US data center providers Aligned, Ascent, Corscale, and T5 have all signed up to use Ledger8760 to account for their carbon emissions hour-by-hour.
The 24x7 tracking platform will measure their energy, emissions, and utility data, so they can share it transparently with their customers.
At present, organizations find it hard to gather and report data accurately: this year, Boston Consulting Group Gamma reported that organizations estimated a 30-40 percent error rate in their emissions reporting.
Spot carbon strategy holes
The Ledger8760 service will show how customer energy use changes hour by hour alongside the carbon intensity of the supply used to meet that demand. Ledger8760 says this will help the providers spot weakness in their carbon strategy, or even find hardware that needs to be replaced to meet targets. The software will also help choose the best tariff.
"Many data centers claim to be 100 percent green but until they are measuring 24x7 carbon intensity, it's hard to back that up," said Adam Kramer, CEO of Ledger8760. "We see too many companies get caught up in receiving inaccurate emissions data or not capturing it often enough, but through our 24x7 tracking technology, we're enabling leaders to be less concerned with data gathering and more concerned with change, because you can't change what you can't measure. We're excited to help these data centers create a new standard for their industry and enable customers to more easily access the data they need to reach carbon-free energy goals."
As well as the carbon footprint, Ledger8760 can also track water use, and link the emissions and water tracking to financial data, saving time and dollars otherwise spent keeping spreadsheets or other applications updated.
"At T5, we have the unique perspective of being both a facilities management service provider and a data center owner," said Craig McKesson, chief customer and marketing officer at T5. "Implementing Ledger8760 will finally enable us to efficiently and effectively baseline our ESG data and thus enable us to measure the overall impact of our carbon reduction initiatives while also providing our customers with a transparent, real-time view into their usage patterns."
Among the four customers, Corscale is least known. It's a newly set-up brand, of investment developer Patrinely Group. Although Patrinely has not yet set up a website for Corscale, the brand is expected to focus on focus on hyperscale data centers. Patrinely has hired two data center experts in the last year - Nic Bustamente, formerly of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Rackspace; and Stuart Levinsky, formerly of Iron Mountain Data Centers, Switch, CyrusOne and Cincinnati Bell.
