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Editor's Note: Facebook responded to this post with a statement, which has been appended to the bottom of the post.
"The Social Network" it certainly isn't, but Greenpeace today unveiled the latest front in its battle to get Facebook to change its coal-powered-data-center ways.
Timed to the release in two weeks of a feature film about the at-times-seamy beginnings of Facebook, Greenpeace has put together its own satire of the company's history.
The video, at www.greenpeace.org/coalfacebook, is a silly little two-minute animation about how Zuckerberg came to build Facebook and how it's powered by coal-fired power plants. But behind the video is a list of four actions Greenpeace is urging Facebook to take to become what Greenpeace calls a "Cool IT leader:"
1. Commit to stop using polluting coal power,
2. Use its purchasing power to choose only clean, renewable sources of electricity,
3. Advocate for strong climate and energy policy changes at the local, national and international level to ensure that as the IT industry's energy demand increases, so does the supply of renewable energy,
4. Share this information publicly on its website so its millions of users know the company is a climate leader.
The new video is the latest volley in the at-times one-sided dustup between Facebook and Greenpeace. It all started in January when Facebook announced plans to build a green data center in Prineville, Ore. Greenpeace and a number of other groups then dug into the power generation mix for the region and found it largely relies on coal power. Cue the campaign, which is taking place on Facebook itself and other fronts, where Greenpeace claims half a million users backing its call for cleaner energy in Facebook's data center.
The campaign has yet to make Facebook blink, and last month the company said it was doubling the size of its data center, to boot.
So will this movie make a difference in Facebook's power plans? That obviously remains to be seen. But it does call to light the fact that companies will need to start taking seriously where their power comes from -- whether for data centers or not.
Update, 2:30pm 9/16/10: Facebook emailed a statement in response to this story, from spokesman Barry Schnitt:
We agree wholeheartedly with Greenpeace's goal of environmental responsibility but disagree on how best to achieve it. As other environmental experts have established, the watts you never use are the cleanest and so our focus is on efficiency. We've invested thousands of people hours and tens of millions of dollars in efficiency technology, including software that reduces demand for servers by 50 percent. We have made this software available for free to any company, which could dramatically reduce the power needs of an entire industry. We would welcome the opportunity to explain these efforts in a constructive dialogue but we're disappointed that the conversation with Greenpeace has degraded to an inaccurate and personal attack.
Yes, I do like this article.
Yes, I do like this article. The video might seem a bit silly but it's the sentiments behind it which are important. So subconscious, so resounding.
Sammy.
Evangelical environmentalism
I went to a public hearing earlier this week about Utah's governor's 10-year energy plan. Speakers from the community generally represented just themselves, but they came from diverse backgrounds. The most cogent arguments came from professionals arguing against continued narrow subsidization of fossil fuels and support for development of new and destructive extraction techniques for which they could present alternatives, and arguing for government-backed incentives to support activities which they themselves are in the midst of scrambling to carry out,
All very cogent arguments, from people who intended to carry out the activities they were supporting.
The exceptions to the generally rational and productive dialogue in the hearing were people who "spoke from the heart." These were people who represented religions, "young people", "students." Their heartfelt words amounted to rhetoric that gained potency only when ratcheted up to the level of veiled threats about losing patience and becoming "less friendly." In other words, by the end of the argument they concluded that they have absolutely no leverage in the energy world other than their own "heartfelt" convictions and ability to throw a tantrum.
I'm all for positive changes in the direction of sustainability, but Greenpeace is ridiculous. Lead, follow or get out of the way. If you want to change the world, get educated, start a business, do whatever you have to do to become a leader yourself. Otherwise, reconcile yourself to the reality that someone else picked up on those opportunities while you screamed in a picket line.
For Facebook and the Cloud, Electricity Source Matters
We continue to disagree with Facebook's claim that Facebook simply has to buy whatever electricity is available. This is not the case for Greenpeace, and is certainly not the case for Facebook, which is an industrial scale consumer of electricity.
As evidenced by the 500,000 users who have asked Facebook to get off of coal, we expect and demand more leadership from such an innovative company that is a playing an important role in bringing the world together.
Facebook is buying electricity in bulk to meet the needs of 500 million+ users, and is becoming a very influential company both inside and outside the IT sector. The expected power consumption of the Oregon data center alone gives Facebook the purchasing power of 30,000-40,000 homes, which gives it the ability and standing to shape how power is generated in Oregon and far beyond.
As we have seen with other environmental challenges, motivated companies with big purchasing power can make a powerful difference in driving environmental solutions and policy change.
Facebook must take responsibility for the significant impact its investment decisions on the location of its own data centers and the source of electricity that is supplying both its own and those facilities it is renting can have. Efficiency is certainly important, but is only the beginning of taking responsibility for the cloud computing's rapidly growing energy and environmental footprint.
Google, Yahoo and others in the IT sector already understand that while efficiency is important, it is not the whole story. Given the rapid growth in the IT sector, these companies know that the source of electricity is also an increasingly important consideration, that they have a responsibility and an important role to play. We can see that they are significantly increasing the amount of renewable electricity they purchase.
Ultimately, we need Facebook to work in Oregon and elsewhere to push for the policy changes that will rapidly move us off of coal and toward renewable sources of energy.
The world’s top climate scientists tell us that we have as little as 5 years to stabilize global warming pollution globally, which means that we must move off of coal as rapidly as possible. As was highlighted in Greenpeace’s Make IT Green Report, at current growth rates, data centers and telecommunication networks that make up the cloud will consume more than the current electricity consumption of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined by 2020. Given this projected growth of energy use, it is essential that Facebook and others in the IT sector show leadership in driving a transformation in our production and use of electricity.
We look forward to working with Facebook to help it and the rest of the world off of coal and to more renewables sources of energy as rapidly as possible.