INTELLIGENT GREEN TECHNOLOGY

With 175 datacentres, 40 + global locations, effective power management from renewable and non-renewable resources is an important part of Equinix’ s operational strategy.

Natural Gas 40 %, Nuclear 7 %

Europe: Renewables 100 %, with utility resource mix: Renewables 22 %, Coal 28 %, Natural gas 24 %, Nuclear 23 % Some examples:

• France, 100 % certified renewable energy provided by supplier, EDF

• Germany, 99 % certified renewable energy provided by supplier, Mainova

• Switzerland, 100 % green power electricity from energy providers certified with naturemade star label

• Netherlands, 100 % certified renewable energy provided by supplier, Nuon

• United Kingdom, 100 % certified renewable energy provided by supplier, Statkraft

What few people realise is that the Internet, while providing substantial environmental benefits worldwide, requires vast amounts of electricity. That is why companies who make up the backbone of the Internet, and therefore use the most energy, are going green.

As an example, majority of the world’ s Internet traffic passes through Equinix datacentres. To enable this digital highway, Equinix datacentres consumed more than 2,200 Gigawatt Hours of electricity in 2014, the equivalent of powering 200,000 + average-sized US homes. As a tier-one datacentre provider, Equinix has an obligation to make data availability a high priority, but it also has an equal obligation to make all of that data traffic as green as possible.

In the datacentre and technology space, many major cloud companies and Equinix customers have made commitments to green operations. Corporations such as Apple, Box, Facebook, Google, Rackspace and Salesforce. com have committed to goals of powering their datacentres, including colocation partners, with 100 % renewable energy and offering carbon neutral services.

In 2014 Equinix met more than 30 % of its global electricity requirements, nearly 100 % in Europe, through renewable energy purchases.

For Equinix, the effective 2014 electricity resource mix directly supplied by utilities and suppliers was:

Americas: Renewables 17 %, Coal 27 %, Natural Gas 19 %, Nuclear 22 %

Asia Pacific: Renewables 3 %, Coal 30 %,

It has power purchase agreements in California, Texas, Oklahoma totaling 330 MW of new solar and wind capacity expected to come online in 2017. Another initiative is to maintain aggressive reduction in power usage effectiveness through improvement of design across its datacentres.

Green technology is constantly changing and improving. At Equinix there is no such thing as a static datacentre. Equinix datacentres incorporate fresh air cooling, airflow control, adaptive control systems, lighting systems control, amongst other technologies.

Whenever Equinix builds a new International Business Exchange datacentre, it takes full advantage of the site’ s unique conditions, thereby maximising energy efficiencies and shrinking the carbon footprint. It uses techniques such as indirect evaporative cooling, deep lake water cooling, Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage, green rooftops, granular temperature controls, water-side economisers, rooftop solar panels,

40 Issue 03 INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS