environment
Environmental Stewardship
Equinix serves customers by facilitating a digital economy that drives innovation and connection with a focus on sustainability.
We design, build and operate our data centers while consciously considering a number of sustainability topics, including energy efficiency, supplier commitments, material selection, clean and renewable energy, water and biodiversity conservation, and circularity.
With our high-performance data centers, we continually innovate to enable the data center of the future.
Focus areas
Decarbonize our global operations
- Net-zero by 2040 goal set and approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative
- Achieved 96% renewable energy coverage across our global portfolio
- Implemented evaluation process of low-embodied carbon alternatives for targeted key commodities for all new builds
Optimize efficiency through innovation, creating infrastructure that meets the rising demands of AI and new technologies
- Achieved an annual average global power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.39, a 6% improvement from 2023
- Invested $51 million in energy efficiency
- Enabled heat export at three additional facilities
Responsibly manage natural resources while enabling business expansion
- Achieved an annual global water usage effectiveness (WUE) of 0.95
- Launched a global waste management program
- Developed strategies to encourage the adoption of landscape and site design decisions that can positively impact local biodiversity
Our progress
96%
renewable energy
Seventh year in a row with 90%+ global renewable energy coverage
1.39
average annual PUE
6% Power Usage Effectiveness improvements from 2023
$51M
invested in energy efficiency
Driving environmental stewardship and operational excellence in 2024
1.2 GW of PPAs under contract
370 MW of new PPAs signed in 2024, including our first in the APAC region1
A
list CDP Climate
Change rating
Achieved highest ranking score for the third consecutive year
29%
of Qualified2 Scope 3 emissions
Covered by supplier-set science-based targets
0.95
average annual WUE
Water usage effectiveness of our entire global portfolio of data centers
Customer Water Report launch
Provides site-level WUE and customer’s allocated water withdrawal
14.5
GWh of heat export
Putting recovered heat back to use in our communities and increasing community energy resilience, a 245% increase from 2023
1Includes Australia, India and Singapore
2Includes Category 1 and 2 Scope 3 emissions
Our approach to responsible environmental management
Key environmental metrics
| Metric | Units | 2019 (Baseline) | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity Consumption | GWh | 5,700 | 7,750 | 8,170 | 8,560 |
| Renewable Energy | GWh | 5,250 | 7,430 | 7,850 | 8,230 |
| % Renewable Energy3 | % | 92% | 96% | 96% | 96% |
| PUE (Annual Average) | Quotient | 1.54 | 1.46 | 1.42 | 1.39 |
| Energy Intensity | GWh / million USD revenue | 1.028 | 1.077 | 1.007 | 0.989 |
| GHG Emissions: Scope 1 | mtCO₂e | 40,700 | 40,300 | 29,000 | 59,400 |
| GHG Emissions: Scope 2 (Location-based) | mtCO₂e | 2,081,000 | 2,418,000 | 2,623,800 | 2,645,700 |
| GHG Emissions: Scope 2 (market-based) | mtCO₂e | 308,000 | 241,000 | 247,600 | 253,300 |
| GHG Emissions: Scope 3 | mtCO₂e | 1,311,000 | 1,292,000 | 1,249,000 | 1,435,000 |
| Carbon Intensity (location-based) | mtCO₂e / million USD revenue | 381 | 338 | 324 | 309 |
| Carbon Intensity (market-based) | mtCO₂e / million USD revenue | 63 | 39 | 34 | 36 |
| WUE (annual average; all sites) | Quotient | – | – | 1.07 | 0.95 |
| WUE (annual average; evaporative sites only)4 | Quotient | – | – | 1.63 | 1.55 |
Energy and emissions are assured to ISO 14064-3:2019 standards for the quantification and reporting of GHG emissions.
We have updated our methodology. The resulting adjustments explain the minor discrepancies between current figures and those reported historically.
3 Percent renewable energy coverage across all Equinix data centers for both building overhead and customer IT equipment.
4 Evaporative sites refer to data centers with cooling systems that utilize water. WUE data was first reported in 2023 thus no prior-year data is available.
Case Study
Customer impact
Schneider Electric is a French multinational corporation that specializes in digital automation and energy management. They are committed to becoming net-zero across their end-to-end value chain.
As a result, Schneider needed a data center provider that could drive efficiency and emission reductions while adding support for industrial automation. Equinix was up to the challenge.
We moved Schneider from legacy infrastructure to Platform as a Service, saving the need to purchase and maintain complex hardware and the associated costs and carbon overhead.
They decommissioned outdated equipment, optimized their infrastructure and transitioned to energy-efficient high-performance data centers covered by renewable energy. Our collaboration enabled Schneider to minimize their carbon footprint and reduce customer latency while also lowering operational expenses.
“It always starts with a purpose: What is a company trying to achieve in terms of their digital transformation? For us, it was very simple. It was about making IT infrastructure modern, because of the legacy footprint that we have. That organically translated into reduction of the footprint, thus reducing the carbon footprint.”
Zach Nimboorkar
Senior Vice President of Global IT Infrastructure and Operations at Schneider Electric
Case Study
Customer Green Power Reports
The Equinix Green Power Report (GPR) is a renewable energy attestation statement based on the principles of The Greenhouse Gas Protocol. It grants customers access to data about their electricity consumption, renewable energy usage and carbon footprint at Equinix deployments.
Our customers value that GPRs enable them to respond to emerging reporting requirements and track metrics in pursuit of their targets—in fact, requests for the GPR increased nearly 50% in 2024 from 2023. We enhanced the GPR in 2024 to better serve our customers by increasing data granularity to the billing account level, allowing fiscal year customization and refining back-end data and logic.
Accounting and assurance
We calculate our GHG footprint in reference to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and report in alignment with CDP and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), as well as with the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) standards which are now part of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
Our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions; energy consumption; renewable energy consumption; and water withdrawal, discharge and consumption volumes are independently assured to ISO 14064-3:2019 standards for the quantification and reporting of GHG emissions and water.
Compliance and management system standards
Aligning our operations with international management standards helps us protect the environment, ensure employee safety and meet stakeholder expectations. Equinix actively pursues ISO certifications for all newly constructed sites and acquisitions.
We maintain a global parent certification covering Environmental (ISO 14001), Energy (ISO 50001) and Health and Safety (ISO 45001) standards, with all EMEA sites certified under each standard. In 2024, we achieved ISO 14001 certification for our sites in Korea and Hong Kong, as well as ISO 50001 certification in Hong Kong. In the AMER and APAC regions, all operational sites (apart from those in China and new acquisitions) are ISO 50001 certified.
Looking ahead to 2025, we plan to expand our certifications in various regions, with a focus on expanding our achievement of ISO 14001 certifications across LATAM, Canada and APAC locations. Additionally, we aim to broaden our ISO 9001 certification to include the AMER East region, with a goal of further enhancing our Quality Management Systems across our global operations.
Recognition
