ECO Cloud and Environmental, Social and Business Governance (ESG)
Environmental and social governance (ESG) is a growing concern for businesses globally. Employee wellness diversity gaps and the impacts of climate change and the importance of environmental sustainability have become major concerns at present. It’s time the IT sector including cloud providers/data centres recognised the part they must play in supporting organisations with ESG efforts. ESG is an important concern of businesses and not just an activity that sometimes is brought on board of directors meetings.
What's ESG
Cloud Computing and ESG
In our fast-changing technology-driven world ESG has to play a critical role in business operations. Think of ESG more like business objectives rather than nice to have features. Everything we do has carbon consequences, for example, R&D engineers developing the right product or software. Each time the test or demo version is deployed will have a carbon footprint.
Cloud computing can minimalise the carbon impact by providing them with the right toolset and much faster times of development. Also by embracing the newest manufacturing machines including sensors, and live data reporting, the company can adjust production performance to reduce its environmental footprint.
The IT sector plays a critical role in both the supply chain and sustainability. For instance, SaaS applications can help to optimise the routes of vehicles re-routing them if necessary to avoid traffic jams or shortening logistical times and therefore minimising energy needs.
ECO Cloud
Consequently, adopting the right cloud services can have huge environmental benefits. For example, ECO Cloud impacts the environment by at least 30% less than traditional cloud providers. We do this by utilising hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) architecture and advanced liquid immersion technology with a biodegradable dielectric cooling fluid that ambiences the IT hardware, delivering cooling power one thousand times more efficiently than air. This setup allows deploying CPU and GPU clusters much closer together, i.e., in high-density configurations, while protecting vital components from thermal and environmental risks.
Our commitment to net-zero
We are taking a holistic approach to assessing both the water and energy usage of each potential cooling solution to select the most efficient method. Therefore, we’re launching an aggressive plan to reduce carbon emissions around data centres.Â
We’ll drive down our emissions to near zero or even a negative mark by the middle of this decade through the following steps:
- Our liquid-cooled servers in Gatwick DC are already powered by 100% renewable energy. By the end of 2025, all our data centres and buildings will be powered by this type of energy.
- We’ll be investing in more carbon reduction and cutting edge technologies. Â
- We will pursue the UK and global Zero Carbon certifications not just for our liquid immersion projects.Â
- By the end of 2025, and as part of the local governments’ project, our liquid-cooled data centres will contribute to a source of heating for local and public buildings. This will be achieved by installing thermal heating exchanges at the end of our closed-loop water circulation.