Operational Sustainability: Excellence in Every Detail

Introduction

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, ensuring network readiness while optimising power consumption is crucial for global operations. Our strategy balances operational efficiency with sustainability by focusing on four key areas of development: 

• Optimising Power for Usage
• Sustainability Through Technology
• Sustainable Partnerships
• Going to Market Responsibly

This combination of simple yet innovative approaches are part of a broader commitment to sustainability, incorporating cutting-edge transponder technology, renewable energy sources, and strategic partnerships aimed at reducing environmental impact. 

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As an owner and operator of critical global operations, having our network prepared for traffic in a moment's notice can make a huge difference for clients in need of flexibility. Having this network prepared, but not powered, is key to the Aqua Comms strategy for minimization of power consumption in operations – without sacrificing the flexibility and speed of our services.

The provisioning Team at Aqua Comms carried out an analysis of our per-site use power and have commenced a program to power down any unused locations and to remove any unused Ciena cards in operational locations from the energy network.  This has had an estimated saving of 200 W per card.

“What we try to do is power down or remove any unused cards in our racks to minimize power consumption. Additionally, client optics are set to an out of service state until needed to reduce power consumption… No need to transmit the light if nothing is connected.” Adds Jack Bullen, Network Engineer at Aqua Comms. 

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Key to the sustainability of any digital infrastructure network is to always be updating the network with the latest and most efficient technologies. For Aqua Comms, the dominant product we offer to customers is Wavelengths services, which are delivered using transponder technology. This, and enhanced sustainability in our owned and operated Cable Landing Stations, are huge areas of focus for us.

Aqua Comms always strives to be at the peak of transponder technology. New generations of transponders have higher line rates per slot, leading to less power consumption per 100G. Additionally, new releases are designed to allow operators to easily swap out older gear as advancements are made, so we no longer have to discard our old technologies when they are outdated – we can simply repurpose them to make the most of their useful life. We buy our transponders as soon as they are released and will continue to upgrade/enhance them as the software dictates to allow us to continue to be at the forefront of transmission.

In our cable landing stations, we chase every opportunity we can to leverage renewable energy sources to power our network and the networks of our customers. Sometimes, this comes in the form of power drawn from wind turbines or nuclear sources. However, a big focus of ours is on the integration of air cooling at our sites – something that the northern location of our CLS’s enables us to pursue. We are in the process of implementing air cooling at our Killala CLS, enabling it to efficiently regulate its temperature using cool outside air. This system produces no waste and operates entirely on a 100% renewable energy source.

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Green targets are a part of our vendor management process from the very beginning. “What are our partner’s sustainability goals, what is their sustainability journey? This is a conversation from day 1, as soon as we start interacting with them” says Sarah Gregory from Aqua Comms procurement.

This year, we set a specific and ambitious goal with our partners to make a big push toward green energy: 

Goal: Convert 35% of the brown energy as per 2023 audited figures into 100% renewable energy

For Aqua Comms, this equates to a 461,000 KHW Target. Starting in 2023, our Vendor Management Team made massive efforts to achieve this by focusing on all of our Cable Landing Stations, Colocation sites, and ILA’s throughout the UK, Ireland and the US. Each of these are a type of site in which space and power are consumed to fuel our network, making them the most impactful category we can target for transitioning to green energy.

We took inventory of each site and set a plan in place to move 35% of the power consumed in aggregate to renewable energy in 2024. Many of them are third party locations, so this involves understanding how our suppliers manage energy sources and what their roadmaps are to improve them.

“For suppliers that aren’t currently on a Green Energy tariff, it’s about sharing our thoughts, beliefs and ideas and seeing if they’re willing to come on that journey with us”, if we find out a Supplier is supplying  Brown Energy, we ask them “What can we do to work with you to change that to a Renewable source?” says Sarah Gregory, Head of Aqua Comms Vendor Management procurement.

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Details matter most in our efforts to create a go-to-market program that keeps environmental responsibility at the forefront. When it comes to conferences and events, there are a number of things Aqua Comms does to keep sustainability at the heart of our operations. We track all flight and travel emissions for reporting and management, do not make use of paper collateral and choose to keep all our marketing materials digital or reusable to reduce waste, and seek to tie in green initiatives to the events we host. At conferences, for each meeting that we have with a customer Aqua Comms sets aside money to be donated to a related charity. We do this rather than giving out Aqua Comms branded gear, swag, pens, or notebooks - most of which end up thrown out after the event. 

We also engage in a number of initiatives throughout local communities, including 

• Beach clean ups near our cable landing station where we have collected over 54 Kilos of waste as a team
• Participation in the “DC’s for Bees” program, promoting biodiversity for the land near our cable landing stations through orchard planting - sponsoring over 500 trees through this partnership and volunteering hours for employees to plant trees ourselves
• Donation commitments and volunteering with the Clew Bay Oyster Co-op to support biodiversity through the waters where our cable lands

These are just a few highlights of work we do to support the communities and markets we operate in. These efforts are a great compliment to the more technical energy saving initiatives we engage in, but are key to making sustainability a part of every function in the business.

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