LCL Data Centers is gearing up to expand its solar panel park at the LCL Wallonia One site in Gembloux, Belgium, with the addition of 1,300 photovoltaic panels to the 2,000 already there.
With this extra energy, the company will be able to cover a greater part of its energy consumption at the Gembloux data centre – current power production will grow by 60 per cent. It will also enable LCL to produce an extra ten per cent of its own energy needs, which means the company will have to buy ten per cent less energy.
Belgian telecommunications minister, Petra De Sutter, said: “The LCL data centre in Gembloux is one of our country’s most sustainable. Its solar panels park produces green electricity that partly covers its own needs. Practically speaking, this means investing in renewable energy. The more parties invest in it, whether for their own use or for sale to third parties, the faster we will make our companies sustainable. So I am delighted with LCL’s decision to extend its solar park.”
“With this extension, LCL Data Centers comes one step closer to the next generation of data centres. In future we want to be a key player in the electrical grid with local production of green energy, storage of our production and its consumption at the best time,” noted Nicolas Coppée, manager of LCL Wallonia One data centre.
The data centre company has pledged to be carbon-neutral by 2030, for its entire data centre portfolio. To that end, LCL Data Centers, plus 24 other companies and 17 associations, launched at European level the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact. This strategy neatly matches the European Green Deal.
Moreover, LCL Data Centers signed the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in November 2021 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its data centres and thereby limit global warming to 1.5°C. Building on SBTi, the data centres company announced in October 2022 that it will use a renewable fuel, HVO100, for the backup generators at its data centre in Aalst. As a result, LCL Data Centers will be the first Belgian data centre to begin using this renewable fuel. In the short term, LCL plans to operate all the generators on HVO100, at its five data centres.
Laurens van Reijen, managing director of LCL Data Centers, concluded: “As a Belgian data centres company, LCL has always played an exemplary role in the data centers sector. Over the last few years, we have made huge efforts in that field, both at national and international levels. This investment is another such effort. By expanding the solar panels park at LCL Wallonia One, we will use even more green energy. This will help us become more sustainable in the near and long term. We also want to encourage our suppliers and other companies in the industry to make greater use of green energy, as this is one of the only ways we can work together for a more sustainable world.”
