Meta Kept Its 100% Renewable Goal and Left the Group That Vouched for It

Meta’s exit from RE100 became public on July 23, 2026, and the first wave of coverage said it had walked away from its clean energy pledge. RTE News reported that Meta “has abandoned a global pledge.” That is close enough to be useful and wrong in a way that matters.

Meta’s goal is still on Meta’s website. In October 2026 it reads: “Continue to match 100% of our electricity use with renewable energy.” The commitment to match its full electricity use survives the exit, and so does its net zero target for 2030. What Meta lost was the outside body that vouched for the claim, and it lost it for a stated reason. A Climate Group spokesperson told Recharge News that Meta “has withdrawn from the RE100 initiative, as it is no longer able to meet the technical criteria due to investments made in new gas power.”

That sentence is the story. A company can keep a target and lose the ability to satisfy the standard that gave the target meaning. Meta told TechCrunch the split was mutual and would not discuss the reasons.

Key findings

• Facebook was on RE100’s member list by December 2016. In 2018 it set the end of 2020 as its date for 100 percent renewable energy, and in 2021 it said it had got there.
• Meta’s exit became public on July 23, 2026. It no longer appears on the RE100 members list. Apple, Google and Microsoft remain among more than 400 members.
• The Climate Group’s stated reason is that Meta can no longer meet RE100’s technical criteria “due to investments made in new gas power.”
• Meta has not changed the wording of its own goal, which is to match its electricity use with clean and renewable energy, not to source it directly.
• Louisiana regulators approved three Entergy gas units, about 2.26 gigawatts, for Meta in August 2025. Seven more, 5,278 megawatts, face a vote set for December 16, 2026. Ohio has approved two behind-the-meter gas plants, 450 megawatts in all, for a Meta affiliate.
• Meta’s 2025 report puts 2024 emissions at 8.2 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent with contractual instruments applied, against 15.6 million tonnes on a location-based measure.
• Market-based Scope 2 emissions for 2024 were 1,358 tonnes. Location-based, the same electricity accounted for about 5.97 million tonnes.
• Meta’s 2024 Scope 3 emissions were about 41 percent above the 2021 baseline it has pledged not to exceed by the end of 2031.

The difference between matching and sourcing

There are two ways to count the emissions from the electricity a company uses, and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol requires companies holding energy contracts to report both. Location-based accounting reflects, in the Protocol’s words, “the average emissions intensity of grids on which energy consumption occurs.” Market-based accounting reflects the contracts a company holds: power purchase agreements, energy attribute certificates, supply deals.

Meta’s own report gives both figures and the gap between them. “Our total 2024 emissions with contractual instruments applied (8.2 M MT CO2e) were 48% less than our location-based emissions (15.6 M MT CO2e).” Its market-based Scope 2 line for 2024 reads 1,358 tonnes, which is under one percent of the total. Meta’s Environmental Data Index puts location-based Scope 2 for the same year at 5,967,348 tonnes. Counted that way, electricity is more than a third of Meta’s footprint.

Neither number is fabricated. They answer different questions. The 1,358 tonne figure describes contracts. The 5.97 million tonne figure describes the grids Meta’s data centers actually draw from. Meta’s report is explicit that the contracts do most of the work: matching, it says, “reduced our operational emissions by 6 M MT of CO2e in 2024,” and certificates applied to Scope 3 cut a further 1.4 million tonnes.

RE100 does not choose between the two numbers. Its technical criteria are, in its own description, “mostly an interpretation of the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard market-based scope 2 accounting guidance.” What RE100 adds is a set of rules about which contracts count. The renewable generation has to sit in the same market as the consumption. Projects more than fifteen years old count only up to a limit. And since March 2025, power from plants that co-fire renewables with coal does not count at all.

Why the gas buildout broke the membership

RE100 membership is a claim about electricity, and the initiative has been tightening how it checks those claims. Starting with its 2025 disclosure report, RE100 publishes only the progress figures it “recognizes” under its own methodology, rather than whatever members self-report.

