Facebook posts unfriendly rise in carbon emissions

Facebook‘s greenhouse gas emissions were up a whopping 35 percent in 2012, as the social media giant further extended its global reach.

But help may be at hand. A study from Microsoft has shown that data center emissions could be slashed by as much as 99 percent, using electricity market analytics.

This research comes as a survey by Siemens, UBM Tech and Information Week Marketing Services finds that respondents are worried that some of their organizations’ data centers will run out of power, cooling or space by the end of 2014.

However, because of budget issues, most respondents are not planning to invest in new data centers, but are planning on upgrading existing facilities.

Data centers consume 1-2 percent of electricity in the U.S., and their emissions are growing fast.

In 2012, Facebook was responsible for about 384,000 metric tons of CO2e, up from 275,000 in 2011, according to the company’s annual report on carbon emissions and energy use. This includes GHGs from data centers, office space, employee commuting and air travel, data center construction and hardware transportation.

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