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The electricity needs of a Facebook data center in Lulea, Sweden are completely covered by hydropower
Photo: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND / AFP
By 2030 at the latest, Facebook wants to work climate-neutrally across its entire value chain, including its suppliers, employees' commutes and business trips.
The company announced on Tuesday, a day after Google presented its plan to operate exclusively with renewable energies by 2030.
Facebook wants to achieve its goal primarily through the use of renewable energies and savings.
Among other things, the company assumes that with the current experience in the Corona crisis, some of the business trips can be replaced by video conferences.
Facebook wants to absorb the remaining emissions with the help of technologies for binding CO₂.
By the end of this year, Facebook wants to be CO₂-neutral in its operational activities.
For example, the data center in Denmark is powered by wind power - at the same time, the heat from the servers is used to heat up to 6,900 households in the city of Odense.
Scientists estimate that the CO₂ footprint of the internet in 2019 was even greater than that of the aviation industry.
Facebook wants to provide reliable information about climate change
Google announced on Monday that its entire historical CO₂ footprint since it was founded in 1998 was "now zero".
Microsoft announced in January that it wanted to achieve this goal by 2050.
Microsoft was founded in 1975, so it has much more to catch up than Google.
The Windows Group also wants to have a negative carbon footprint by 2030, i.e. remove more CO₂ from the atmosphere than it produces.
In future, Facebook wants to present its users with reliable information on climate change in a special area.
The climate information center with access to resources from leading research organizations such as the German Weather Service (DWD), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the environmental program of United Nations (UNEP) will initially be available in Germany, France, Great Britain and the USA.
Facebook had already set up a similar area for the corona pandemic.
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