By: Pedro Hernandez

Pedro Hernandez — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:03:25 +0000

Agreed that efficiency trumps, at least at this stage of the game. Something that occurred to me after writing this and seeing all the flack it’s been catching — http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/02/facebook-gets-slammed-by-environmentalists/1 — is that a company that’s built on such a strong social component is not only held to a higher standard, but perhaps a different one. Do folks automatically expect Facebook to be a green trailblazer from the get-go?

By: Celeste LeCompte

Celeste LeCompte — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:16:13 +0000

I’ll go out on a limb and say, yes. I’m still not convinced that coal is the question, here. (I wasn’t sure I agreed with Derrick when he wrote the piece about a need for clean-energy powered data centers, a few weeks ago, either.) While, yes, there is an ongoing need for renewable/clean energy sources to power everything from our dishwashers to our data centers, I still think efficiency takes precedence. My favorite analogy goes like this: “Building out renewable energy resources before undertaking energy-efficiency initiatives is like buying a bunch of new suits right before going on a diet.” It just doesn’t make sense. An energy-efficient data center will, whether powered by coal or hydropower, still consume less energy and have less of a negative impact on the environment than an energy-hogging one. Building out clean energy sources doesn’t mean we can go hog wild on our energy consumption — wind turbines and solar panels still have an environmental/land-use footprint, cause social conflict over views/sightline, require copious chemical and resource inputs to build, and they can only produce so much power within these constraints. The more energy we can squeeze out of operating data centers (and any other building or activity), the quicker we can shutter coal plants and power our world with renewables.

Comments on: Facebook’s Coal-Powered Problem

By: Pedro Hernandez

By: Celeste LeCompte