Element Critical Utilizes Renewable Energy as Interest Moves From Efficiency to Data Center Sustainability
Massive digital growth and the ability to harness technology advancements more seamlessly have led to a significant data center outsourcing trend for businesses of all sizes. Businesses are leveraging cloud computing and colocation data centers to fuel their digital transformation initiatives. In turn, data center owners and operators are emerging this year with an even greater interest in reducing energy usage for the customers collocated in their buildings. Purpose-built data centers are already designed for ultimate energy efficiency and economical cooling. Yet, in the current landscape, it is a fortuitous instance in which financial and environmental concerns are coinciding to create large-scale data centers that are built for maximum energy efficiency and also focused on sustainable data center practices.
Energy Sourcing – ESG Takes Precedence
Companies are adopting ESG (Environmental, Social, & Governance) policies designed to advance their corporate environmental responsibility. At the same time, many companies are expanding their efforts to include their third-party 
suppliers such as data center providers in their ESG strategy. To meet this prominent business priority, data center operators that place sustainability at the center of their business model not only focus on building data center design efficiency but reach further to source renewable energy and offset their annual usage with renewable energy. Renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric power are favored over legacy power sources like coal.
While energy efficiency offers significant budget savings for operators and their customers, there are fewer financial advantages when it comes to how your power is sourced. The desire for sustainable energy resources to lower emissions may be universal but it is not as easily aligned with the current economic interests. That said, meeting ESG goals means being a good corporate citizen by lessening the impact an organization has on the plant. In some cases, forward-thinking data center providers are able to hedge price volatility in the power market with long-term renewables purchasing that stabilizes the cost and passes the benefits of renewable power procurement to customers without charging more for green than grid power.
The next step sustainable-minded operators are taking toward green initiatives is procuring energy in the same local markets their data centers are situated. However, this can be challenging since the supply of sustainable energy is also not unlimited; thus, it isn’t always possible to get green energy directly. Some parts of the country have renewable energy available, in other areas the local utilities do not directly provide energy from sustainable resources. Businesses are at the mercy of the local power providers, their policies, and the amount of sustainable power that is available in the area. Yet, as demand for renewable power increases and more data center operators prioritize the agenda for the customers they support, resources will likely follow suit.
Element Critical’s Approach
The source of the energy that powers our data centers matters at Element Critical. Likewise, leaders of corporate industry and our customers are steering their businesses toward carbon reduction more than ever and asking critical questions to include their supply chain and business partners in their corporate initiatives. Some have advanced ESG programs, others simply have a culture of operating in as sustainable a manner as possible. Element Critical meets requirements for both energy efficiency and sustainable sourcing.
Our Texas data centers, in Austin and Houston, are both state-of-the-art facilities with tremendous efficiencies realized. Austin One and Houston One are designed to meet internal efficiency goals for PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) to ensure the lowest costs for our shared tenants. We continue to pursue the capture of greater efficiencies and lower power usage, resulting in a reduced carbon footprint within all our data centers.
Additionally, Element Critical delivers sustainably sourced power to the Texas grid, offsetting the total annual power usage for both our Texas data center and colocation customers. We have purchased a multi-megawatt (MW) power-purchase-agreement (PPA) to deliver sustainably sourced power from a local Texas wind farm that replaces the legacy-generated power from the grid. Additionally, this purchase exceeds our current colocation customer usage to showcase our commitment to sustainability now and into the future, allowing our customers to claim 100% renewable power credits for their data center deployments with Element Critical.
Element Critical is hard at work getting the overall net carbon impact of our organization is as close to zero as possible and we look forward to bringing 100% renewable power to our national platform.
We would welcome a discussion with you on your organizational goals for sustainability. Visit www.elementcritical.com, email us at [email protected], or call 512.374.8022 to arrange for a meeting. Let’s discuss our mutual interest in sustainable power utilization and how we can support your business ESG initiatives today.
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Read the press release on renewable power in Texas.
Learn more: Four Ways Element Critical Drives Innovation Toward Greener Data Centers
Download our green energy brochures for Austin and Houston.
