Case study - Cornerstone reduces its carbon footprint
Cornerstone, the UK’s leading mobile infrastructure services company, is always looking for sharper solutions to ensure services are delivered in the most effective way possible to enable digital connectivity across the UK.
The challenge
Several thousand sites that we manage and own have large cabins or rooms housing critical electrical, radio, and electronic equipment. These essential pieces of equipment produce heat and need to be kept cool. When telecom networks first came on the scene a few decades ago, the use of air-conditioning was commonplace because of its ease and simplicity to install. However, the steady increase in energy tariffs, the ‘Montreal Protocol’, followed by the ‘Kigali agreement’, has encouraged the telecommunication industry to radically change how they keep their sites cool, by limiting the use of air-conditioning systems. The Montreal Protocol bans the use of ozone-depleting refrigerants, massively contributing to the healthy recovery of our ozone layers. The Kigali agreement limits the use of refrigerants that have higher ‘Global Warming Potential.’ At Cornerstone, we recognised that having an effective cooling strategy would ensure long-term environmental sustainability, business continuity and future-proof our network assets.
