Environment

Policy for environmental initiatives

In order to continuously realize the IIJ Group's business philosophy and to achieve long-term sustainable growth, IIJ Group recognizes the importance of taking initiatives in the reduction of environmental impact on the society as a whole through business activities that comply with environmental laws and regulations and take the global environment into account.

As the first commercial Internet service provider in Japan, IIJ has created the Internet infrastructure in Japan and has been providing Internet connectivity services. Social and economic activities are obviously more efficient than they were about 30 years ago with the use of internet-based services and applications. IIJ Group will continue to stably provide highly reliable services that support the networked society such as the Internet and cloud computing services thereby contributing to further improving the efficiency of social activities and reducing the environmental impact on the entire society.

Meanwhile, the use of electricity is essential in providing these services, and the IIJ Group is required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and realize the carbon neutrality of data centers where a large amount of electricity is consumed.
Additionally, to make its data center a reference model for carbon neutral data centers, IIJ will pursue diverse initiatives by increasing renewable energy as a percentage of its total energy use toward 2030 and setting targets for increasing energy efficiency. In addition, IIJ Group will make an effort to promote procurement activities that take into consideration the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions throughout the supply chain when procuring equipment and services necessary for the provision of its services from partner companies.

• Initiatives for carbon neutrality at IIJ data centers

IIJ has established the "Sustainability Committee", chaired by the President, to promote these activities as a company-wide initiative, and will implement PDCA activities to reduce the environmental impact. IIJ will disclose sufficient environmental information to its stakeholders.

In light of the purpose of the Corporate Governance Code revised in June 2021, IIJ will enhance environmental disclosure based on the TCFD framework etc. in accordance with the above policy.

• Information Disclosure based on the TCFD Recommendations

Improvements in energy efficiency

In recent years, the problem of climate change has become a material issue of urgency that the international community has to address, and, for example, companies are being required to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As energy sources account for a large proportion of the CO2 emissions in many countries, it is important to reduce unnecessary energy use and strive toward more efficient use.

IIJ is actively promoting efforts to cut our energy consumption at data centers in particular, because they are said to account for 2% of all the electricity consumed in the world. In addition, the Internet's characteristic of reducing the movement of people and things is considered to be one way of helping to substantially improve energy efficiency throughout society as a whole.

Initiatives at Matsue Data Center Park

IZmo IT module

Realization of energy-saving

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a metric that shows how efficiently electricity is used at a data center. It is calculated by dividing the electricity that an entire data center consumes by the electricity that the IT equipment there consumes. The closer to 1.0 the metric is, the more efficiently the data center uses power. In Japan, the metric is 2.0 for conventional data centers and 1.6 for newer data centers with highly efficient facilities. In comparison, Matsue DCP has achieved figures in the 1.3 range.

Annual Average PUE of Matsue DCP

co-IZmo/I, a container-unit modular data center developed in 2013, adopted an indirect outside air cooling system so as to achieve high energy-saving performance even in an environment where the air quality is poor, such as air with a high grit, dust, and salt content. As such, IIJ foresees it spreading to a wide range of regions.

• co-IZmo/I

co-IZmo/I

Initiatives at Shiroi Data Center Campus

In May 2019, to accommodate the large-scale demand accompanying increases in digital data expected due to the spread of 5G, IoT, and AI and etc., IIJ started operating the Shiroi Data Center Campus（"Shiroi DCC"） in Shiroi, Chiba Prefecture with the help of knowledge gained at Matsue DCP. This data center campus adopted a system-module construction method that enables a larger-scale modular architecture, thereby systematizing and streamlining construction and production processes prior to construction work.

• the air-conditioning modules (Energy-saving initiatives—outside-air cooling, bus ducts, three-phase four-wire UPS)
• Shiroi Data Center Campus

Shiroi Data Center Campus

Peak cut / peak shift of electric power by storage batteries

Estimated reduction in electricity consumption achieved with system cloud IIJ GIO

In 2009, IIJ launched IIJ GIO, cloud service, and has provided many corporate customers with this service. IIJ GIO uses energy-efficient data centers, including Shiroi DCC and Matsue DCP, as its infrastructure and consolidates IT resources more efficiently using massive servers and storage equipment, thereby significantly reducing electricity consumption.

The entire service infrastructure consumes approximately 99,000 MWh of electricity per year, estimated to be an approximately 40% reduction (amount of electricity consumed by about 15,000 general households (*)), compared to the situation where everything is in an on-premises environment. Going forward, IIJ will contribute to reducing CO2 emissions by pursuing improvements to IIJ GIO's energy efficiency and helping cut the electricity that society consumes when using IT.

• (*)Calculated by assuming that the average household consumes 4,175 kWh of electricity annually based on the "FY2021 Statistical Survey of CO2 Emissions from the Household Sector" by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan

Joint Crediting Mechanism: Energy-saving data center project in Laos

Initiatives through products and services

Remote access to reduce the movement of people and things

As working environments are rapidly becoming digital, as represented by telecommuting and web/video conferencing, the IIJ Group provides companies with a "digital workplace," a comfortable and productive digital space.

The VPN service IIJ Flex Mobility Service, with its low latency and stable connections, prevents communication interruptions even in places with unstable mobile connections. This service is just a sample of IIJ offers to increase productivity and enhance corporate value.

IIJ also contributes to climate change mitigation by promoting digital workplaces through our infrastructure and reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with the movement of people and goods.

Visualizing electricity demand with the help of smart meters and B route

Smart meters are available in two types: "A-route" smart meters retrieve data every 30 minutes for use by general electric utilities to calculate electricity bills. In contrast, "B-route" meters retrieve electric usage data in virtually real-time. IIJ offers the authentication devices and services needed in B-route applications.

The lifelog data acquired through B-route meters may be used to create new services, including watchdog systems and energy-saving diagnoses. These meters also promise a role to play as electricity sensors for smart grids.

• IIJ High Voltage Smart Metering Service for B Route

Utilization of renewable energy

As well as saving energy, IIJ must choose energy sources that emit less CO2 so as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change. As IIJ consumes a large amount of electricity for our operations, including data centers, IIJ recognizes the need to address this issue and is considering ways to covert energy.

Initiatives at Matsue Data Center Park

In February 2022, Matsue DCP began using electricity virtually derived from renewable energy (renewables)(*1) at Site 1. In March 2023, the photovoltaic power generation panels installed on the rooftop of the administrative building on the premises of DCP began operating. The installed capacity of the photovoltaic power generation panels is nearly 7% of electricity used in the Matsue DCP server building. Annual power generation is estimated to be nearly 340 MWh. Currently, Site 2 has also completed its introduction of renewables-derived electricity. As a result of these efforts, 100% of the electricity used by Matsue DCP is from renewables.

Moreover, the electricity to be introduced this time uses FIT non-fossil certificate with tracking (*2) and meets RE100 (*3).

1. (*1)Electricity that is regarded as substantially 100% renewable electricity and emitting zeroCO2 by adding the environmental value certificate to the power source of electricity companies.
2. (*2)Non-fossil certificate is a certificate of the environmental value as non-fossil energy (effect of the reduction of CO2emissions, etc.) for the electricity generated from non-fossil energy such as renewable energy and nuclear energy, and is issued through the Non-fossil Value Trading Market established in May 2018.
3. (*3)RE100 (Renewable Energy 100%) is an international initiative aiming to procure energy consumed in business activities from 100% renewable energy.

• IIJ to Introduce Substantial Renewable Energy at "Matsue Data Center Park"

Initiatives at Shiroi Data Center Campus