By the nature of our business model, we are already running an energy efficient operation before we consider the external resources that we depend on for our day to day running.
Blue Sky Systems staff are home based, which means we don’t have the high running costs that office spaces create. Each member of staff works from a VDI on our Truly Cloud platform which optimises the very latest in energy efficiency and significantly reduces the amount of power consumed by individual staff. We never over order stock or hold large inventories and we produce very little waste – any of which is recycled in line with the WEEE directive.
When visiting clients, the majority of our fuel is carbon offset however we have further plans to ensure 100% of our business mileage is offset by 2025. When we travel by air we always use Easyjet who have recently unveiled their ‘roadmap to net zero emissions by 2050’.
More importantly, the core of our operations, the Datacentre, happens to be one of the most energy efficient Datacentres around. The facility was designed with sustainability at its core and has plans of becoming fully carbon neutral by 2030.
One of the main advantages of using a datacentre is that they can buy power at scale and innovate to reduce environmental impact. This is something that companies with on premise data centres often find difficult to do. The latest step in their sustainability initiative is the migration from red diesel to HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) for their backup generators. HVO is one of the world’s purest and greenest fuels. It is a relatively new fuel that is synthesised through the hydrotreatment of vegetable oils.
Our datacentre’s green credentials;
• Energy-efficient adiabatic cooling. Our free cooling design uses a flooded airflow approach, which can deliver a PUE of 1.2, or less, and significantly reduces our running costs and carbon footprint.
• Power from renewable sources and carbon offsetting. Our recently renewed power contract continues our use of full carbon offsetting and power from renewable sources (Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGOs) have been procured to cover the full supply).
• Our acquisition by UBS Asset Management in 2021 added further impetus to our drive to excel in the realm of ESG - our environmental priorities were a key factor in UBS’s decision to acquire our facility. Sustainability is a key part of UBS’s investment lifecycle; its sustainability framework includes pre-acquisition ESG due diligence assessment, and its fund sustainability framework involves ongoing tracking and reporting on the environmental performance of its infrastructure investments.
• Ensuring that our power feeds use renewable energy was a major step, but we are committed to ensuring that our entire power stream uses energy from sustainable sources. This is why our backup generators, which are required to provide offline backup power in case of a critical power incident, will now be migrated from the use of red diesel to HVO.