Facebook has been praised after revealing their data centres consumed just 532 million kwh of electricity last year.

According to guardian.co.uk, the company generated only 285,000 tonnes of carbon footprint in 2011, which represents an impressively low 269g per user per month. Most of Facebook's carbon footprint (72 per cent) was generated by the data centres used to store everything that users post on Facebook.

Facebook executives could be pleased to hear that they have a relatively green data centre when compared to one of their main competitors Google. Google generated 1.5 millions tons of Co2 in 2010, which is more than five times Facebook's total.

The figures have been welcomed by Greenpeace.

Gary Cook, who is the organisation's senior IT analyst, told v3.co.uk: "Facebook has committed to being fully renewably powered, and today's detailed disclosure and announcement of a clean energy target shows that the company means business and wants the world to follow its progress.

"Unfortunately, the transparency Facebook exhibited today is still rare among companies who are racing to build our online world, where some of the largest companies behind the cloud, such as Amazon, still refuse to disclose any information about their energy use and mix."