When eBay, the world’s largest online marketplace, built its first-ever data center in South Jordan, Utah, it wanted to not only design and build the site to LEED Gold standards, it wanted to use clean energy to power much of the sprawling facility. This wasn’t simply part of eBay’s company-wide commitment to sustainable operations, it was a bottom-line business decision: sourcing renewable energy would stabilize and reduce long-term energy costs and minimize environmental impacts in a state that gets 94 percent of its electricity from coal.
But there was a problem: Utah law didn’t allow non-utility energy consumers to buy and transmit power directly from renewable energy developers.
Together with Data Center Pulse, an association of data center professionals representing individuals from over a 1,000 companies. A working group that included representatives of eBay, Republican State Senator Mark Madsen, Rocky Mountain Power, renewable energy producers, consumer groups and industrial stakeholders got together to craft legislation to make renewable energy available to Utah energy consumers – with the key provision of not raising electricity rates or taxes for local Utah residents.
That legislation, Senate Bill 12, was unanimously approved this month by the Utah Senate and House and was signed into law yesterday by Governor Gary Herbert. The law goes into effect this summer.
This success story occurs at the intersection of economic growth and clean energy and is a win-win for Utah’s economy and its environment. eBay, which employs more than 1,500 people in the state, says the green-power option is a key prerequisite for boosting its presence there. The company plans to build a second data center and add 2,200 jobs in Utah. Forbes