The Climate Group has not said which criterion Meta failed. Its published rules point to one candidate. RE100’s technical FAQ states that it “does not support decarbonizing electricity from on-site fossil fuels through any approach which does not directly or contractually reduce those fossil fuel emissions.” It adds that certificates “cannot be used to decarbonize Scope 1 emissions or electricity that is not delivered through the shared electricity grid (e.g., through a direct line).”

Meta’s Ohio plants fit that description closely. The Ohio Power Siting Board says the 200 megawatt Socrates South plant, approved in June 2025, “will operate ‘behind-the-meter,’ to serve the electric load of an adjacent data center and will not be physically connected to the electric power grid.” The power goes to Sidecat LLC, which the board identifies as “an affiliate of Meta Platforms, Inc.” A 250 megawatt plant on the same terms, for the same affiliate, was approved in June 2026. Meta’s own sustainability site describes the practice as “working with energy developers to add onsite, behind-the-meter natural gas generation where the local electric utility cannot meet our electricity needs.” Reading the RE100 rule and the Ohio approvals together is our interpretation. The Climate Group has not confirmed it.

Louisiana is larger, and it runs through the grid. In August 2025 the Louisiana Public Service Commission approved three Entergy combined-cycle units to serve a data center that Meta, through its subsidiary Laidley LLC, is building in Richland Parish. Meta calls the campus Hyperion. Entergy put the three units at a combined 2,260 megawatts. In March 2026 Entergy applied for seven more combined-cycle plants, 5,278 megawatts in all, to serve Evest LLC, which the Commission describes as “a wholly-owned subsidiary of Meta Platforms, Inc.” building another hyperscale data center next door. Entergy says the deal is structured so that Meta pays its full cost of service. The Commission has set its vote for December 16, 2026. A hearing was scheduled for October 7 through 20, and Entergy filed a sealed notice of settlement on September 28. If the seven units are approved, the two orders come to ten gas units and about 7.5 gigawatts.

Both Louisiana deals carry renewables too. The 2025 order provides for 1,500 megawatts of solar and hybrid resources designated to Meta, and Entergy says Meta committed in March 2026 to help fund up to 2,500 megawatts of new renewable resources. Those are real commitments. Neither changes what the gas units are built to do.

A company can match its annual consumption with certificates and still pay for new fossil generation to be built. Those two facts sit together comfortably in market-based accounting and uncomfortably in a standard designed to certify that a company runs on renewables.

What Meta kept, and what it is worth

Read Meta’s response carefully and it is precise rather than evasive. A Meta spokesperson told reporters, in RTE’s account, that leaving RE100 does not change the company’s goal of matching its electricity use with clean energy and that it is continuing to scale up renewable investment. Its energy page adds: “Since 2020, we have matched 100% of our annual electricity use with new clean and renewable energy.” All of that is consistent with its published report.

The word doing the work is “annual.” Matching on an annual basis means a wind farm spinning in west Texas on a spring night can offset a data center drawing gas-fired power in Louisiana on a still August afternoon. RE100’s own rules allow that. It treats the United States and Canada as a single market, and its 2026 reporting guidance says: “There is no mandatory 24/7 time-matching requirement for RE100 reporting companies.” The Climate Group’s stated reason for Meta’s exit is the gas, not the annual method.

Google set itself a harder test in 2020, aiming to run “on carbon-free energy everywhere, at all times” by 2030. Its 2026 environmental report says about 65 percent of the electricity used by its data centers and offices in 2025 was matched with carbon-free energy hour by hour, against 66 percent in 2024, in a year its electricity demand rose 37 percent. The same report says Google “again matched 100% of our electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases (on a global and annual basis).” One company, one year, two answers. The gap between them is not a sign that anyone is lying. Hourly and annual matching are different claims about the same grid, and only the hourly one shows the hours that went unmatched.

