Greenpeace Spoof Slates Facebook’s ‘Dirty Data’

Greenpeace has created a short animated film called “The So Coal Network”, which attacks the social network for its use of coal-fired electricity, although Greenpeace says its data centre is one of the world’s greenest. The Greenpeace movie is timed to coincide with the release of “The Social Network” – a movie about the founders of Facebook.

The Social Network, due for release in October, is based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg and former pop-sensation Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker – founder of Napster and one-time Facebook president.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace’s two-minute spoof animation tells the story of how Facebook has picked dirty coal power instead of clean energy to power its first data centre, located in Prineville, Oregon. The film is part of Greenpeace’s Cool IT campaign, in which the environmental campaign group calls on IT giants to become climate champions.

Facebook’s ‘dirty’ data centre

Earlier this month, Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo wrote an open letter to the founder and chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, following news that Facebook was planning to double the size of its Oregon data centre.

“Greenpeace regularly uses Facebook to engage its supporters and their friends to hold corporations accountable for their environmental impact,” wrote Naidoo. “Facebook is uniquely positioned to be a truly visible and influential leader to drive the deployment of clean energy.”

500,000 people – 0.1 percent of Facebook’s membership – also joined a Facebook group, asking the company to “unfriend coal”. Objections centred around Facebook’s choice of PacificCorp as an energy provider which, according to Naidoo, “runs an electricity mix that is disproportionately powered by coal, the largest source of global warming pollution”.

However, Facebook was quick to defend the efficiency of its data centre, pointing out that it uses modern cooling methods and has a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) measure of 1.15, making this one of the world’s greenest data centres.

Greenpeace has maintained the pressure, arguing that Facebook’s iconic status means it should do better. Previous Greenpeace attacks on Facebook were described as “a drive-by shooting” and “hypocrticial” by green data centre providers, given Greenpeace’s own failure to use clean power for its IT.

Efficient energy usage

Facebook says it is concentrating on using power effectively, rather than getting involved in how it is produced, according to a statement, and chose the Oregon site because the “temperate” climate would allow it to operate without mechanical chillers – normally one of the biggest detractors from efficiency in a data centre.

“Because of the climate around Prineville and our unique design, we won’t use any mechanical chillers. None,” said the Facebook statement. “We won’t even build any. Instead, the data centre will use an innovative evaporative cooling system.”

A report by Greenpeace in March calculated that, at current growth rates, data centres and telecommunication networks will consume about 1,963 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2020 – over triple their current consumption and more than France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.

As well as Facebook, Greenpeace is also running separate campaigns targeting Samsung, Dell and Apple. During a meeting of Dell executives in March to discuss the companies plans to cut the use of toxic materials, campaigners unfurled huge banners on Dell’s offices in Bangalore, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen calling on chief executive Michael Dell to “Drop The Toxics”. Greenpeace also singled out the “cloud” infrastructure behind Apple’s iPad, which relies on energy-hungry data-centres.

Watch “The So Coal Network” here: