Gembloux, 21 November 2022 – The data centers specialist LCL is gearing up to expand its solar panel park at the LCL Wallonia One site. Over the next few months, the data centers specialist plans to add 1,300 photovoltaic panels to the 2,000 already there. So in total, the solar panels park will include 3,300 solar panels. With this extra energy, the company will be able to cover a greater part of its energy consumption at the Gembloux data center. This investment is in line with LCL’s commitment to a sustainable path.
LCL Data Centers’ solar panels park in Gembloux will feature no less than 1,300 extra solar panels. Current power production will grow by 60%. This expansion will enable LCL to produce an extra 10% of its own energy needs, which means the company will have to buy 10% less energy. LCL is thus the country’s most sustainable data center, with a strong emphasis on an active ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) policy and continual progress in adopting renewable energies.
Belgian telecommunications minister Petra De Sutter today visited LCL’s data center in Gembloux. “The LCL data center 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’m delighted with LCL’s decision to extend its solar park,” she said.
When LCL Data Centers took over the site in 2021, it already had a one-hectare solar park. This included 2,000 solar panels, capable of producing around 1 MW of electricity. LCL will now add 1,300 extra panels, bringing the total in this solar park to 3,300 panels and enabling the generation of 1.6 MW of electricity. This decision is fully in line with LCL’s focus on sustainability in general, under which energy efficiency is also important.
“With this extension, LCL Data Centers comes one step closer to the next generation of data centers. 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 center.
Expansion of the solar panels park is very much in keeping with the sustainability strategy of LCL Data Centers. Indeed, the data centers company has pledged to be carbon-neutral by 2030, for all its data centers. 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 centers and thereby limit global warming to 1.5°C. Building on SBTi, the data centers company announced in October 2022 that it will use a renewable fuel, HVO100, for the backup generators at its data center in Aalst. As a result, LCL Data Centers will be the first Belgian data center to begin using this renewable fuel. In the short term, LCL plans to operate all the generators on HVO100, at its five data centers.
Laurens van Reijen, Managing Director of LCL Data Centers, concluded: “As a Belgian data centers 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.”
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