French company OVHcloud was established in 1999 and is European market leader in the cloud sector. It offers cloud and hosting solutions, dedicated servers and domain name registrations for its 1.6 million customers in over 140 countries and has data centres all over the world.
‘Sustainability has been ingrained in our working methods and thinking ever since our establishment,’ says Daphné Julienne, Corporate Strategy and CSR Director at OVHcloud. Simply the fact that she combines both roles shows that corporate social responsibility is strategically embedded in OVHcloud's DNA.
Your purpose reads ‘Leading the data revolution for a responsible future’. How do you see that?
Daphné: ‘Data is the ‘raw material’ we need to carry out our activities. In the cloud there is personal or sensitive data and it's our responsibility to handle it ethically and sustainably. By doing this we believe we can build a responsible future with data.’
What exactly does it mean?
Daphné: ‘Data has a big impact on people and nature. Our sector is energy-intensive and servers are made using material with a big carbon footprint. By building our own servers we have complete control over our supply chain and are able to manage the entire life cycle of our servers. When they've served their purpose the servers are disassembled in our factories where all the components are tested. Components that are still good enough are reused up to four times in new servers, or sold. All the material is recycled afterwards.’
‘In 2023, 36% of the components in our servers comprised recycled parts. The fact that we focus very strongly on the components, makes OVHcloud unique. And because we carry out extensive tests the performance of our servers is not compromised in any way. We guarantee our customers perfect performance and reuse of their servers.’
Does that mean sustainability is a sales argument?
Daphné: ‘Not necessarily. Some customers find it very important or interesting, but others just don't see any added value in it or simply aren't interested in how our servers are made. If some customers partly choose us because of our commitments and actions in favour of the environment, it's for the best.’
'By measuring and analysing our environmental footprint we know that our components have as big an impact on our carbon footprint as on our power consumption.'
Do you use a framework for your sustainability campaigns?
Daphné: ‘We follow the GHG protocol which is an international standard for our carbon balance. This drives our efforts to reduce our impact where our carbon footprint is the most important. And we are able to do so because we have a full control over our value chain thanks to our vertically-integrated model. I my opinion there is a lot of focus on scope 1 (direct emission) and 2 (indirect emission) and less on scope 3 (indirect emission caused by the production or after the sale of your product or service). By measuring and analysing our environmental footprint we know that our components (scope 3) have as big an impact on our carbon footprint as on our power consumption (scope 2). But because of the huge general focus on scope 1 and 2, there is less focus in our sector on the components of servers, whereas we publish our carbon balance to show that their impact is at least as big.’
Do you communicate about this in other ways?
Daphné: ‘Absolutely. Our carbon calculator specifies the amount of CO2 that customers have emitted on their monthly invoice. It's broken down into three dimensions (electricity, manufacturing, and operations) to explain how it works and what impact our approach has. The calculator is available to our private cloud customers and will be available to our public cloud customers very soon. It shows the source of their emissions and allows customers to make better choices about the services they use and the impact they have.’
Do you take initiatives to reduce your own power consumption?
Daphné: ‘We already reached a first milestone in 2003 by cooling our servers with water in a closed circuit. That was quite revolutionary at a time when everyone was still using air conditioning. We patented that system and are now on the third generation water cooling system. If you know that we have 450,000 servers worldwide, you can imagine the environmental impact.’
‘The effectiveness of your power consumption or Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is expressed in a quotient. The closer to 1 the better. And thanks to our working methods, our PUE is 1.29. The average in our sector is 1.60 which means we're doing much better than most of our competitors. And this is not at the expense of our water consumption because we have a closed circuit. Our Water Usage Effectiveness is 0.30 litres per kWh whereas the average in our sector is 1.80 litres per kWh.'
'We want to be a thought leader, but all major players have to do the same worldwide. We want the whole sector to apply the same high standards as us.'
These are impressive figures and considering your size this must have a massive positive impact?
Daphné: ‘Yes, but it's important all cloud providers do the same because otherwise our impact is minimal. We want to be a thought leader, but all major players have to do the same worldwide. We want the whole sector to apply the same high standards as us. This is a global problem that needs a global solution. That's why we're strong believers in the strength of an ecosystem. We're big but not big enough to have a meaningful impact if we don't involve all our suppliers, partners, customers.’
How do you achieve this?
Daphné: ‘We want to help our customers and suppliers understand what their impact is and how to reduce it. That's why we organise workshops with them, publish whitepapers, organise webinars, etc. We want to help them take the next step and provide new ideas.’
‘We have to keep innovating. But you can only do so in an ecosystem you can rely on. And you can only monitor this ecosystem up to a certain extent, you still depend on suppliers. That's why we implemented a sustainable purchase policy.’
Do you take any other initiatives?
Daphné: ‘In France we only use decarbonated energy. In Quebec we chose to build our data centre next to a dam for easy access to hydroelectricity, which is renewable energy. Data centres are energy-intensive, but also take up space. The circular idea behind our servers is also applied to our data centres in that we build most of them on old factory sites or brownfields, not on greenfields.’
‘We also take smaller initiatives, like encouraging people to come to work by bike or public transport or to not fly but to take the train whenever possible. Our goal is to make them understand why it's important and not because it's come from higher up.’
Do you have to meet certain reporting standards?
Daphné: ‘From 2025 we need to meet CSRD requirements. It requires a lot of preparation and is quite intensive. But we want to do it well. We also meet certain ISO standards, e.g. for PUE and water consumption. To measure this correctly we have sensors in our data centres. We're also CNDCP members (Climate Neutral Data Center Pact), an organisation that we helped establish. This pact lays down standards for data centres to minimise their impact.’
Is it hard to roll out the sustainability policy worldwide in a multinational such as OVHcloud?
Daphné: ‘Every region has its specific context of course. But it's very interesting to see how small offices across the world launch initiatives that are embedded in their local context, notably through local office managers. It’s also true in our factories, as we've undertaken to put zero waste to landfill on waste from our production centers by 2025.’
For more than 20 years, OVHcloud is committed to innovation and has been focused on making the cloud more sustainable, and reduce their carbon footprint and that of their customers. On their website you can read all about their sustainability initiatives, goals and results.
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