Iron Mountain Inc., a data storage and information management services firm, has announced the activation of a solar energy array at its Freehold, N.J., facility.
The nearly 2 MW project, which sits adjacent to Iron Mountain’s largest records management facility on the East Coast, will allow the company to offset 60% of the site’s energy consumption, with that percentage expected to increase as other energy efficiency projects come online for the 857,194 square-foot campus.
The solar array is made up of 6,444 panels and will supply Iron Mountain through a 20-year, fixed-price power purchase agreement with site developer Tech Advisory Group. The project effectively doubles Iron Mountain’s installed solar production from 2 MW to nearly 4 MW and, together with prior wind farm power purchases in Pennsylvania and Texas, will help the company utilize renewable resources for two-thirds of its total North American electricity load by 2018.
“Energy usage across our real estate portfolio comprises half of our global greenhouse-gas emissions footprint,” says Ty Ondatje, senior vice president of corporate responsibility and chief diversity officer at Iron Mountain. “As such, renewable and sustainable energy strategies like solar represent a major opportunity for us to reduce our impact on the environment while enabling us to innovate and operate our business more efficiently.
“Additionally, power purchase agreements like this and others we have throughout North America help us stabilize our long-term costs and enable us to use energy at lower-than-grid prices. For these reasons, we are committed to renewable energy strategies to benefit our business and position Iron Mountain and our customers to meet the growing expectations for sustainable business practices.”
The array was installed by Pro-Tech Energy Solutions of Moorestown, N.J., and sits on neighboring property belonging to The Clayton Companies, one of the largest privately held mining companies in New Jersey.