Meta’s remaining targets are dated and quantified: net zero across the value chain in 2030, Scope 1 and 2 down 42 percent in 2031 from a 2021 baseline, Scope 3 not exceeding the 2021 baseline by the end of 2031. That last one is the target to watch. Meta’s Scope 3 emissions were 5.77 million tonnes in 2021 and 8.15 million tonnes in 2024, about 41 percent above the level it has promised to be back under by the end of 2031. Capital goods, a category Meta’s data index illustrates with server hardware, accounted for 5.5 million tonnes of the 2024 total, about two-thirds. The same index lists the Scope 3 categories Meta adjusts with certificates: construction electricity, ocean freight, air travel, remote work, leased facilities and the use of its consumer hardware. Capital goods is not among them.

What the withdrawal actually tells shareholders

RE100’s accountability guidance describes two tools: the progress table it publishes for every member, and its endorsement of what members say publicly about their targets. Membership itself is the third. Here it used the third.

For an investor, that is more informative than a target withdrawal would be. If Meta had quietly deleted the 100 percent language, the company would control the narrative around why. Instead the standard-setter said on the record that its criteria were no longer met and named the cause. Meta’s goal survives on Meta’s website with Meta’s definition of “match” attached to it, and the party that used to check that definition has stepped back.

The WokeCorp assessment

The headline overstates it, and the accurate version is not softer. Meta kept its renewable goal. It lost the outside check that distinguished the goal from a bookkeeping convention, and the checker gave a reason on the record.

The reason is a business decision, not an accounting dispute. The Climate Group cited “investments made in new gas power.” Meta says it adds behind-the-meter gas where utilities cannot meet its needs. By our reading, Meta chose electricity availability over membership in a standard, which is a defensible commercial call and a documented change in what the company is willing to be measured against.

The claim to test going forward is Scope 3, not Scope 2. Meta’s electricity emissions net to 1,358 tonnes on paper. Its Scope 3 emissions were about 41 percent above their 2021 level in 2024, and the end of 2031 is the date it put on bringing them back down.

Related reading

• Net Zero Theater, on corporate climate targets that survive by adjusting what counts
• What Is Greenwashing, the accounting conventions that let a claim be technically accurate and misleading
• The Net-Zero Banking Alliance Exodus, another voluntary coalition losing its largest members
• SEC Climate Disclosure Rule Abandoned, the mandatory reporting regime that would have standardized these figures
• California SB 253 Climate Disclosure, the state requirement now doing that job instead

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Sources

Verified October 9, 2026.

• Meta 2025 Sustainability Report, covering the 2024 reporting year, and Meta 2025 Environmental Data Index.
• Meta Sustainability goals page and Energy page.
• Meta, “Request for Proposals: Addressing Upstream Natural Gas Emissions,” May 19, 2026.
• Meta, “Meta Announces Joint Venture with Funds Managed by Blue Owl Capital to Develop Hyperion Data Center,” October 21, 2025.
• Facebook, “On Our Way to Lower Emissions and 100% Renewable Energy,” August 2018, and “Taking Action Together on Earth Day,” April 2021.
• Climate Group, RE100 members list; RE100 companies page as archived by the Internet Archive on December 16, 2016.
• RE100 technical criteria (April 15, 2025), Technical FAQs (August 2025), Accountability Guidance (July 2026) and Reporting Guidance 2026.
• GHG Protocol, Scope 2 Guidance.
• Louisiana Public Service Commission, Order No. U-37425 (August 2025), Order No. U-37882 (May 2026), Order No. U-37882-A (September 2026), and the Docket U-37882 record.
• Entergy, news releases of December 6, 2024 and March 27, 2026.
• Ohio Power Siting Board, news releases of June 9, 2025 and June 26, 2026.
• Google, “Our third decade of climate action: Realizing a carbon-free future,” September 14, 2020, and Google 2026 Environmental Report.
• Recharge News, “EXCLUSIVE: Meta thrown off key global clean energy scheme over gas spree,” July 23, 2026 (paywalled).
• RTE News, “Meta quits clean energy pledge amid data centre expansion,” July 25, 2026.
• TechCrunch, “Meta drops out of a major clean energy pact as its natural gas buildout accelerates,” July 23, 2026.