Facebook announced today that it exceeded (超越)one of its biggest environmental goals: it managed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 94 percent in 2020. It had previously promised to cut planet-heating emissions by 75 percent. The company said that it had also achieved its goal of "net zero emissions''.
Facebook also announced that it had achieved another goal: it now purchases enough renewable energy to cover 100 percent of its global operations, which includes its offices and data centers. But that doesn't mean that all of its operations are actually powered by renewables like solar and wind energy—at least not yet.
Renewable energy is on the rise, but most electricity grids (电网) still rely on fossil fuels. When companies can't purchase enough renewable energy from utilities because there isn't enough supply, they buy renewable energy certificates that signal that the company invested in renewable energy projects somewhere. Those projects can be located anywhere, and certificates have been sold for so cheap that experts say they don't really lead to more renewable energy production. Facebook also relies on renewable energy certificates, but it focuses on signing long-term contracts to support the construciion of new solar and wind developments in the same places where it operates. Is invested in 63 new renewable energy projects located on the same electrical grids as its data centers.
Facebook has recently also tried to limit misinformation about climate change on its platform. Last year, it launched a "Climate Science Information Center'' in some countries. In the UK this year, it started adding a label to some posts about climate change that redirect people to its information cenler. lt all comes on the heels of criticism from activists and policy makers over how misinformation about climate change festered on the site, including one famous case of Facebook re versing (撤丰肖)a ''false'' rating that its fact -checkers gave based on inaccurate information.
