Environment
Protecting Our Planet
With the effects of climate change, natural disasters and other environmental pressures accelerating, protecting our planet is more critical than ever before. Digital technologies are helping to reduce environmental impact, conserve natural resources, and improve efficiency and resiliency. Companies, organizations and communities are coming together and connecting with shared vision and purpose – collectively accomplishing more for the planet than what one company can alone.
Environment Overview
At Equinix, we seek to be good stewards of the environment and all the resources we consume while helping our customers operate more sustainably. Our environmental efforts deliver meaningful and measurable progress against our sustainability goals that positively impact our customers, partners, investors and employees. The energy efficiencies we achieve in our data centers directly impacts our customers’ abilities to green their digital supply chains.
We understand the urgency of global climate change as a threat and risk to our business and the entire world. We strive to protect our planet and climate by increasing clean and renewable energy usage and reducing our carbon footprint across our global portfolio. By advocating and leveraging our buying power to promote the deployment of renewable energy generation sources, we are influencing energy suppliers and purchasers to support utility grids free of fossil fuels.
In addition to our commitments on clean energy, we are collaborating worldwide at the regulatory and government level to integrate data centers into next-generation energy schemes which lower aggregate emissions across industry sectors. We believe data centers can perform an integral role in energy recovery and stabilizing power systems so that our grids can support more renewable energy sources.
Our global reach and scale of over 200 International Business Exchange® (IBX®) sites enables us to deploy cutting edge innovations in our data centers that benefit all our customers, such as machine-learning to maximize energy efficiency. By pioneering green data center innovations, building and operating energy-efficient data centers and partnering with like-minded organizations, we are helping to protect worldwide energy resources.
Our environmental commitments include:
Protecting our planet and climate:
- Reaching our goal of 100% clean and renewable energy usage across our global portfolio
- Accepting responsibility for our proportional share of greenhouse gas emissions and the supporting the goal of urgent reduction across direct and indirect energy consumption with an increasing focus on indirect value chain emissions
- Building and maintaining healthy and sustainable office settings for our employees
Protecting worldwide energy resources:
- Deploying best-in-class data center energy efficiency technologies, innovations and strategies for reducing energy consumption, while addressing resilience, prudent water consumption and climate-related risks
- Partnering with like-minded organizations to advance environmentally-friendly policies, buying practices and innovation on priorities such as clean energy and heat recovery
Protecting our infrastructure:
- Evolving our design strategies to take advantage of local conditions and proactively addressing risks and opportunities at our sites
Key Environmental Metrics
| Energy Consumption | Renewable Energy |
|---|---|
| Equivalent to nearly 500,000 U.S. homes’ energy use for a year 120% increase in energy consumption since 2015 or ~5,740 GWh consumed | Purchases equivalent to 802 wind turbines running for a year Over 90% renewable energy use globally or ~5,250 GWh across 20 countries |
| Carbon Footprint | Green Buildings |
| 60% reduction since 2015 Equivalent to ~450,000 metric tons CO2e avoided across Scope 1 + 2 | 67% under certification 16 million sq. ft of gross floor area under LEED, ISO 50001 or 14001, or other environmental certification |
| Assurance | Onsite Generation |
| ISO 14064-3 Limited Assurance for energy consumption, renewable energy coverage and emissions since 2015 | 38 MW of fuel cells providing cleaner, reliable electricity |
Environmental Commitments
We strive to deliver meaningful and measurable progress against our sustainability goals and positively impact our key stakeholders and communities.
Energy and Renewables
Equinix has a long-term goal to use 100% clean and renewable energy for our global interconnection and data center platform.
Carbon Reduction
Our efforts to reduce energy usage and increase renewable energy result in significant carbon reductions.
Innovation and Building Green Data Centers
Energy efficiency and environmental sustainability are part of everything we do, whether we’re building new data centers or upgrading existing facilities.
Healthy and Sustainable Offices
Our sustainability mission is embedded in our corporate office initiatives globally.
Advocacy and Collaboration
Advocacy is a hallmark of our strategy as we leverage the buying power of many companies through a single voice.