As demand for digital services booms, the data centers that house the internet’s infrastructure – like servers, storage systems and cooling equipment – are increasingly consuming energy and releasing emissions. In this context, US-based company Iron Mountain Data Centers is determined to prove the compatibility of the tech and renewable energy revolutions, by simultaneously expanding its business and moving to 24/7 carbon-free electricity (CFE), which is why Climate Group’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition caught their attention.
A renewable energy leader
Iron Mountain Data Centers made an early commitment to carbon-free electricity and have been matching their annual consumption at the data centers with renewables since 2017. In 2018, it joined Climate Group’s RE100 campaign, a collective corporate commitment to renewable electricity. Now, the next step is matching its data centers’ electricity usage with local and temporal low-carbon energy sources.
A 24/7 carbon-free electricity learning journey
Initially, Iron Mountain Data Centers’ leaders weren’t sure if 24/7 CFE was something their company could achieve. While they were inspired by Google’s 2020 public commitment to operate on 100% renewable electricity matched to local sources on an hour-by-hour basis by 2030, they thought that such a target was the preserve of corporate giants.
However, they went on a learning journey and rapidly concluded that this kind of matching was the only way to genuinely achieve net zero – for any business, of any size. As a result, Iron Mountain Data Centers became the first company to follow Google’s lead and set a 24/7 CFE goal – adopting Google’s methodology and using it to set its own target of 2040.
Iron Mountain Data Centers took this approach to help build a wider movement, rather than doing things on its own terms.
“Hourly-matched, carbon-free electricity should change the way all companies think about their renewable energy claims. You can't hide from it. You’ve got to decarbonise every hour of every day of electricity your business is using. It’s the only way to achieve net zero and green the world’s energy grids.”
“Hourly-matched, carbon-free electricity should change the way all companies think about their renewable energy claims. You can't hide from it. You’ve got to decarbonise every hour of every day of electricity your business is using. It’s the only way to achieve net zero and green the world’s energy grids.”
A marathon, not a sprint
The Iron Mountain Data Centers team view the journey towards 24/7 CFE as a marathon, rather than a sprint. They underline that it isn’t an overnight transformation. The starting point was understanding how much energy their data centers were consuming each hour and where their contracted energy was coming from.
To this end, the company began a pilot project in 2021, collating the data from four of its US facilities and one in the UK. With the help of the specialist energy certificate trackers at Cleartrace (US) and Flexidao (Europe), Iron Mountain analysed the captured data to gain an understanding of its baseline performance and work out how to improve. By 2023, its US pilot sites had achieved 97% matched hour-by-hour energy use with local renewable electricity. Now, the company is working to improve the electricity matching at the rest of its sites around the world
Enabling wider decarbonisation
Iron Mountain Data Centers’ decarbonisation initiatives have widespread repercussions. As a co-location data center company, it rents out space to customers so they can run the digital side of their operations – effectively acting as their digital utility. Indeed, in their sustainability reporting these customers recognise the energy that they consume inside its buildings as their own Scope 2 emissions, akin to the energy they use to heat or run their offices.
By purchasing energy on behalf of all these customers in this way, Iron Mountain is consequently responsible for their digital carbon footprints. When it switches to cleaner sources and matches them at a granular level, it is enabling wider decarbonisation.
This collaborative ethos is core to all Iron Mountain Data Centers’ sustainability efforts. In fact, when its team first went out to solar and wind energy projects with the aim of setting up 24/7 CFE contracts with them, they made a point of creating an off-the-shelf retail model that other companies could easily replicate.
These kinds of commitments demonstrate why Iron Mountain Data Centers have joined Climate Group’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition as a Founding Partner. By learning and working together in this way, companies can help push fossil fuels off energy grids.
For further information about Climate Group’s 24/7 CFE campaign, please sign up to our newsletter.
