Isra-Mart srl:Hosting firm UKFast becomes carbon neutral

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Isra-Mart srl news:

Hosting firm UKFast has said it is now a carbon neutral company, and aims to help its customers go down that path themselves by continuing to use its data services.

UKFast has also just launched new company UKFast Energy with the backing of the Co-operative Bank, which will provide carbon-neutral energy services.

The company – which has over 400,000 web domains on its network and over 3,000 clients, including UKTV, Chelsea Football Club, Mulberry and Barclays Bank – says it is now carbon neutral at both at its offices and data centres, and all client services provided are also carbon neutral.

The new UKFast Energy operation is now planning a series of hydro electric power plants in Wales and Scotland, to consolidate UKFast’s position in the green IT market. The “clean” power from these plants will be used at UKFast’s data centres.

UKFast has identified eleven hydro electric locations and it says energy production is “a potential eighteen months away”. In the meantime, in order to gain carbon neutrality with immediate effect, UKFast has invested in a series of existing hydro electric plants in South America and Europe, offsetting more than 2,000 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalence).

The company’s managing director, Lawrence Jones, said: “UKFast’s new data centre in Manchester will assist with the reduction of our overall power consumption, and contribute towards the UK target to keep the global temperature increase below the two degree celsius threshold.”

UKFast isn’t the only firm looking to hydro electric power to reduce its carbon footprint. Yahoo recently opened a new data centre that relies on that same type of power, along with natural wind chilling to cool the server racks.