OREANDA-NEWS. December 02, 2015. Earlier this year, Equinix made a promise to one day power our entire global data center platform with clean and renewable energy. Now, we’re joining companies that share our commitment to a sustainable energy future to support the Obama Administration’s efforts to combat climate change.

Today, Equinix announced that we’re one of 140 companies across the U.S. that signed the White House’s American Business Act on Climate Pledge.

The pledge is an ongoing commitment to action on climate change. It also voices support for an agreement at this week’s COP21 Paris climate negotiations that takes a strong step toward a low-carbon, sustainable future.

The pledge’s signatories aren’t just private businesses like Equinix. They also include local governments and foundations which agree that accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy will produce multiple benefits, including economic growth, public health improvements and an improved global environment.

Among our collective aims are an increase in energy efficiency, more investment in low-carbon energy projects and making solar energy more accessible. But at Equinix, we want to make some additional pledges of our own.

We’ve long recognized that our industry is energy-intensive, and we believe that as world’s largest interconnection and data center company, with 105 data centers in 33 markets, our choices can have a substantial impact. That’s why in April we made a long-term commitment to 100% clean and renewable power use. We’ve since contracted for 330 megawatts of wind and solar energy (in deals with wind farms in Texas and Oklahoma and a solar farm in California) that will increase the percentage of our global footprint that’s covered by clean and renewable power to 82%.

To expand this commitment to sustainability, we pledge to:

  • Continue our efforts towards operating our portfolio of data centers using 100% clean and renewable energy
  • Be transparent in our reporting of our environmental impacts through respected agencies
  • Design, build, and operate efficiently in order to reduce our consumption of all resources, including electricity, water, natural gas, diesel and refrigerants
  • Increase our investment in upgrades, retrofits, and replacements of old or inefficient equipment to enable demand savings and additional reductions in our carbon footprint
  • Build to a minimum of USGBC LEED Silver Standards (or regional equivalents)
  • Track our performance using U.S. Energy Star for Data Centers (or regional equivalents) and strive for facility certification
  • Play an active role in the greening of our industry by promoting the use of innovative, clean and renewable technologies through collaboration and advocacy with our customers, peers, utility providers, and other interested parties.

A review of our philosophy and actions to promote sustainability follows:

We recognize that delaying action on climate change will be costly in economic and human terms. At Equinix we believe it is important that companies operate in an environmentally sustainable way. For us, electric power is our largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. As such, earlier this year, we announced a long-term commitment to use 100 percent clean and renewable energy across our global platform.

Our efforts will result in carbon-neutral data center and interconnection services for our customers and partners around the globe. Already 100 percent in Europe and 43 percent globally, we are increasing our use of renewable energy to power our data centers through solar and wind power purchase agreements and onsite generation. In the U.S. we recently contracted for 330 MW of wind and solar. Taken together, these represent the largest power purchase agreements (PPAs) ever undertaken by a data center provider.

Equinix is also deploying onsite renewable energy and investigating other ways to increase its contribution to its renewable goals. We are currently installing a 1 MW fuel cell at our San Jose data center in Silicon Valley and have solar panels installed in our data centers in Amsterdam and Singapore.”

Read more about our commitment to sustainability and energy efficiency.