Question

What kind of electricity do you run on?

Posted January 30, 2014 6.7k views
Really I want to know if the electricity to run the cloud hosting is from renewable sources, wind, solar, wave or the old fashioned stuff - oil etc. Does it depend on where the server is based?
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morag.embleton
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morag.embleton
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13 answers
xibao February 11, 2020

I was looking for informations concerning DO’s services sustainability, and I ended up making this post to centralize the infos we currently have as customers.

@DigitalOcean: Here are a few questions for your team:

  1. Which facilities or/and provider are SFO2 and BLR1 located ?
  2. Is DigitalOcean in a colocation contract with Digital Realty ? They claim to offset 100% of Colocation business electricity footprint, so it would be great if you were!

========= Results ===========

If you have more info and/or spot inaccuracy, feel free to comment and I’ll update as necessary.

== Categories ==

Name description
GREEN 100% power by renewable energy
LIGHT-GREEN doesn’t use a renewable energy based grid, but 100% compensate by buying energy credits/green energy.
DARK Fossil energy based grid and/or mix of renewable energy and/or compensate part of its consumption
UNKNOWN Unreliable and/or missing information to evaluate

== INFOS ==

Category Location DO Region Provider Justification
GREEN Amsterdam AMS2, AMS3 Equinix since 2016 Green grid (GoOs)
GREEN Frankfurt FRA1 Interxion Green grid
GREEN London LON1 Equinix LD5 Green grid (REGO)
LIGHT-GREEN Singapore SGP1 Equinix SG2 100% I-RECs
LIGHT-GREEN New York City NYC1 Equinix NY7 100% RECs from wind
LIGHT-GREEN San Francisco SFO1 Realty NYC2 LEED GOLD
LIGHT-GREEN Toronto TOR1 Equinix TR2 100% RECs from wind
DARK New York City NYC2 Digital Realty NYC2 No transparency on sustainability
DARK New York City NYC3 Digital Realty NJR3 No transparency on sustainability
UNKNOWN San Francisco SFO2 ? ?
UNKNOWN Bangalore BLR1 ? ?

Bangalore
Apparently the services hosted in Bangalore seems to be in a facility own by NTT Communications. But I didn’t find any official source to confirm that assumption.
If it happen to be the case: NTT Communications stated in their 2018 report that they partially use wind power energy in their facility.

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Jonathan36 August 22, 2019

I asked the support about the Frankfurt data center, and I got the answre below. So, Frankfurt indeed runs on 100% renewable energy, and you can find information about the other data centres as well:

At this time we partner with several data center providers. You can find detail about their energy consumption and efforts to utilize renewable energy sources here:

Equinix (NYC1, LON1, AMS2, AMS3, SGP1, TOR1) - https://www.equinix.com/data-centers/design/green-data-centers/
Digital Realty (NYC2, NYC3, SFO1, SFO2) - https://www.digitalrealty.com/about/sustainability/clean-energy
Interxion (FRA1) - https://www.interxion.com/why-interxion/sustainability/
NTT Communications (BLR1) - https://www.ntt.com/en/about-us/csr/eco/ict.html

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finnwoelm March 15, 2019

Found this DigitalOcean idea: https://ideas.digitalocean.com/ideas/DO-I-1007

It’s about the same issue. Give it an upvote if you’d like.

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kamaln7 January 31, 2014
We have datacenters located in the NYC area (located in the Equinix and Telx datacenters), San Francisco (Telx), and in Amsterdam (TelecityGroup). You can check what kind of electricity each datacenter runs on on its website.
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  • turboy January 7, 2016

    this answer is a no answer… if you are answering on behalf of digitalocean, I’m sorry for you guys that you have no power to answer clearly and properly to a very easy question.

    E.g. NYC 100% renewable
    Europe 100% renewable
    wherever 50% renewable
    wherever else 0% renewable

    this is an other example how google is stating their energy policy https://cloud.google.com/why-google/ :

    “Carbon neutral and invested in renewable energy

    Google has been carbon-neutral since 2007, investing over $1.5 billion in renewable energy projects. We’re using renewable energy to power over 35% of our operations and we’ve committed to using wind and solar as much as possible by investing in renewable energy projects to grow the industry.”

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morag.embleton January 31, 2014
Thanks Kamal I'll check them out
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morag.embleton February 3, 2014
Couldn't find the info on Telecity's website, so contacted them. Just got a reply:

"Thank you for question through our website.

We do have a mix of renewable energy, but this is only applicable when customers explicitly ask for. I can only answer you that Digital Ocean is a customer of us in our Amsterdam's site. For more information I would like to refer you to Digital Ocean.

Kind regards,"

I'm going round in circles on this one. Does anyone have a definitive answer?
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morag.embleton February 4, 2014
The answer in case anyone is looking for it is here: http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocean/suggestions/2891520-green-hosting
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  • turboy January 7, 2016

    the answer, isn’t an answer but a “I suggest you …”

    It’s really clear to me that digitalocean isn’t explicitly interested about green energy. If someone can prove the opposite, I’d be glad to ear it ;)

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itsluke October 8, 2018

Today feels like a good day to bump this thread. Digital Ocean, can you please supply information about your energy suppliers in 2018 and if you have plans to move to renewable sources.

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jstsch October 10, 2018

I’m also interested in the answer to this question. I would also be willing to pay a surcharge if necessary.

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njh November 2, 2018

I would love to know which of the Digital Ocean regions run on sustainable energy.

See also this petition and White Paper:

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mattthanaleng May 13, 2019

I would also like to know. I’m hosting my website in Singapore and I have no idea if the energy used is renewable or not, I guess not.
And I would also be willing to pay more for that, I would be ok with paying double or three times the amount I currently pay.
Otherwise I think I’ll just move to another hosting provider, which is a shame because Digital Ocean is simply the best one for my needs.

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Patabugen July 16, 2019

I would also like to know this - I’m assessing my business’ impact on the earth and wish to choose providers who are trying to reduce theirs too.

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mads September 12, 2019

Eavesdropping. Eager for specifics.

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