Aligned Data Centers, a leading technology infrastructure company offering innovative, sustainable and adaptable colocation and build-to-scale solutions for cloud, enterprise, and managed service providers, announces 2021 milestone achievements in growth, sustainability, and historic green financing, including the first-ever green, and largest-ever inaugural, data center securitization, and the first-ever U.S. data center sustainability-linked financing. The past year also saw Aligned ranked on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ in recognition of the company’s 870 percent growth.
“The completion of our second data center in the Salt Lake Metro Area, our expanded presence in the region with a new Build-to-Scale data center, and our new hyperscale data center campus in Chicago are proof positive of the growing demand for our energy efficient, sustainable, and scalable data center platform,” states Andrew Schaap, CEO of Aligned. “2021 also saw Aligned make further progress on our environmental targets, including carbon reduction and water conservation. Aligned’s successful delivery of sustainable data center infrastructure for hyperscale and enterprise customers during a period when our industry experienced the greatest demand for digital services in history is a testament to our top-tier people, operational maturity, and innovative technologies.”
The first quarter of the year commenced with the completion of Aligned’s second data center in the Salt Lake Metro Area, located in West Jordan, Utah. The new 48 MW (expandable to 60 MW), 240,000 square-foot facility is the second data center to be built on Aligned’s Salt Lake Metro campus. Only a month later, Aligned broke ground on its latest hyperscale data center campus in Chicago. The first data center under construction on the 18.5-acre campus, known as ORD-01, is a 220,000 square-foot, 48 MW facility (expandable to 60 MW). Upon completion, Aligned’s Chicago campus will offer 100+ MW of capacity.
In Q3’21, it was determined that Aligned exceeded all the requirements of the $1 billion sustainability-linked credit facility issued in September 2020. Aligned’s sustainability-linked financing is tied to the company’s core environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), including a commitment to match 100% of Aligned’s annual energy consumption to zero-carbon renewable energy by 2024. Also in Q3’21, Aligned announced the issuance of $1.35 billion in securitized notes, representing the first-ever green data center securitization. Concurrent with the issuance of the $1.35 billion in securitized notes, Aligned closed on an additional $375 million sustainability-linked loan, bringing the total to $1.725 billion of structured sustainable debt financing raised within the quarter. Meanwhile, Aligned and ING Capital received the Environmental Finance 2021 Bond Award for the “Highly Commended, Sustainability-Linked Loan of the Year.”
Q3 2021 also saw Aligned’s continuing expansion in the Salt Lake Metro Area with the development of the company’s new data center campus. Aligned acquired the new multi-megawatt site for its latest waterless Build-to-Scale development and the expansion further supports its geo-redundant growth in the region following the Q1’21 launch of its second Salt Lake Metro data center, SLC-02, and in advance of a third master-planned facility on its West Jordan campus. Aligned’s Build-to-Scale data centers are delivered at unprecedented speed and built for optimum scale to solve the complex needs of today’s large enterprises and hyperscalers.
2021 also marked a new design standard for Aligned: waterless data centers. Further innovation of its patented and award-winning Delta³™ cooling technology enables seamless integration with state-of-the-art waterless systems to deliver ultra-efficient and waterless data center campuses. Aligned’s Delta³ cooling systems also allows customers to Expand on Demand™, incrementally scaling in place up to 50 kW per rack without stranding capacity.
Closing out the year, Aligned became one of the first data center providers in the industry to offer transparent and accurate data of their carbon footprint to better inform the sustainability strategies and goals of both the company and its customers. Using Ledger8760, the 24/7 carbon tracking platform that measures energy, emissions, and utility information, Aligned will be able to measure data center energy consumption with the greatest accuracy to further reduce carbon emissions.