Feb 25, 2009 : Rackspace Releases Carbon Calculator

📅 February 25, 2009 - Offering a new way to help businesses assess and reduce their environmental impact, "computing-as-a-service" provider Rackspace Hosting (rackspace.com 👉 Total Reviews: 16
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As part of its continuation of efforts to promote environmentally friendly programs, last week, Rackspace launched its Carbon Calculator, developed by NativeEnergy, a leading international provider of high quality carbon offsets and emission reductions. This is the latest environmental commitment for the company since it began its green initiative, Greenspace, in 2007.

Rackspace Hosting chief technology officer John Engates said the Carbon Calculator is a good representation of the company's "green" initiatives.

"We've done a lot of things internally to strive toward greener IT, and what this tool does is really help us take some of the things that we've learned and some of the work that we're doing... and lets [others] participate and understand their impact and make changes based on the feedback this tool gives them."



The Carbon Calculator essentially asks a company questions about the size of its office space, how many employees work there, how much travel do they do, and so on. These factors are inputted into a formula that calculates how many carbon offsets the company needs to buy to be carbon neutral.

"It's publicly available on our website and not restricted to customers. I think for non-customers, I think it's really trying to demonstrate our commitment to green energy and green hosting and show customers what we're thinking about, so it's an outward sign of the work going on inside - sometimes that's hard to see for customers and I think demonstrating your commitment by putting these tools in the hands of potential customers as one way of demonstrating that."

Through this new tool, companies can also access Rackspace's online Greenspace resources to learn more about climate change and effective steps they can take to reduce their carbon impact, like reducing wasteful packaging practices using energy efficient hardware, and by purchasing carbon offsets from NativeEnergy, which fund projects that try to reduce man's impact on climate change.

"Many companies want to do more to reduce their potential negative impact on the planet," NativeEnergy president and chief executive officer Tom Boucher said. "Rackspace is not only leading the way, the company is engaging its customers to support real and effective solutions that can help businesses reduce their environmental impacts and achieve corporate goals."

A longtime proponent of the Green movement, Rackspace also practices what it preaches. The company makes a conscious effort to decrease its customers' carbon footprint as well as its own. Rackspace designs all data centers with power conservation in mind and also operates one facility on renewable energy. The company is also working on getting its corporate headquarters to qualify for Leadership in Enery and Environmental Design certification, a sustainable building rating system developed by the US Green Building Council.