Untangling a company’s environmental claims can be a dizzying task these days, and reading Meta’s latest sustainability report was no exception. The company’s greenhouse gas emissions either increased, depending on how you look at it or It fell last year.
The company’s greenhouse gas emissions either increased, depending on how you look at it or It fell last year
Confused? The difference relates to whether you are assessing gross or net emissions and, more importantly, whether you are considering the local impact Meta has at the locations where it operates.
It may be helpful to look at the graphic below from the Sustainability Report. The light gray bar shows Meta’s total “location-based” greenhouse gas emissions. These indicators have been rising steadily since 2019, and by 2023, total CO2 equivalent will climb to 14,067,104 tons.
On the other hand, the dark bars on the same chart show the decline in “market-based” emissions over the past year. Looking at these figures, Meta’s carbon footprint has almost been reduced by half, to just 7,443,182 tonnes in 2023.
So, which number should we believe? As expected, Meta highlights the smaller numbers at the top of the report, a few pages before the chart. But it’s important to keep both numbers in mind — especially given how difficult it is to figure out how effective market-based mechanisms are at eliminating the fossil fuel pollution that drives climate change.
“On paper they’ve almost cut emissions in half, but it’s hard to say how much they’ve actually cut them,” said Rachel Kitchin, senior corporate climate campaigner at environmental group Stand.earth.
When it comes to larger, location-based emissions, she said, “You could say that’s what their actual emissions are.” Those higher gray bars on the chart reflect how much electricity the company uses wherever it has a factory. local pollution caused. Data centers are typically connected to the local power grid, so they use the same fossil fuel mix as other data centers. Most of Meta’s data centers are located in the United States, a country that still generates 60% of its electricity from fossil fuels.
But Mehta said Contest 100% of its electricity use comes from renewable energy purchases, which is why it is able to show a smaller carbon footprint on paper. It can do this through Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), which represent claims to the environmental benefits of renewable energy. Power companies that produce renewable energy can sell the electricity itself and RECs, which should provide additional revenue to support the development of new renewable energy projects.
Companies like Meta can ostensibly purchase these RECs to offset or offset the carbon emissions from their electricity use. Unfortunately, math doesn’t always add up in the real world. A 2022 study of 115 companies found that companies often overestimate the greenhouse gas emissions they believe they will reduce through RECs. The problem is that RECs have become so cheap that selling them is not necessarily enough to fund new clean energy projects.
However, there are ways to avoid these pitfalls. That’s why it’s still worth looking at Meta’s market-based emissions, which takes into account RECs and other commitments to support the growth of renewable energy.
Buying local makes a big difference. Companies like Meta can agree to purchase bundled RECs specifically related to new and renewable energy projects in the regions where they operate. In this way, they can help bring more clean energy into the local grid, local homes, businesses and their own data centers. Committing to matching electricity use to renewable energy on a 24/7 basis, rather than on annual accounting statements, can also have a greater impact. It encourages the construction of additional clean energy sources that can balance each other out when the sun is out or the winds are down.
Buying local makes a big difference
To its credit, Meta says supporting new wind and solar projects near its data centers is a priority. An economic impact study conducted last year found that its support of 86 new wind and solar projects in 24 U.S. states would add 9,800 megawatts of renewable energy to local grids by 2025. Saskatchewan’s renewable energy generation capacity exceeds 15,000 megawatts.
“I would say, from reading their report, it appears Meta is broadly pursuing a high-impact approach to renewable energy,” Kitchin said. This week, for example, Meta announced a new effort to develop geothermal energy for new data centers.
Because training new artificial intelligence tools consumes a lot of energy, finding new clean energy sources has become an even greater challenge. Urvi Parekh, Head of Renewable Energy at Meta, spoke with edge This week. “Our data center is online 24 hours a day so users can access products like Instagram and WhatsApp. So the great thing about geothermal energy is that it can also provide power around the clock.
There is still a lot of progress to be made. According to an assessment of technology companies’ renewable energy spending published earlier this year by Stand.earth, 8.5% of Meta’s renewable energy purchases come from less efficient unbundled RECs. Meta did not confirm in an email whether that number was still accurate, saying only that unbundled RECs make up a “small portion” of its portfolio. Meta said it mainly enters into long-term agreements to purchase renewable energy from new projects.
But whether you look at location or market-based emissions in the latest sustainability report, Meta’s carbon footprint is still significantly larger than in 2020. or use of its products. Now, we are further away from that goal than when we started.
