Facebook promises Greenpeace to clean up its act

Facebook will attempt to feed its datacentres clean, renewable energy, in exchange for Greenpeace actively supporting the company's own efficiency schemes.

The goal of powering its datacentres with environmentally friendly electricity, announced on Thursday, comes after Greenpeace ran a campaign against the Californian social media company's use of coal-generated electricity for its major datacentre in Prineville, Oregon.

"Facebook is committed to supporting the development of clean and renewable sources of energy, and our goal is to power all of our operations with clean and renewable energy," Facebook and Greenpeace said in a joint statement (PDF).

Facebook will try to build its datacentres where there is a supply of clean energy; look into ways of being more energy efficient; and talk to its utility providers about getting more clean energy for its datacentres, according to the joint statement.

In turn Greenpeace will give "active support" to Facebook's Open Compute Project, which aims to cut the cost and up the energy efficiency of datacentre hardware. It will also ask utility providers to partner with Opower, Facebook and the National Resources Defense Council's scheme to make it easier for people to upload data on their home's energy usage into Facebook.

"Facebook looks forward to a day when our primary energy sources are clean and renewable, and we are working with Greenpeace and others to help bring that day closer," Marcy Scott Lynn of Facebook's sustainability program said in a statement. "Another important step will be to work with Greenpeace to put the power of our platform to use for the environment."