How Combell is actively creating a greener future

Although research indicates that Combell is well on its way to becoming a decisively green hosting company, we aim to launch even more actions and projects to reduce our CO₂ emissions. For this, we can rely on our international hosting family, team.blue.

Combell and its overarching group, team.blue, firmly commit to a greener, sustainable future. We owe this to our society. Climate change is a fact, and its consequences are profound and unpredictable.

Belgian companies realize that by making the right investments, they significantly benefit our environment. According to Acerta, the majority of Belgian companies are actively engaged in sustainable business practices.

Green data centers

Combell stands as a prime example of this commitment. As a growing hosting company, we at Combell (and more broadly at team.blue) have long been aware of our impact.

Did you know that Combell's data centers have been running on renewable energy for years? Perform the test yourself on The Green Web Foundation's website. If you look up a website hosted by us, you'll receive confirmation that it operates on green hosting.

Thanks to our efforts, our CO2 emissions further decreased in 2022. While other major hosting companies still produced four times more emissions than us in the same year.

Vanessa De Waele, Sustainability & Legal Director at team.blue

Efforts produce outcomes

"The green data centers are just one of many actions Combell and team.blue undertake to reduce CO₂ emissions. External research shows that all our efforts together yield a very positive result," says Vanessa De Waele, Sustainability & Legal Director at team.blue.

"To give you an idea: in 2022, our group's CO₂ emissions amounted to 6.38 tons per 1 million in revenue. In contrast, other major hosters reached 43 tons per 1 million in revenue in 2022. That's four times our emission level," emphasizes Vanessa.

Actions that demonstrate our green ambitions

Although we are pleased that we are making a literal difference, we are not yet satisfied. Our CO₂ impact needs to be further reduced. That's why we have set ambitious science-based targets for the next six years.

We expect the same ambitions from our suppliers (such as those of our hardware). Combell and team.blue choose suppliers who have also set concrete targets.

Now that we have declared our ambitions and set our goals, it is time for action. We have already launched several projects.

Ongoing Initiatives:

• A Combell forest in Marche-en-Famenne where we aim to plant 5,800 trees by the end of this year.

• team.blue supports global climate projects through Ecologi. This initiative plants trees in areas severely affected by climate change and where biodiversity needs support.

• Investments in projects that reduce CO₂ emissions, such as wind farms, a project to extract methane gas from a landfill, or a project to generate electricity from organic waste.

• Green power in all team.blue data centers. Less than 5% of our sister companies' data centers still lack green power. This will soon change, enabling these companies to run on green energy like Combell.

• All our company cars are being replaced with electric models. Currently, our fleet is already 25% electric. By 2027, it should be 100% electric for Combell.

• We also encourage our employees to use their cars less. We have a very flexible remote work plan, which reduces commuting. Thanks to the launch of bike leasing, employees can get a (electric) bicycle at favorable conditions to ride to work.

• When colleagues go on business trips, we prefer trains over planes and stay in environmentally friendly hotels.

• We participate in 'Digital Cleanup Day': this is the moment to encourage employees to delete old, unused documents from the cloud. This also leads to CO₂ emissions. During our first edition, 42,635 GB was deleted, saving about 10,653 kg of CO₂ per year.

This is by no means all! For example, at Combell, office lighting has been replaced with energy-efficient LED lighting. Additionally, we donate or recycle old equipment. In 2023, 322 old servers from team.blue were refurbished or recycled.

Together towards a greener future

As you can see, the sustainability journey of Combell and team.blue is well underway. We are, of course, pleased with the impressive results we can present.

Firstly, because it has a positive impact on our climate, but also because it allows our customers, suppliers, and employees to be part of this greener future. The fact that we need to do this together is undeniable!