On Earth Day, people around the world reflect on all of the measures we can take to minimize our negative impact on the environment. Aside from what we can do as individuals, it is also important to consider how businesses, both large and small, can pledge to incorporate more sustainable practices and technologies into their operations. These days, the topic of sustainability across telecom, data center and tech companies is so widely discussed, so we asked our valued JSA Clients what sustainability initiatives they are excited about. We’ve highlighted their answers below.
In honor of Earth Day, what are some sustainability initiatives, past or planned, that your company is excited about?
At 1623 Farnam, we have initiated efforts to create a more sustainable facility, while undertaking our $40M expansion project. Adopting sustainable measures and minimizing our impact on the environment are important causes to us. Because of this, we have incorporated hot aisle containment, which is a more efficient way of controlling the ambient temperature in the data center. Additionally, our new design takes advantage of fluid coolers, which utilize outside air temperatures, allowing 1623 Farnam to recirculate the building cooling loop up to 7,200 hours per year. This allows the data center to spend less energy cooling the air, consume less power and reduce the data center’s carbon footprint.
ONE TREE FOR EVERY ATTENDEE
American Meetings, Inc. offsets each meeting’s carbon footprint with this sustainability program. AMI’s professional meetings management programs include supporting the cause in reducing carbon emissions for meetings. Trees help cool the planet by sucking in and storing harmful greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, into their trunks, branches, and leaves, and releasing oxygen back into the atmosphere. AMI’s One-Tree program gives organizations a simple way to make your corporate meetings and events carbon neutral.
Collocation of multiple tenants on a shared communications infrastructure is fundamentally an environmentally sustainable business model that maximizes efficient use of land, water, energy and other resources. We manage our business with a full life-cycle perspective and prioritize the protection of the natural environment. In every phase of our work—planning, constructing, operating and decommissioning sites—our local site development and land management teams are committed to complying fully with the letter and spirit of all applicable environmental laws and regulations.
Green energy and sustainability are critical aspects of DataBank’s Data Center Evolved™ strategy. From the use of 100% renewable wind sources at our Indianapolis 1/2 and Minneapolis 2 facilities to the unique heat recycling and onsite microgrid housed at Atlanta 1, we have taken significant steps toward enhancing energy efficiency across DataBank’s portfolio. Looking forward, we will continue to adapt and evolve the data center experience to provide better service for our customers and a better result for our environment.
At GoldConnect, we’re proud to embrace advanced sustainable and renewable technologies to power our infrastructure in Latam. We aim to not only reduce power instability but to also protect and pioneer efficient practices that protect the environment in which we operate.
As part of our Earth Day efforts, Involta has committed to help replace the 65% loss of trees amid a devastating derecho that hit the area in 2020. Involta employees in Cedar Rapids and Marion, many of whom were impacted by this storm, had the opportunity to choose up to three native trees and shrubs provided by Involta for their home landscape or donate them to others, as part of the “Planting Forward” initiative. More than half of the trees in Cedar Rapids alone were damaged or destroyed, which has a detrimental effect on the ecosystem. This effort helped increase environmental awareness while offering a team-building opportunity to celebrate both the local community and Earth Day.
Kohler believes that doing well as a business and doing good in the world go hand in hand. The Kohler brand has created a number of green initiatives, including our Innovation for Good® in-house start-up incubator, our Design for Environment (DfE) program and our WasteLAB. Still, sustainability is particularly crucial in the data center sphere. That’s why we work closely with the EPA and continuously refine our Tier 4 Final data center generator products to reflect new regulatory requirements — among other innovations still to come.
Even individually, we’re not afraid to roll up our sleeves and get to work. In fact, our generator product engineer Brad Miessner collaborated with the nonprofit Water Mission to develop an automatic transfer switch for solar powered generators serving off-grid water filtration stations in refugee camps in developing parts of the world. As sustainability becomes key, Kohler is committed to spearheading change.
In February 2021, Atos announced an ambitious decarbonization plan to reach net zero by 2028, and to reduce the global carbon emissions under its control by 50% by 2025. The commitment puts Atos 22 years ahead of the 2050 Paris Agreement target. At Maven Wave, the dedication Atos has shown to decarbonization through digitalization has inspired how we help companies create sustainable cloud infrastructures. Whenever we partner with a client, we’re doing our part not only to develop reliable, scalable cloud strategies for companies, but also ones that create a more sustainable digital future for everyone as we push closer and closer to net zero emissions.
We’ve implemented a new building management system (BMS) that provides clear visual representation of critical temperature and humidity readings, power used to run pumps, motors, and fans for our cooling systems, and most importantly the ability to see our power usage effectiveness (PUE) in real-time, enabling fine tuning. With these insights, we eliminated over cooling and effectively reduced our PUE from a 1.9 to a 1.47, all without changing out major equipment or capital expenses.
One of our biggest accomplishments this year has been the launch of the Havfrue subsea cable system – connecting our NJFX Cable Landing Station to mainland Northern Europe. When Bulk Infrastructure chose NJFX as the U.S. landing site, it became the on-ramp for the Nordic Gateway, allowing us to tap into one of the few genuinely sustainable solutions the data center industry has seen to date. The Nordic Gateway unlocks 100% pure emissions-free hydropower from the Nordic countries. NJFX is committed to embracing more sustainable initiatives, as our industry works to become more aware of the environmental impact of data center solutions.
As part of its ongoing efforts to meet growing data center demands, Serverfarm continues to put sustainability at the forefront of its mission.
By modernizing existing data centers instead of building new ones, and layering in efficiency optimization through our InCommand DMaaS platform, we deliver to clients infrastructure requirements while also reducing IT’s carbon footprint.
On this note, we’re excited to announce that on Earth Day this year, Serverfarm will trial our upcoming podcast, The Future of Data Centers. The first of four quarterly mini-series will kick off in May with host Joel Makower, Founder of GreenBiz, and tackle data center sustainability. We look forward to you lending us your ears!
