title: How to store your data without CO2 emission
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pub_date: 2019-11-20
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author: ungleich
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twitter_handle: ungleich
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_hidden: no
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_discoverable: yes
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abstract:
Avoiding CO2 emissions in data storage is a daily task, too
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body:

When we talk about climate change or sustainability, we usually think
about factories or cars. What we usually don't anticipate is how much
we actually contribute to climate change by our digital behaviour.

## How data is stored

Your data is usually stored in one of the many data centers in the
world. To save your data, multiple disks or even multiple servers are
used to ensure that your data is safely stored.

When you open up your mobile phone to browse pictures or to read your
email, you access the servers to retrieve your data.

## How data centers are operated

Most data centers use energy from the grid. This energy can be either
produced by coal, nuclear power or renewable energy. 

![](/u/image/energysource.jpg)

Unfortunately,most of them don't run on renewable energy. Some do buy CO2
certificates to compensate for this fact.

![](/u/image/co2-offset.jpg)

The energy in a data center is spent on one side for actually running the
servers that store your data and on cooling on the other hand. The
amount of energy used for cooling can be quite significant, too.

So even if you are living a very green and sustainable way, you might
be contributing to CO2 emissions by using your default data storage.

## An alternative: the sustainable way of saving data

So how can we tackle this situation?
We have worked hard here in Switzerland to create the [Data Center
Light](https://datacenterlight.ch), a completely alternative
approach to save as many CO2 emissions, as possible.

And this is how it is done:

* instead of buying certificates, we use 100% renewable energy
* instead of buying energy, we produce it locally (using PV and a
local hydropower plant)
* instead of building new data centers, we modernise existing factory
  halls
* instead of buying new servers, we buy 2nd hand (with new disks/ssds)

![](/u/image/environment-chat.jpg)

## The sustainable data center

With this approach, there is practically no CO2 emission from power
consumption and also the grey energy is minimised. The team of
[ungleich](https://ungleich.ch) is very proud to offer a variety of
products that are built with sustainability in mind:


* [Sustainable Data Storage: Zero Carbon Cloud](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/zero-carbon-cloud/)
* [Sustainable Virtual Private Servers: Data Center Light](https://datacenterlight.ch)
* [Sustainable IPv6 VPNs: IPv6VPN](https://ipv6vpn.ch)
* [Sustainable IPv6 Backup](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/backup/)
* [Sustainable Matrix chat](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/hosted-matrix-chat/)
* [Sustainable Mattermost chat](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/zero-carbon-chat/)

![](/u/image/datacenterlight-hydro-solar.jpg)

In our opinion, we can only reach sustainability, if we take actions
in all fields of our daily life.

If you have any questions or comments, you can reach us at
**sustainability at ungleich.ch** or in the [ungleich
chat](https://chat.with.ungleich.ch).