OREANDA-NEWS. September 28, 2015. Solar energy will power all 11 of Equinix’s California data centers, plus our Silicon Valley headquarters, as part of our new deal to buy electricity from a solar farm being developed near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The move to go all-solar in California is major step toward fulfilling our pledge, made earlier this year, to use 100% clean and renewable energy to operate our global data center platform, which includes 105 facilities in 33 markets on five continents.

With this power purchase agreement (PPA), the percentage of Equinix’s data center footprint that uses clean, renewable sources of energy jumps from 30% to 43%. That means this one agreement has expanded our global renewable energy portfolio by more than 40%.

“This PPA is a major milestone in achieving our long-term goal of reaching 100% renewable power, and it solidifies Equinix’s position as a global data center leader in sustainability,” said Karl Strohmeyer, president, Equinix Americas.

Equinix’s commitment to 100% clean and renewable energy is an acknowledgement that our industry uses a lot of energy, and that a fossil fuel-based energy system has negative impacts. As a global data center industry leader, we want to make good decisions about our energy consumption and we think the choices we make can have broad influence.

This new deal calls for us to purchase 105 megawatts of solar power from SunEdison Inc., which is building the Mount Signal Solar II project near Calexico, Calif., just north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 150 megawatt solar farm is expected to be up and running in 2016.

The project is expected to generate 300,000 megawatt hours per year to offset Equinix’s electrical consumption in California and reduce our carbon footprint by 180 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually. That’s the equivalent of taking 18,000 passenger cars off U.S. roads each year.

In its article on the agreement, Fortune magazine said the deal “shows how the world’s largest Internet companies – many of which buy data center services from Equinix – are increasingly interested in clean energy-powered Web services.”

Strohmeyer told Fortune that there’s significant customer demand for clean-energy powered data center services. “With their help and the lessons they’ve learned, it feels like there’s been momentum in the past year to get this done,” he said.

The agreement with SunEdison comes a few months after we announced our deal to install a biogas-fed Bloom Energy fuel cell to power a section of our SV5 facility in Silicon Valley. To learn more about our deal with Bloom Energy, click the link.

More details about our commitment to 100% clean and renewable power can be found on the Equinix website.