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Energy star
The Lakeside Energy FromWaste
(EFW) facility close to Heathrow
Terminal 5 in Berkshire has
won the Commercial Rooftop
Installation Award at the Solar
UK Industry Awards 2014. A joint
venture between GrundonWaste
Management and Viridor, Lakeside
EFM transforms 410,000 tonnes
of non-recyclable waste into 37
megawatts of electricity each year.
In November 2013, it appointed
BELECTRIC UK to install 1,000 solar
panels on one third of the plant’s
south-facing curved roof. Today,
the system generates 230,500 kWh
of sustainable energy and saves
137,000 tonnes of carbon.
Corporate supporter
Support services company Carillion
has pledged its support to the
Freshwater Habitats Trust, by
becoming the environmental
charity’s first corporate benefactor.
Based in Oxford, the charity works
to protect wildlife in ponds, rivers,
streams and lakes through a
combination of ecological research
and practical projects, such as
wetland habitat creation and
restoration.
Carbon neutral
B&MWaste has achieved
carbon neutrality for the
fourth consecutive year after
offsetting 2,590 tonnes of
carbon dioxide in Verified
Carbon Standard (VCS)
certified clean energy projects.
In the last four years, the
waste management and recycling
specialist has offset more than
10,000 tonnes of CO2 and
invested £43,000 in projects in
Indonesia, Brazil, China, Turkey
and India. It has also spent
£1,400 on tree planting initiatives
in the NorthWest of England.
B&MWaste’s carbon
management plan has been
implemented with Carbon
Footprint Ltd in accordance with
BSI PAS 2060.
Bucking the trend: AOC is creating the UK’s first 100% green data centre
at Queensway Business Park in Glenrothes, Fife. The 75,000 square
foot facility with up to 1,500 high performance computer racks will be
powered by renewable energy from a nearby biomass plant. The facility
is being built to a BREEAM outstanding standard with a power usage
effectiveness (PUE) rating of less than 1.15. AOC says the new facility
will enable occupiers to reduce their carbon emissions from data centre
activities by 80% or more.
Energy guzzling datacentres
riddled with inefficiencies
Much of the electricity that US data centres devour to support
business and online activity is being wasted running computer
servers that most of the time do little or no work, according to a
report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The report,
Scaling Up Energy Efficiency Across the Data Center
Industry: Evaluating Key Drivers and Barriers
, states that improved energy
efficiency could cut energy waste by at least 40%, saving more than $3
billion annually.
Pierre Delforge, NRDC director of high-tech energy efficiency, said:
“Most of the attention is focused on the highly visible hyperscale
‘cloud’ data centres like Google’s and Facebook’s, but they already are
very efficient and represent less than 5% of U.S. data centre electricity
consumption. Our small, medium, corporate and multi-tenant data
centres are still squandering huge amounts of energy.”
The report written in conjunction with Anthesis notes that while huge
‘cloud’ server farms have made significant efficiency improvements,
progress has been much slower and more uneven across almost 3 million
other data centres housing 95% of US servers.
It argues that up to 30% of servers that continue to consume large
amounts of electricity are comatose and no longer needed because
projects have ended or business processes changed and that many others
are grossly underutilised, operating at 12-18% of capacity.
Overall, U.S. data centres guzzled an estimated 91 billion kilowatt-
hours of electricity in 2013. By 2020, annual data centre energy
consumption is expected to reach 140 billion kilowatt hours, at a cost to
US business of $13 billion and 150 million tons of carbon pollution.
The report estimates that if just half of the potential savings from
cost-effective energy efficiency best practices were realised, electricity
use could be cut by 40% or 39 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, saving
$3.8 billion in 2014.
Age UK wants your aged PCs
Age UK has launched a new computer recycling scheme in conjunction
with RDC-CBS (Consumer Buyback Services), the largest provider of
computer recycling services in Europe. RDC-CBS provides donors with
instant online valuations for their unwanted desktop PCs, monitors,
laptops/tablets and other items, plus details of where to drop off the
equipment. It then sends the value of donations straight to Age UK.
Equipment still in working order is reused or resold and the rest recycled.
Copper-bottomed
investment
IT lifecycle management company
Network 2 Supplies (N2S) has
installed a cable granulation plant
at its Bury St Edmunds site. The
£250,000 investment has created
three new jobs and is expected
to generate up to £30,000
additional revenue each month.
It will enable N2S to dispose of
clients’ redundant cables in a
safe and environmentally friendly
manner and separate copper and
plastic for resale. The granulator
shreds industrial cable and wires
into sugar size granules and then
separates the copper, which can be
recycled into new cables, from the
plastic, which can be reformed into
fence posts and outdoor seating.
