Carbon footprint of Facebook revealed

The carbon footprint of social media giant Facebook has been revealed for the first time.

Data published shows its annual emissions were 285,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2011. This figure is a fraction of Google’s 1.5m tons in 2010.

The vast majority of Facebook’s emissions (72%) come from the company's data centres in the USA. The annual footprint for each user that's active monthly is 269 grams, or around the equivalent footprint of a cup of coffee.

Also detailed were the energy sources that power its data centres. The majority, 27%, comes from coal power, with the rest coming from renewable sources (23%), gas (17%), nuclear (13%) and the remaining 20% uncategorised.