Some 25 companies and 17 associations representing cloud infrastructure and data centre sector in Europe agreed on Thursday 21 January to take specific steps to make their data centres climate-neutral by 2030.
Through the ‘Climate Neutral Data Centres Pact’, the signatory organisations commit themselves to achieving measurable targets for 2025 and 2030 in five areas: (1) energy efficiency; (2) use of 100% carbon-free energy; (3) water conservation; (4) reuse and repair of servers; (5) recycling of waste-heat.
“This commitment underpins a roadmap for Europe’s cloud infrastructure industry to offer climate-neutral services to customers by 2030”, said Alban Schmutz, President of CISPE (Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe).
Stressing the increasingly important place of technology in the daily lives of citizens, the Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of the ‘European Green Deal’, Frans Timmermans, considered the initiative “constitutes a promise to society and offers a welcome first step towards achieving our common ambitions for a smart and sustainable future”.
Developed in cooperation with the European Commission, this self-regulation initiative will be reviewed twice a year by the institution to assess progress. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)