Renewed pressure for renewables

In a recent presentation at the Energy Smart conference in Stockholm, Gary Cook, the Greenpeace activist who has tracked data center carbon emissions for a decade, showed a slide of logos, indicating companies that have made a commitment to use 100 percent renewable energy for their IT. Cook showed the commitment started with big brand consumer-facing IT (such as Google and Apple), then spread to big data center operators (such as Equinix and Digital Realty), and now is being adopted by business-to-business companies such as HP Enterprise.

Our research supports Cook’s view that this small cluster of logos will grow to a forest in the years ahead, with a surge of renewed enthusiasm coming from top-level executives. The reason is not altruistic: corporate leaders, investors and shareholders are exerting increasing pressure on enterprises to actively address climate change risk, better manage natural resources, such as water, and become more energy efficient.