Social network giant Facebook has once more resisted pressure from environmentalists and plumped for a new data center that will be mostly power by coal.

 

It will build a data center in North Carolina – its second in the state - with power supplied by Duke Energy, which generates 55% of its electricity by coal, Data Center Knowledge reports. 

Greenpeace has been lobbying against Facebook over its selection of an Oregon site that is powered by PacifiCorp, a utility firm that gets 58% of its power from coal. The campaign includes a site on Facebook itself www.huffingtonpost.com/kumi-naidoo/the-so-coal-network-confr_b_717866.htmlunder the slogan “The So Coal Network.”

 

“Facebook is emblematic of a sector that is increasingly thirsty for energy but is satisfying that thirst with dirty fuels,” Daniel Kessler, a Greenpeace spokesman, told the New York Times.  “Facebook and other IT firms can help to make the internet green, but first they need to move away from coal.”

 

Facebook’s defense is that it believes it makes a greater contribution to lowering carbon emissions by building energy efficient centers than by focusing on the energy source, issuing several case studies on its efforts to cut energy consumption.

 

Greenpeace is not impressed, responding in a blog post: “Facebook's rapid growth continues drive new demand for dirty energy, with no apparent plan for how to address the concerns of 600,000 Facebook users who want Facebook to get off of coal.

 

It contrasted Facebook with data center projects from firms such as Yahoo, Google and Verizon, who have plugged into clean energy sources as well as improving the efficiency of their servers and cooling.