Equinix will continue to pursue its clean energy goals

After period of silence on this matter, Equinix, one of the world’s largest data center services providers (and the world’s largest retail colocation provider), said it will continue to pursue its goal of powering its global data center platform with renewable energy, despite uncertainty around the future of the renewable energy market in the US in the face of attempts by President Donald Trump’s administration to roll back climate regulations.

“Our renewable energy commitments have not changed in light of the White House’s rollback on climate policy,” Michelle Lindeman, a spokeswoman for Equinix, said in an email Monday. “We continue to have a long-term goal of using 100% clean and renewable energy on our global platform.”

Several data center providers have recently joined large-scale cloud companies such as Google and Microsoft in making large investments in renewable energy for their data centers. More large enterprise data center customers are preferring colocation services powered by renewable energy to meet their own sustainability goals, while wind and solar power have become more cost-competitive.

While it’s unclear at this point what the exact impact of the climate executive order Trump signed last week will be, any major regulatory changes will certainly have an impact on the energy market. President’s order directs EPA to review the Clean Power Plan, a set of emissions regulations for existing power plants enacted by the Obama administration that is expected to be phased out under the current White House, lifts the moratorium on coal mining on federal lands and calls on federal agencies to identify policies that hinder American energy independence .

In addition to Equinix, another U.S. data center provider, Switch, said the order does not change its plans to power its facilities with renewable energy. This week, Iron Mountain’s data center services unit announced that it has secured enough renewable energy to offset energy consumption at all three of its U.S. data centers.

Equinix last year signed contracts for the purchase of wind and solar energy whose total capacity meets the demand of its North American data centers. The company also recently published its first vintage company sustainability report.