Oregon Public Broadcasting

Online giant Facebook is building its first data center in the high desert town of Prineville.

This kind of data center needs a lot of energy to run. Facebook says its center will be one of the most efficient in the world.

But Greenpeace, and some Facebook users, say it’s tainted by coal power. Amelia Templeton reports.

Five sawmills used to be the economic heart of Prineville.  But they shut down a long time ago.

These days unemployment is 17 percent. So when Facebook decided to build a 147,000 square foot data center, city officials were thrilled.

Thousands of computers will store the photos, gossip, and funny videos you share with your friends online. But environmentalists say there’s a drawback to Facebook in Prineville.

Jenny Bedell-Stiles is a Northwest organizer with the Sierra Club. She says she first heard about the problem on -- you guessed it -- Facebook.

Jenny Bedell-Stiles: "A student from UW invited me to this group and he said have you heard that Facebook is putting in a data center in Oregon that’s going to be run off of coal power and I said no I haven’t, thanks for clueing me in.”

Facebook’s building will get electricity from Pacific Power. Most of Prineville does. And according to the Oregon Public Utility Commission, Pacific Power gets about twice as much energy from coal as the state average.

Casey Harell from Greenpeace says data centers run their computers 24/7 and consume large amounts of energy.

Casey Harell: “What we’re saying is they need to take into consideration the fuel source when they decide where to site their plants.” 

About 9,000 Facebook users have joined Greenpeace’s page asking Facebook to run on renewable energy. 

A dozen similar Facebook pages have sprung up with about 20,000 members total.

Prineville City Manager Steve Forester says he respects their concerns. But he says the climate in Prineville will keep computers cool and cut Facebook’s electricity use.

Steve Forester: “We have these cool nights that will really help them offset and use a lot less power to cool the servers.”

Cooling systems can account for more than half of a center’s energy use. Greenpeace agrees that Facebook’s building will be extremely efficient. But the group says the data center is still creating a demand for coal.

Prineville manager Forster sees things a little differently.

Steve Forester: “I think if you added all those saw mills up and all those operations up that were here 15, 20 years ago, I’m not saying it would be all the power Facebook will be using but it would be a substantial trade off.”

Facebook says that Pacific Power has committed to increasing the amount of renewable energy in its mix. Pacific Power had no comment.