Interxion Holding NV has announced that, as of this month, over half of the power it provides for customers in its data centers is from solar, wind, geothermic, tidal, or hydro energy sources. Power from renewable energy sources is available to customers across the company’s 11-country European footprint, and Interxion’s operations in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK are 100% powered by renewable energy sources.

The provision of power from renewable sources to drive down carbon emissions is one of a range of energy efficiency, emission and waste reduction initiatives from Interxion. The company pioneered modular architecture for data centers in 2000 and has since driven its power usage effectiveness (PUE) down year-on-year through a mix of design, procurement and operational measures, including the use of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), deployment of free air cooling and variable-frequency drives as standard, and the use of cold and hot aisle containment to support high power densities more efficiently.

To minimize energy waste, alternative cooling sources such as sea-water cooling are also deployed wherever practical, and Interxion is in the process of implementing closed-loop energy recycling systems, where the heat generated in the data centre is recycled for use elsewhere.

“Over half of the power we provide comes from sustainable sources in order to offer a choice of renewable energy to our customers, many of whom are among the global leaders in addressing corporate social responsibility issues and the environmental impact of their ICT infrastructure,” said Peter Cladingbowl, Interxion senior vice president, engineering and operations support. “We are among the industry’s leaders in terms of energy efficiency, but as a business, we believe that sustainability rather than pure energy efficiency should be our long-term objective, and this is one of a number of initiatives we are implementing to achieve this goal.”