Facebook this week announced a partnership with Greenpeace to “create a world that is highly efficient and powered by clean and renewable energy”.
The collaboration follows on from Greenpeace’s launch in February 2010 of the ‘Unfriend Coal’ campaign, which was directly targeted at Facebook and asked online activists to call on the social networking giant to power its data centres with clean energy instead of coal.
This week Facebook said it is committed to supporting the development of clean and renewable sources of energy and that its goal is to power all of its operations with clean and renewable energy.
It said it will adopt a siting policy that states a preference for access to clean and renewable energy supply. It pledged to conduct ongoing research into energy efficiency and share that technology openly through its Open Compute Project. In addition, it said it will carry out ongoing research into clean energy solutions for its future data centres and discuss increasing the supply of clean energy to power its data centres with its utility providers.
Greenpeace, meanwhile, will actively support the Open Compute Project, including encouraging companies to join the effort, use the technology, and share their efficiency technology. It will encourage utility providers to offer ways for customers to get their utility data, including by joining the partnership with Opower, Facebook, and NRDC. And it will recognise company leadership in advancing best practices in efficiency or sustainability technology through the open source sharing of design and technology advances.
The companies said they will work together to develop and promote experiences on Facebook that help people and organisations connect with ways to save energy and engage their communities in clean energy issues. They will co-host roundtables and discussions with experts on energy issues. And they will jointly engage other large energy users and producers to address the energy choice they are facing and develop new clean energy rather than recommission coal plants or build new coal plants.