful company