Digital companies are HUGE consumers of power. Data Centres are one of the biggest contributors to energy consumption and it's often overlooked!
Picture this, you're sitting down in the evening scrolling through Facebook or doing some online shopping, watching the latest trending video. Did you think about the environmental impact?
It might not seem like much, but when you visit any website you're using energy from large data centres, often not carbon neutral.
I didn't want to be a contributor to that.
I wanted to lower my carbon footprint by taking action against what services and providers I was using to power websites and office equipment every day. Not only that, but increased my performance too. Challenge Accepted.
Renewable Datacentres
I found a data centre who are committed to providing 100% renewable energy as well as providing a super reliable service, Equinix.
They're a London-based data centre who follow strict certifications such as:
- OHSAD 18001
- ISO 27001
- ISO 9001
- PCI DSS
- SSAE 16/ISAE 3402
- ISO 50001
They're currently running at 92% renewable with the future goal of achieving 100%. I found a range of providers that utilise these datacentres of which I now use to host websites.
Find out more about Equinix's renewal committment here
Green Office Power
Another area to tackle was how the machines were running in the office, with iMacs, Laptops, iPads and Internet all using power I needed to find a way of getting renewable energy into the home office. We're using Bulb who are 100% renewable. Check!
Overal, it wasn't actually too difficult to find renewable energy companies out there, but you do need to actively seek them.