From Business Green 2nd September 2010  

Facebook, the popular social networking site, is today facing questions over its intention to run a new data centre from coal power. The new centre, which is to be built in Oregon, will be the world's largest building of its kind and will add to Facebook's growing electricity usage. By 2020, it is predicted that across all its data centres, it will use more power than France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.
 Greenpeace International has reported an initial 500,000 protestations over this. Director Kumi Naidoo has written to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg advising that "Facebook is uniquely positioned to be a truly visible and influential leader to drive the deployment of clean energy."
Facebook counteracted with this statement - "It is true that the local utility for the region we chose, Pacific Power, has an energy mix that is weighted slightly more toward coal than the national average. However, the efficiency we are able to achieve because of the climate of the region and the reduced energy usage that results minimises our overall carbon footprint.
"Said differently, if we located the data centre most other places, we would need mechanical chillers, use more energy, and be responsible for more overall carbon in the air – even if that location was fuelled by more renewable energy. "
This follows revelations earlier in 2010 that Greenpeace use a mixture of coal power and nuclear to run their data centres, however this group reportedly offset their energy use to power the central website, and utilise renewable energy where possible.

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September 2, 2010