Facebook Reaches 100% Renewable-Energy Milestone (cbsnews.com) 19
Facebook has reached a key environmental goal early: The social media company now purchases enough renewable energy to run all of its operations around the world, it announced this week. CBS News reports: Facebook joins a handful of tech companies that have committed to ambitious green energy goals, including Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Over the past few years, Facebook has cut its greenhouse gas emissions significantly. Since 2017, carbon emissions from the company's operations have fallen by 94%, surpassing its goals of reducing emissions by three-quarters, according to its sustainability report. Emissions were cut primarily by focusing on the massive data centers that power the servers running Facebook's services, as well as its office locations.
"Data centers for us are the primary sources of electricity consumption and the primary footprint we've been thinking about," said Urvi Parekh, the company's director of renewable energy. Cutting down emissions meant "making our data centers as efficient as possible and reducing the amount of electricity that's consumed" as well as purchasing enormous amounts of wind and solar power to run those centers. Last year, when most of its employees started working remotely, Facebook said it purchased enough clean energy to match the amount used by employees working at home. The company still emits some carbon from its construction activity and natural-gas use in some locations where it has no other energy options, Parekh said. Last year, that was the equivalent of 38,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (or about as much carbon as is emitted from 8,900 cars driving for one year). Facebook is offsetting those emissions by investing in reforestation and other carbon-removal projects, Parekh said. The company has set a new goal of reaching net-zero emissions across its entire supply chain by 2030.
"Data centers for us are the primary sources of electricity consumption and the primary footprint we've been thinking about," said Urvi Parekh, the company's director of renewable energy. Cutting down emissions meant "making our data centers as efficient as possible and reducing the amount of electricity that's consumed" as well as purchasing enormous amounts of wind and solar power to run those centers. Last year, when most of its employees started working remotely, Facebook said it purchased enough clean energy to match the amount used by employees working at home. The company still emits some carbon from its construction activity and natural-gas use in some locations where it has no other energy options, Parekh said. Last year, that was the equivalent of 38,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (or about as much carbon as is emitted from 8,900 cars driving for one year). Facebook is offsetting those emissions by investing in reforestation and other carbon-removal projects, Parekh said. The company has set a new goal of reaching net-zero emissions across its entire supply chain by 2030.
How does that work? (Score:1)
"Facebook said it purchased enough clean energy to match the amount used by employees working at home."
So if it was on 100% already, then purchased energy to cover employees working at home... Does that mean they bought more energy than they needed and then wasted it on something?
Re: (Score:2)
So what does Facebook do with all that renewable energy, it saturation markets wasteful consumption. Yes, they are so green, and it is all you filthy animals fault the planet is burning to the ground. Not the fault of it's saturation advertising telling you to buy more, eat more, waste more, pollute more, hundreds even thousands of times a date. EAT, WASTE, POLLUTE, do it, do it more, do it today, do it tomorrow, do it, do it, do it.
If advertising did not work, to manipulate people to consume to waste, they
Waste (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
What about all the energy to power the client devices so people can waste their time on Facebook?
Before Facebook, people wasted their time watching TV instead. A TV uses more power than a cellphone. So at the client level, Facebook is a net win.
Also, people who fulfil their social needs on Facebook don't need to drive their cars to go meet real people, saving even more energy.
Facebook users tend to sit on the sofa all day, consuming fewer calories than active people. That means less food production is needed, saving the energy needed to grow crops.
Kudos to Facebook, but.... (Score:5, Informative)
It's unfortunately not 100% correct.
I've seen some of these datacenters that the tech companies built, I have worked in several of them, and while they do try to "go green", by placing datacentres in areas with natural cooling, reusing heat from processing, and even on occasion have plastered PVcells all over their buildings and many other interesting moves, a very important factor remains: Much of the electricity purchased, doesn't actually generate "new" green electricity. The power companies sell electricity as being "Green", by ensuring a certain amount of the electricity they purchase is from renewable sources. But if that source generated the power anyway, it would have become part of the normal "electricity mix" sold to all customers. So, when choosing to buy a "green mix", the datacentres are in fact just taking the "green" away from a household or other business, who doesn't pay extra for being provided "green electricity", but the electricity comes from the same provider.
The only way to guarantee green electricity, is to add new green electricity into the existing electricity mix. And that is, from what I have seen, not the case for all datacentres Facebook, Google, Microsoft etc. have built in recent years. Sure, for some countries, like in Scandinavia, the mix is nearly totally green, but not 100%, so unless they also offset this (which the article doesn't say is the case, it just says they bought the power), then they still have a little way to go.
Re: (Score:2)
Came here to say this, but I have to mention that their datacenters in Oregon run on hydroelectric power and a meager amount of photovoltaic.
Why would anyone believe Facebook? (Score:2)
They are the internet's version of a tobacco company [youtube.com].
Can we just recycle Facebook instead? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Use all of Facebook's servers to undo all the game server shutdowns Ubisoft has done over the years.
Really? (Score:1)
This is the kind of fairy story one usually hears from folk who want to sell you... original kit, no knock offs etc. Kit that you know was obtained dubiously and is clearly of dubious quality.
Impossible. (Score:2)
Fuck you beauhd (Score:1)
If they went away it would factually be zero (Score:2)
Unserious solutions from unserious people. (Score:2)
This is just creative bookkeeping by Facebook and the utilities to claim they received all their electricity from renewable energy.
The bar to clear on CO2 emissions and cost is now natural gas. To show one is serious about the problem of global warming, and did their research, means getting their electricity from sources that are lower in CO2 emissions and competitive in costs with natural gas. That means getting their electricity from onshore wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear fission.
Buying electricit