London data centre one of UK’s first to switch to 100% green energy

Renewable energy has undoubtedly been one of the 'hottest' topics in recent times following the wake of global warming.

Netwise Hosting is leading the charge after officially making the switch to true 100 percent renewable energy at its fast-filling London Central data center.

This commitment positions the company as one of the first data center operators in the UK to push entirely renewable energy, joining the ranks with the likes of Google who themselves are committed to making the switch across their entire global estate by the end of the year.

Managing director at Netwise Hosting, Matthew Butt is excited for what the future holds.

"This is a big step for us in setting the standard for the future of data center operations, particularly in a major capital city like London," Butt says.

"We are incredibly proud to be delivering our customers with what may well be the greenest data center service set in London, if not the UK.

There is certainly strong evidence behind the renewable energy push with data centers at the epicentre of responsibility for spearheading the support.

Current estimates predict global data center power usage to exceed 500 terrawatts by 2020, representing 3 percent of the world's total energy consumption.

Netwise Hosting turned to specialist provider Ecotricity for the delivery of the massive change as rather than than relying on ambiguous carbon credits and misleading offset schemes, Ecotricity generate this energy themselves using the wind, the sun, and soon the sea.

According to Butt, this is directly in line with Netwise Hosting's own ethos of owning and controlling as much of the service chain as possible.

In conjunction with the green energy shift, Netwise Hosting's London Central data center also has an industry-leading Power Usage Effectiveness rating of 1.12 (lower is better, with the average at 1.60) that the company says is achieved through the intelligent deployment of evaporative and free cooling technologies.

Senior manager at Netwise Hosting, Matt Seaton says the company is now working with a wide range of clients who consider 'going green' to be a major priority for their service delivery.

"We now work with several large service providers who are feeling added weight every day in reducing their carbon impact, as computational demands continue to increase," says Heaton.

"We've listened to this demand, and helped our early adopters in delivering this to their end clients.

Netwise plan to run a range of events and engagement activities to increase awareness around the importance of delivering services to end clients using energy sourced responsibly. The first of these occurred this month, with a soft launch of the company's new 'green wall', now in place at its London Central facility.