Can Rackspace power data centre on renewables?

Here’s an interesting one from CIO turned blogger Steve O’Donnell.

Now Steve’s blog is pretty new, but he knows for certain that some of the most influential CIOs in the world are reading it because they are his friends and peers.

Greenbang thinks it’s cool that he’s blogging because unlike most of the people who write about IT (me included), he actually works in the industry, living and breathing tech and data centre air.

Because he looks after First Data’s IT (First Data processes global credit card transactions), that makes this post of his even more important.

And that is that Rackspace Hosting now have equipment which “they claim will be powered by renewable energy sources”.

Here’s what Steve says: “The data center is located in Slough close to a Scottish and Southern Energy combined heat and power (CHP) plant with potential generating capacity of 101MW.  The CHP plant is the UK’s largest dedicated biomass energy facility and its main sources of fuel are wood chips, biomass and waste paper.  The site has its own fibre fuel processing plant, which takes delivery of waste paper products and converts these into useable fuel.

“The plant is connected to the National Grid so Rackspace’s claim is probably more marketing spin than reality. Are Rackspace buying the ROCs (and increasing the already expensive cost of data center power) or just claiming that they use the power as they are a local consumer?”

He then asks Rackspace to comment on his blog. Question is, are they reading? They should be… Greenbang would also love to hear from Rackspace. We can send Steve a message if you like – or how about we get Steve to interview Rackspace? Now that could make great telly…

It’s work meets fun meets social media mashup gone cuurrazy.