The Green

Rackspace, a premier server solution for individuals and businesses seeking top-notch service, has taken measures to offset the carbon emissions from their digital activities. The environmentally-concerned initiatives of Rackspace are collectively called GreenSpace. GreenSpace is working with NativeEnergy, a leading national marketer of renewable energy credits (RECs) and carbon offsets, the IT hosting specialist will be providing support to two new renewable energy projects through the purchasing of carbon offsets.



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 a 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. There are other initiatives that Rackspace provides funding for, all under the expert guidance of NativeEnergy.

The second prong of the GreenSpace initiative is found in Rackspace's commitment to helping their customers use their computers more resource efficiently.



For more information on the GreenSpace initiative, please visit www.rackspace.com.

Why is it important for Rackspace to make this commitment to carbon offsetting?

Computers definitely seem like they are good for the environment. They save a lot of paper, they allow the transmission of important documents without any transport cost, they facilitate business meetings from afar and they are relatively compact machines which do not seem to take a great deal of resources to make.

The reality, sadly, is that computers soak up a tremendous amount of electricity when you consider the total amount of computers worldwide and the fact that some computers are never turned off, and others are left on when they are not being used. On average, computers use from 200-1000 watts to operate.

By offsetting carbon emissions, and by helping their customers seek their own energy efficiency methods, GreenSpace is working to change the dynamic of the computer industry towards a more sustainable direction.