Nxtra, Bharti Airtel’s data center subsidiary, has announced a partnership with Bloom Energy for deploying low environmental impact fuel cell installation at its data center in Karnataka. This would help the company in reducing the carbon emissions through a cleaner and hydrogen ready fuel supply. What’s unique about this is that Nxtra would become the first data center company in India to deploy fuel cell technology. Airtel said that Nxtra plans on starting the unit on non-combusted natural gas and then switch to 50% hydrogen in future without any significant investment. Speaking about the partnership, Mr Rajesh Tapadia, COO, Nxtra by Airtel, said, “Nxtra is committed to set new benchmarks in sustainability for the data center industry and play a leading role as India emerges as leading data center destination in APAC. With an ambition to reach net zero by 2031, we have embarked on our sustainability journey by making all possible efforts to adopt innovative energy solutions. Our partnership with Bloom Energy is a testament to our future-ready energy strategy to supply much cleaner energy to our data centers. “Bloom Energy’s technology is distinctly capable of helping India meet its decarbonization objectives as it transitions to a hydrogen economy,” said Tim Schweikert, senior managing director, international business development, Bloom Energy. “We are proud to collaborate with Nxtra to support them in their pursuit of using clean, reliable and affordable power for their data centers.” Nxtra by Airtel has the largest network of data centers in India with 12 large and 120 edge data centers across the country and will invest over Rs 5000 cr over the next four years to expand its capacity by 3X to over 400 MW. The company has already invested and partnered with 8 organisations to develop renewable energy power plants across India to source more than 180,000 MWh of renewable energy and is committed to achieving 50% of its power requirements through renewable energy sources in the next 12 months.
