Although Facebook (News - Alert) is setting new power consumption and efficiency standards for data centers around the world, the environmental organization Greenpeace is not fully satisfied with Facebook’s decision to use a utility that is not a 100-percent renewable energy provider. The social networking giant has opened a new data center in Luleå, Sweden, which is powered entirely by hydroelectric energy, but the utility providing power for this center, Vattenfall, still invests primarily in non-renewable energy.
In a statement, Greenpeace first congratulated Facebook for using renewable energy, a goal that had been the focus of a two-year Greenpeace social media campaign, calling on the social networking giants to stay away from environment polluter coal. But, at the same time, Greenpeace said it was “disappointed” that Facebook used a utility provider that invests in non-renewable energy for other customers.
According to Facebook, the Luleå, Sweden data center is one of the world's most efficient and sustainable data centers as it was designed using technology developed at its open-source data center community called the Open Compute Project. In a company blog, a spokesperson wrote, “Nearly all the technology in the facility, from the servers to the power distribution systems, is based on Open Compute Project designs.” As a result, the company's engineers have been able to reduce the number of backup generators at the site by more than 70 percent, wrote the blogger.
Facebook provided some details of the new facility on the Luleå data center’s page. The social networking giant said that in addition to harnessing the power of water, the new facility uses the chilly Nordic air to cool the thousands of servers that store photos, videos, comments and the likes. Plus, any excess heat produced by the servers and computers is used to keep the offices warm.
In addition, Facebook wrote the company’s commitment to energy efficiency is evident inside Luleå’s giant data halls. Nearly all of the technology in the facility, from the servers to the power distribution systems, is based on Open Compute Project designs, which has resulted in pretty impressive power usage efficiency number. In early tests, Facebook’s Luleå data center is averaging a PUE in the region of 1.07.
Meanwhile, according to Greenpeace, Google (News - Alert) has committed to buying all electricity generated by a 72 MW wind farm, which is being built in northern Sweden, for a decade. The search engine giant said that it will use this power to run its new data center in Hamina, Finland, which is plugged into the same electrical grid as the future wind farm.
The environmental organization was also critical of Apple’s data centers, which has not provided enough details on how it’s going to reach its goals. “Apple (News - Alert) got a lot of kudos and positive attention for its clean energy commitments in May but it now must explain to its customers how it plans to fully eliminate its dirty energy sources and should extend that policy to new data centers as its iCloud expands,” said Gary Cook, Greenpeace senior IT analyst.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey