For Vodafone’s UK leaders, sustainability is a continuous way of operating. It is work which requires transparency, humility and the ability to adapt and innovate. The technology and telecommunications industry has unique challenges. Its footprint is truly global, from cables along the ocean floor to satellites above our heads. Companies sit amidst rising global electricity demands, with AI requiring exponentially higher energy each year. Innovative solutions are needed.  

Vodafone has already come far with its commitments when they joined RE100 in 2018, sourcing 100% renewable electricity in Europe and on track to do so globally by 2025. Joining Climate Group’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition is a logical next step. 

A new frontier 

Vodafone is one of a handful of Founding Partners in the pilot phase of the 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition. Building on Vodafone’s RE100 progress, sourcing 24/7 carbon-free electricity (CFE) represents the best way to evolve, embracing changes in science, corporate sustainability and technology in the green energy transition. A way to achieve full transparency in energy supply and ensure that incentives for fossil fuel production truly shift.  

The 24/7 CFE movement is collaborative. Vodafone’s sustainability team understands that the energy transition involves many interdependencies. Partnership is vital. Joining the 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition is a chance to lead as part of a community, collectively shaping and exploring the best tools to decarbonise the grid.  

Each party brings their specialism to the table. Vodafone’s team is excited to share their know-how in data and learn from other partners’ expertise. Each will have their own hesitations, nerves and knowledge gaps. Working as a community creates a safety net. Most importantly, by pursuing a view of sustainability as one of perpetual growth, companies can be more transparent about their journey, failures and successes, building a more credible relationship with the public along the way. 24/7 CFE is simply the next level of ambition.  

How can we convince more companies to join?  

For Vodafone, joining the 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition is also a business-savvy decision – as George says, “it builds trust and belief between our customers and suppliers. It signals that Vodafone is a company that can be your trusted digital partner.” In the long run, “clean grids will also reduce risks, costs and exposure to price volatility. It's a commercial win as well as a sustainability win.” It’s about taking control of your business’ energy supply.  

What’s next? 

At this stage, Vodafone expects its Founding Partner status to signal its enthusiasm and commitment to the 24/7 CFE principles. Down the line, its ambition is to rapidly grow the number of SME customers and sole traders sourcing 24/7 CFE, for instance through preferential rates.  

If you’re interested in learning more about the 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition but not sure where to start, sign up to our newsletter here. 

Google was the first major global company to publicly commit to 24/7 carbon-free electricity (CFE). Back in 2016, the tech giant published a paper stating that the ultimate way to tackle the emissions arising from its electricity consumption was to power its operations by carbon-free, local energy on an hour-by-hour basis. Four years later, Google announced its ambitious goal of running all its data centres and office campuses worldwide on 24/7 CFE by 2030.  

Google is now utilising their extensive experience and expertise by joining Climate Group’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition as one of its Founding Partners. 

A renewable energy pioneer 

When it comes to the energy transition, Google has been a corporate pioneer for over a decade. The company signed its first renewable energy power purchase agreement (PPA) in 2010.  Seven years later, it reached its goal of matching 100% of its global, annual electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases.  

This milestone was just the start of a major push by Google’s sustainability leaders towards full decarbonisation. The focus was not just on the company’s own operations, but also the wider need to decarbonise energy grids. 

A collaborative process 

It is well understood that no company, no matter how big it is, can drive wider grid decarbonisation by itself. That’s why Google shares its sustainability learnings and innovations with others to advance wider change that will benefit everyone. One example is pioneering the use of Time-based Energy Attribute Certificates (T-EACs) which improve upon today’s clean energy credits by enabling clean energy generation and trading to be tracked on an hourly basis. T-EACs are important to both verify hourly matching, but also provide new incentives for carbon-free energy to be produced where and when it’s needed most. Google is now working with other companies to build new marketplaces for these instruments that can accelerate decarbonisation impact.  

Transparency is central to this ethos. That’s a value that has driven Google’s sustainability team when it comes to its decarbonisation journey. Being open means being able to share not just what works, but what barriers to progress exist so that we can all learn together.  

Next generation carbon-free energy  

Google’s 24/7 CFE goal encourages the Google team to think about new solutions needed to fully decarbonise electricity consumption. While Google continues to focus on significant deployment of variable renewables, like wind and solar, it’s also advancing energy storage, demand flexibility, and dispatchable carbon-free energy technologies that can provide electricity on demand.   

For this reason, Google has become a significant backer of advanced carbon-free energy technologies. As a case in point, in 2021, it signed the first corporate agreement to develop a next generation geothermal power project with startup Fervo Energy. Unlike traditional geothermal energy power – which is found in places like Iceland where there are volcanoes, geysers and hot springs – this new approach uses drilling innovations from the oil and gas industry to access underground heat from places that were previously unreachable. In 2023, the plant became operational and is now delivering carbon-free electricity to the grid that serves Google’s data centres in Nevada.  

In 2024, Google also announced a new initiative with Microsoft and Nucor to aggregate the companies’ electricity demand to accelerate the deployment of advanced carbon-free electricity technologies, including next-gen geothermal, advanced nuclear, long-duration storage, clean hydrogen, and others.  

Joining Climate Group’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition as a Founding Partner aligns with the ongoing work that Google has been spearheading in the space. 

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Leading innovation and sustainability in the cement sector 

While the production process of cement has historically been energy-intensive, the cement industry is embracing innovative solutions to enhance its environmental performance, of which utilising carbon-free electricity sources is a key pillar.  

Shree Cement has achieved several industry-first milestones that reflect its commitment to a greener future, including publishing its first sustainability report 20 years ago (2004-05). This was the first within the Indian cement industry. The organisation’s efforts have been widely recognised, including being named the first Sustainability Champion by the World Economic Forum in 2011. Now, Shree Cement are demonstrating their continued commitment by joining Climate Group’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition as a Founding Partner. 

Renewable energy transition 

Earlier this year Shree Cement joined Climate Group’s RE100 campaign, making a commitment to sourcing 100% renewable electricity for all its operations by 2050. The organisation had already made significant strides in expanding its green electricity capacity prior to joining; growing from 234 MW in 2019-20 to approximately 518 MW today, with over 275 MW contributed by solar and wind energy. Last financial year (23-24), green electricity accounted for 55.9% of its total electricity consumption – this is the highest level in the Indian cement industry.  

Joining the 24/7 Carbon-Free Climate Coalition 

Shree Cement chose to become a Founding Partner of Climate Group’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition to reinforce its commitment to sustainability and leadership in carbon-free energy. By joining this initiative, Shree Cement aims to set a benchmark for responsible corporate behaviour, drive innovation in renewable energy and contribute to a more sustainable future. The platform will also provide an opportunity for them to exchange insights with other members.  

Inspiring further advancement of 24/7 carbon-free electricity  

Shree Cement says that it is important that corporates begin their transition to 24/7 carbon-free electricity as soon as possible. Early action will enable others to develop a robust strategy and adapt to emerging technologies and market conditions. Alongside this, Shree Cement believes that many companies are already paving the way and providing valuable roadmaps that can inspire others and drive collective progress. 

For further information about Climate Group’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition, please sign up to our 24/7 CFE newsletter.  

As demand for digital services booms, the data centers that house the internet’s infrastructure – like servers, storage systems and cooling equipment – are increasingly consuming energy and releasing emissions. In this context, US-based company Iron Mountain Data Centers is determined to prove the compatibility of the tech and renewable energy revolutions, by simultaneously expanding its business and moving to 24/7 carbon-free electricity (CFE), which is why Climate Group’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition caught their attention. 

A renewable energy leader 

Iron Mountain Data Centers made an early commitment to carbon-free electricity and have been matching their annual consumption at the data centers with renewables since 2017. In 2018, it joined Climate Group’s RE100 campaign, a collective corporate commitment to renewable electricity. Now, the next step is matching its data centers’ electricity usage with local and temporal low-carbon energy sources.  

A 24/7 carbon-free electricity learning journey 

Initially, Iron Mountain Data Centers’ leaders weren’t sure if 24/7 CFE was something their company could achieve. While they were inspired by Google’s 2020 public commitment to operate on 100% renewable electricity matched to local sources on an hour-by-hour basis by 2030, they thought that such a target was the preserve of corporate giants.  

However, they went on a learning journey and rapidly concluded that this kind of matching was the only way to genuinely achieve net zero – for any business, of any size. As a result, Iron Mountain Data Centers became the first company to follow Google’s lead and set a 24/7 CFE goal – adopting Google’s methodology and using it to set its own target of 2040.  

Iron Mountain Data Centers took this approach to help build a wider movement, rather than doing things on its own terms. 

Enabling wider decarbonisation 

Iron Mountain Data Centers’ decarbonisation initiatives have widespread repercussions. As a co-location data center company, it rents out space to customers so they can run the digital side of their operations – effectively acting as their digital utility. Indeed, in their sustainability reporting these customers recognise the energy that they consume inside its buildings as their own Scope 2 emissions, akin to the energy they use to heat or run their offices. 

By purchasing energy on behalf of all these customers in this way, Iron Mountain is consequently responsible for their digital carbon footprints. When it switches to cleaner sources and matches them at a granular level, it is enabling wider decarbonisation.  

This collaborative ethos is core to all Iron Mountain Data Centers’ sustainability efforts. In fact, when its team first went out to solar and wind energy projects with the aim of setting up 24/7 CFE contracts with them, they made a point of creating an off-the-shelf retail model that other companies could easily replicate.  

These kinds of commitments demonstrate why Iron Mountain Data Centers have joined Climate Group’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition as a Founding Partner. By learning and working together in this way, companies can help push fossil fuels off energy grids. 

For further information about Climate Group’s 24/7 CFE campaign, please sign up to our newsletter.  

Climate leadership in the pharmaceutical sector

With a target of achieving science-based net zero by 2045, pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is leading the healthcare sector on climate action. Recognizing that the climate crisis is a healthcare crisis, the business’s plan is not to hit its ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets in the easiest way permissible, but to choose the path that delivers the most positive impact possible for human and environmental health. That’s why 24/7 carbon-free electricity (CFE) is the latest step on its net zero journey, and why they have joined Climate Group’s latest initiative, the 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition, as Founding Partners. 

Net zero ambition 

As long ago as 2015, AstraZeneca joined Climate Group’s RE100 campaign, a collective corporate pledge to transition to renewable energy. In 2020, the company launched its Ambition Zero Carbon strategy, followed by its industry-leading long-term net zero target and near-term GHG reduction goals in 2021: reduce GHG emissions from its global operations and fleet, for Scopes 1 and 2, by 98% by 2026, from a 2015 baseline, and halve its entire value chain footprint by 2030, from a 2019 baseline. By 2023, 95% of all electricity use across AstraZeneca’s operations, including self-generation, was from certified renewable sources, putting it on-track for its 2025 RE100 commitment. 

Going beyond low-carbon energy certificates 

With science underpinning everything AstraZeneca does, the company keeps abreast of the latest climate science to inform its approach to sustainability. That’s why its sustainability team was already investigating the provenance and timing of the company’s energy sources when early movers such as Google and Microsoft made public commitments to power their entire global operations on CFE on an hour-by-hour basis.  

The AstraZeneca team was prioritising ‘additionality’ (new-to-grid renewables) in its renewable energy strategy but quickly realised that the transition away from fossil fuels means not just adding new renewables to the grid but improving their utilisation too. They concluded that genuine decarbonisation involves using only renewable energy from local sources that synchronise with local energy usage. Since 2022, the business has consequently been incorporating 24/7 CFE into its sustainability strategy – culminating in becoming a founding partner of Climate Group’s 24/7 CFE campaign. 

Self-generated power 

AstraZeneca aims for more than half of its total site’s energy (electricity and fuels) to come from ‘new to grid’ energy sources by the end of 2025, which means it’s supporting an array of new renewable energy plants around the world. Most recently, it signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) in Sweden that means three new wind farms will supply it with 200 gigawatt-hours of carbon-free electricity per year for ten years – corresponding to 80% of its total electricity needs - at its research facility in Gothenburg and manufacturing facility in Södertälje. Meanwhile, the company is also actively looking at similar PPAs in its two other key electricity consuming markets, the UK and the US. 

Resilience in a changing world 

The AstraZeneca leadership team view the move to 24/7 CFE not just as the responsible thing to do, but also as good risk management, because it’s set to become business-as-usual within a few years. They recommend embedding it in energy purchases now to make sure that long-term agreements are resilient in a changing world.  

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