Blockheating Joins Forces with ITRenew to Bring New Sustainable Edge Data Center Model to Market

SILICON VALLEY, Calif., Nov. 18, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ITRenew, the global leader in Circular Cloud and sustainable data center infrastructure, today announced that they have joined forces with Blockheating – a company specializing in sustainable cloud hosting – to address growing compute demand at the edge with green, all-in-one containerized data centers that recycle energy into a heating source for greenhouses in the community.

While many big cities have slowed or stopped data center construction due to overtaxed power grids and environmental concerns, tech trends like IoT and 5G are driving demand for more distributed, low-latency infrastructure. Together Blockheating and ITRenew are working to address these growing needs by accelerating local deployment of cost-effective, efficient, high-performance data centers that are good for customers and the environment.

Blockheating also saw this shift as an opportunity to take data center sustainability a step further by transforming heat generated by IT hardware from a waste product into a high-value resource. They achieved this by inventing a new way of watercooling servers that harnesses that heat at temperatures up to 65°C or 149°F as a reliable, low-cost, environmentally friendly alternative to natural gas. To bring the concept to market, they looked for a hardware partner equally committed to removing data center environmental impact without compromising quality, performance or scalability. The partnership with ITRenew, who has equipped the new distributed data centers with flexible, cost-effective Sesame by ITRenew rack scale compute and storage solutions, makes it easier to scale efficiently and achieve sustainability goals. Sesame solutions integrate recertified hyperscale data center technology, bringing the financial and carbon-reduction benefits of circularity to Blockheating's customers.

In the Netherlands there are over 3700 hectares of commercial greenhouses. Each containerized data center located adjacent to a greenhouse, can be used to heat 2 hectares in the summer and .5 in the winter – enough to grow tons of tomatoes every year. The server generated heat Blockheating sells to commercial growers costs substantially less than natural gas, and less gas consumed means less CO2 produced. This is in addition to the 'up to' 25% of CO2 and eWaste deferred as a result of the hardware reuse pathways enabled by ITRenew's Circularity approach. Furthermore, because watercooled servers in the data center eliminate the need for air conditioning, this reduces the materials needed for the containerized design, and more importantly, saves an extra 25-30% in power consumption.

"Blockheating is an innovative, fast-growing European solutions and infrastructure company, with a commitment to green business. Like us, they recognize that sustainable data center models, implemented in the right way, also enable market-leading performance and economics," said Ali Fenn, President, ITRenew. "Sesame is purpose-built to maximize flexibility, performance, compute density, and energy efficiency. That was exactly what Blockheating needed to address their technical challenges and launch a competitive new business model that also does something good for the environment. We're excited to bring Sesame solutions into their data centers where we can grow together."

"ITRenew is an ideal partner for us. They share our view that waste is a choice, which means something only becomes waste if you decide it has no use any more." said Jeroen Burks, CEO, Blockheating. "We chose ITRenew for their sustainability credentials, superior technology, 'open compute' flexibility, and the skill of their engineering team to deliver on our requirements at scale – all of which have enabled us to accelerate our development. Plus our budget goes much further with Sesame than it would with conventional architecture, enabling us to integrate all the compute and storage we need to bring our vision to market. We look forward to a long-term relationship with ITRenew that helps our customers achieve their goals while providing practical benefits to industries outside of IT sector."

About ITRenew

ITRenew, the Circular Cloud leader, refuses to settle for a world that pits economic success against social good. ITRenew create second lives and reuse pathways for the most advanced technology on the planet capable of unprecedented data growth. This approach to unprecedented data, application workload and infrastructure demands opens up billions in new financial opportunity, slashes e-waste and CO2 impact, and makes hyperscale hardware accessible to and affordable for all. Our products and services power cloud and enterprise data centers, edge infrastructure, AI/ML, embedded and industrial systems, which is why the world's leading data center owners, service providers and enterprises choose ITRenew to revolutionize how their infrastructure is managed and deployed. ITRenew is headquartered in California with locations worldwide. To learn more, visit www.itrenew.com and follow ITRenew on LinkedIn and Twitter @ITRenewinc.

About Blockheating

The goal of Blockheating is to facilitate a truly green IT infrastructure. For us, sustainability doesn't end with buying green energy. We have to look at the entire generation and reuse cycle of energy. So, we use the heat generated by the data center to produce green energy and we reduce the amount of electricity (and water) used to operate the data center by removing the air conditioning all together. Most importantly: we pick our locations so that energy we recycle as heat can be delivered and used efficiently, without the need for a heat pump. When you move into locations where heating is needed, you're automatically in the vicinity of end-users. When we combine these locations together you end up with a network of edge datacenters with a revolutionary low CO2 footprint. Follow our journey at Blockheating.com and https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockheating

SOURCE ITRenew