Facebook has announced that it will share the design secrets behind its new energy-efficient data centre with rival companies. The social network's facility in Prineville, Oregon is said to use 38% less power than existing centres.

It hopes, by making the innovations public, to cut the amount of electricity the industry consumes. Working under the title Open Compute Project, Facebook will release specifications and mechanical drawings of the building and its servers.

"It's time to stop treating data centres like Fight Club [do not talk about them]," said Jonathan Heiliger, the company's vice president of technical operations.

His comments are likely to be interpreted as a dig at other web firms, such as Google, Twitter and Amazon which have kept their own designs under wraps. Data centres use vast amounts of electricity to run their computer equipment and also to keep it cool.

Environmental group Greenpeace has estimated that their total global energy use will have reached 2 trillion kw/h by 2020. Until now, Facebook has paid to lease its servers and storage space from other companies.

The Prineville plant is its first custom-built facility and cost $188m (£117m). Much has been made of its environmentally friendly specifications.