Verizon: It’s Easy – But Expensive – Being Green

Verizon just earmarked $100 million for a solar and fuel-cell energy project that will help power 19 of its corporate U.S. facilities. This is the company’s latest move to cut its carbon intensity — carbon emissions produced per terabyte of data flowing through its networks — in half by 2020. When completed next year, the carrier says the project will generate more than 70 million kilowatt hours of green energy — enough to power more than 6,000 single-family homes a year — while eliminating more than 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide — enough to offset the annual CO2 emissions from more than one million gallons of gas. Verizon tapped ClearEdge Power to install PureCell Model 400 fuel-cell systems at Verizon sites in California, New Jersey and New York; and it also inked a multiyear deal with SunPower Corp. for high-efficiency rooftop- and ground-mounted solar photovoltaic systems as well as solar parking canopies in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Arizona and North Carolina.