Digital Realty Extends Sustainability Leadership with ENERGY STAR Certifications and Solar Energy Commitments
SAN FRANCISCO: Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), a leading global provider of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, announced today it earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR® certification for superior energy performance in 24 data centers in 2018. Separately, Digital Realty also announced it has enrolled in a new sustainable energy offering from Salt River Project under which Digital Realty will source a portion of the energy consumed by its Arizona data center portfolio from a new 100-megawatt solar plant to be built in Coolidge, AZ.
EPA ENERGY STAR certifications indicate Digital Realty data centers rank in the top 25 percent of similar facilities nationwide for energy efficiency. Digital Realty’s ENERGY STAR-certified data centers are now saving a total of 720,000 megawatt hours relative to industry-average data centers, enough to power 80,000 average U.S. homes for a year and eliminating 535,000 metric tons of C02 emissions. Digital Realty’s ENERGY STAR-certified data centers also perform better than 87 percent of data centers based on the EPA industry benchmark, with industry-leading power usage effectiveness of 1.38 in certified properties compared to the industry average of 1.8.
“Digital Realty’s commitment to ENERGY STAR benchmarking and certification reflects its longstanding focus on achieving exceptional data center energy performance,” said Michael Zatz, Manager, ENERGY STAR Commercial Buildings Program. “Digital Realty is leading by example in the data center industry, efficiently powering the digital economy.”
Digital Realty continues to improve its energy performance by managing energy strategically across the entire organization and making cost-effective improvements to its buildings as part of the company’s commitment to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge and leadership in sustainable data center development and operations. The 24 facilities certified in 2018 total 385,000 kilowatts of data center capacity, representing more than one-third of Digital Realty’s U.S. data center portfolio.
Commenting on the solar energy program, Salt River Project General Manager and CEO Mike Hummel added, “We are excited to offer a program that can meet the needs of customers like Digital Realty, with utility-scale solar energy at a competitive price.”
Digital Realty Senior Director of Sustainability Aaron Binkley concluded, “Receiving ENERGY STAR certification for a significant portion of our data center portfolio speaks to the expertise of our data center design and operations teams and their sustained focus on achieving high levels of energy performance for our customers. These certifications are another element of our commitment to deliver to our clients best-in-class global data center solutions that minimize environmental impacts.
“With respect to the solar energy commitment, Digital Realty continues to actively engage with Salt River Project and other utility providers to identify cost-effective renewable energy solutions. We applaud Salt River Project’s efforts to develop this solar offering, which supports our objectives to bring clean energy to our customers.”
About Digital Realty
Digital Realty supports the data center, colocation and interconnection strategies of more than 2,300 firms across its secure, network-rich portfolio of data centers located throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Digital Realty’s clients include domestic and international companies of all sizes, ranging from cloud and information technology services, communications and social networking to financial services, manufacturing, energy, healthcare and consumer products. https://www.digitalrealty.com/
About ENERGY STAR
ENERGY STAR® is the government-backed symbol for energy efficiency, providing simple, credible, and unbiased information that consumers and businesses rely on to make well-informed decisions. Thousands of industrial, commercial, utility, state, and local organizations—including more than 40 percent of the Fortune 500®—rely on their partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to deliver cost-saving energy efficiency solutions. Together, since 1992, ENERGY STAR and its partners have helped save American families and businesses more than $450 billion and over 3.5 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity while also achieving broad emissions reductions—all through voluntary action. ENERGY STAR® is the simple choice for energy efficiency. For 25 years, EPA’s ENERGY STAR program has been America’s resource for saving energy and protecting the environment. Join the millions already making a difference at energystar.gov.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially, including statements related to our EPA ENERGY STAR certifications, our efficiency statistics and our sustainability program and initiatives, including our commitment to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge. These risks and uncertainties include, among others, the following: reduced demand for data centers or decreases in information technology spending; decreased rental rates, increased operating costs or increased vacancy rates; increased competition or available supply of data center space; the suitability of our data centers and data center infrastructure, delays or disruptions in connectivity or availability of power, or failures or breaches of our physical and information security infrastructure or services; our dependence upon significant customers, bankruptcy or insolvency of a major customer or a significant number of smaller customers, or defaults on or non-renewal of leases by customers; breaches of our obligations or restrictions under our contracts with our customers; our inability to successfully develop and lease new properties and development space, and delays or unexpected costs in development of properties; the impact of current global and local economic, credit and market conditions; our inability to retain data center space that we lease or sublease from third parties; difficulty acquiring or operating properties in foreign jurisdictions; our failure to realize the intended benefits from, or disruptions to our plans and operations or unknown or contingent liabilities related to, our recent acquisitions; our failure to successfully integrate and operate acquired or developed properties or businesses; difficulties in identifying properties to acquire and completing acquisitions; risks related to joint venture investments, including as a result of our lack of control of such investments; risks associated with using debt to fund our business activities, including re-financing and interest rate risks, our failure to repay debt when due, adverse changes in our credit ratings or our breach of covenants or other terms contained in our loan facilities and agreements; our failure to obtain necessary debt and equity financing, and our dependence on external sources of capital; financial market fluctuations and changes in foreign currency exchange rates; adverse economic or real estate developments in our industry or the industry sectors that we sell to, including risks relating to decreasing real estate valuations and impairment charges and goodwill and other intangible asset impairment charges; our inability to manage our growth effectively; losses in excess of our insurance coverage; environmental liabilities and risks related to natural disasters; our inability to comply with rules and regulations applicable to our company; our failure to maintain our status as a REIT for federal income tax purposes; our operating partnership’s failure to qualify as a partnership for federal income tax purposes; restrictions on our ability to engage in certain business activities; and changes in local, state, federal and international laws and regulations, including related to taxation, real estate and zoning laws, and increases in real property tax rates. For a further list and description of such risks and uncertainties, see the reports and other filings by the company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year endedDecember 31, 2017 and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 2018, June 30, 2018 andSeptember 30, 2018. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Source: Digital Realty
