Facebook pledges to power its operations with 100% renewable energy by end of 2020

Aiming to make its energy-guzzling data centres environment-friendly, Facebook has pledged it would power its global operations with 100 percent renewable energy by the end of 2020. The social networking giant also said it was committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent in the same time frame. “In a record-breaking year of corporate renewable energy purchases, Facebook is on track to be one of the largest corporate purchasers of renewable energy. Facebook has signed contracts for over three gigawatts of new solar and wind energy, that includes over 2,500 megawatts in just the past 12 months,” the company wrote in a blog post late on 28 August. [caption id=“attachment_4510129” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] Notably, tech titans such as Facebook, Google and Amazon consume extraordinary quantities of electricity to power their global networks of data centres and infrastructure across the globe. In 2015, the company had set a goal of supporting 50 percent of its facilities with renewable energy by the end of 2018. “We have achieved that goal a year early, by reaching 51 percent clean and renewable energy in 2017,” the company added. Last year, the company pledged its support for climate action by supporting the Paris Agreement through the “We Are Still In Initiative”.