Iron Mountain Goes 100% Renewable In Texas & Illinois
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Iron Mountain Incorporated, one of the world’s leading storage and information management companies, announced this week that it has expanded its commitment to powering its data centers with renewable energy through new transactions which will ensure their Texas and Illinois facilities are powered by 100% renewable power.
Iron Mountain has been actively seeking to ensure its data center services are met by 100% renewable power — unlike companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has been failing to ensure its new data centers are met by new renewable power, according to research published earlier this year by Greenpeace. In early 2017 Iron Mountain announced that its data center business was powered by 100% renewables through a newly-signed 15-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with NJR Clean Energy Ventures. But as the company has expanded to meet the ever-increasing demand for online data services, so too have its power needs.
In late 2018 Iron Mountain announced that the amount of renewable power meeting its global operations was increased to 75% through a newly-signed PPA with the 145 megawatt (MW) Pretty Prairie Wind Farm in Kansas. The PPA also brought the company’s data center business back up to 100% renewables.
Announced on Wednesday, Iron Mountain revealed that a deal structured by American green energy company RPD Energy (formerly Renewable Power Direct) would now provide access to 100% renewable power for its facilities in Texas and Illinois. According to the announcement, “RPD’s flexible, variable energy solutions complement Iron Mountain’s overall mix of purchasing strategies, which include traditional power purchase agreements (PPAs) and on-site projects.” Specifically, the new Texas and Illinois transactions will deliver over 25,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of green energy each year over the next three years.
“With these transactions, Iron Mountain continues to follow through on our commitment to renewable energy by using new models that are both cost-effective and simple to implement throughout our real estate portfolio,” said Chris Pennington, CBRE Energy Manager for Iron Mountain.
“By working with Direct Energy and NextEra Energy, RPD was able to deliver an innovative renewable energy solution for Iron Mountain,” added Eric Alam, CEO of RPD Energy. “The final product has the simplicity of a standard retail contract coupled with the benefits of access to locally-sourced physical energy and RECs. These transactions provide another example of how RPD brings together the pieces of the wholesale and retail green energy puzzle for forward-thinking companies like Iron Mountain.”
In addition to consistent renewable energy targets and ambition, Iron Mountain also announced earlier this year that it had received formal approval from the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) of its 2025 greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals, one of only 150 or so companies which have received such approval.
The company’s newly-approved targets will see Iron Mountain reduce its absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2025 on a 2016 baseline and includes both indirect and direct emissions (Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol). Specifically, Iron Mountain — including the effects of expected business growth — will need to reduce more than 50% of business-as-usual carbon usage by 2025.
“As a global organization, we recognize the impact that our daily operations can have on the world, and in 2013 began a journey to better understand and mitigate that impact,” said William Meaney, president and chief executive officer, Iron Mountain, speaking in February. “That understanding has led us to today, where we look at sustainability as an opportunity to make our operations more efficient and uncover insights that we can pass on to our customers and industry peers to do the same. Our commitment and progress to realizing this opportunity has helped us improve both our business and our customers’ businesses, and we’re proud to join the ranks of the SBTi-approved companies in setting aggressive targets to reduce our GHG emissions.”
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