Rackspace Looks to Continue GreenSpace Mission through Carbon Offsets to Fund Renewable Energy Projects
SAN ANTONIO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Rackspace® Managed Hosting today announced that through its GreenSpace initiative and relationship with NativeEnergy, a leading national marketer of renewable energy credits and carbon offsets, the IT hosting specialist will be providing support to two new renewable energy projects through the purchasing of carbon offsets.
For 2008, Rackspace will support two new renewable projects: the Penn England Family Dairy Waste to Energy Project, which will help ramp up a manure digester on this 700 cow dairy farm that displaces onsite fossil fuel use and emissions of methane, and the Farmer Owned Distributed Small Scale Wind Project in Minnesota, which supports the sale and installation of German-designed 40 kW Aeroman wind turbines that are remanufactured and customized for Midwest conditions.
Rackspace unveiled its GreenSpace initiative in June, a program designed to reduce emissions by conserving energy and increasing employee awareness of climate change, and a key component was using NativeEnergy to offset carbon emissions produced by customer servers managed within Rackspace’s data centers. Currently, Rackspace adds hundreds of new servers a month to its US-based data centers, and Rackspace will continue to offset the carbon emissions for each new customer server brought online.
By offsetting estimated emissions from new servers for 2007, Rackspace helped support the completion of the Schrack Family Dairy Waste to Energy Project in Pennsylvania, and fulfilled their portion of the funding for the Owl Feather War Bonnet Wind Farm project that will bring wind power to the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota.
“Rackspace has been an outstanding environmental ally by offsetting the estimated carbon emissions from all new servers,” said Tom Boucher, president and CEO, NativeEnergy. “Their support of these family farm-based renewable energy projects will help farmers reduce their long-term electricity costs, while helping stabilize the electricity grid with distributed, small-scale power generation. NativeEnergy’s clients have built 18 turbines in the last year, and with Rackspace’s help, we expect to build thirty or more in 2008.”
“What is great about our relationship with NativeEnergy is that not only are we offsetting new servers, but we are able to show existing customers how to offset their servers in an easy and affordable way,” said John Engates, chief technology officer, Rackspace Managed Hosting. “Helping to build new renewable energy projects is a step in the right direction for us, but we still believe offsetting alone is not the answer. Conservation and changing behavior are critical to a full-on approach to reducing emissions, so we are working on multiple projects in our data centers to conserve energy, and we are continually working internally to educate our employees on how to reduce their climate impact.“
For more information on the GreenSpace initiative, please visit http://www.rackspace.com/information/events/green.php.
About NativeEnergy
Native American majority-owned, NativeEnergy is a national marketer of carbon offsets and renewable energy credits (RECs), offering individuals and organizations a means to compensate for their global warming pollution, or to effectively power their homes and businesses with renewable energy. NativeEnergy’s unique business process brings upfront payment to renewable projects for their estimated future REC or offset output, enabling its customers to help directly finance the construction of new wind farms and other renewable energy projects, such as Native American and Native Alaskan wind farms, and wind turbines and methane digesters on family dairy farms. These projects reduce our reliance on fossil fuels to meet the nation’s electricity needs, and reduce emissions on the farms. NativeEnergy also offers Green-e certified RECs from operating wind farms and third party-verified offsets from operating CO2 mitigation projects.
Online at: www.nativeenergy.com.
About Rackspace Managed Hosting
A recognized leader in the global managed hosting market, Rackspace Managed Hosting delivers enterprise-level managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 15,000 customers in eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry’s best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support®. Through trusted relationships, Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments, enabling them to focus on their core business. Since its inception in 1998, Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year. For more information, please visit www.rackspace.com, or call 800-961-2888.