US colocation company QTS is planning to build solar arrays at its Atlanta and Richmond, Virginia, data centers, the company announced Thursday. The arrays will collectively provide 1MW of power for the facilities.

The arrays’ collective power capacity is small compared to the two facilities’ total power demand. Capacity of just the first phase in Richmond could be up to 18MW, the company said in 2010 when it announced opening of the phase.

QTS claims that its Atlanta data center is the second largest data center in the world, measuring about 1m sq ft.

QTS CTO Brian Johnston said the company was an “enthusiastic proponent” of using solar energy to supplement data center power.

“These developments are yet another step that the company is taking in furthering our multi-faceted QTS Green Program, an ongoing quest be an industry leader in reducing data center carbon footprints,” he said about the two solar arrays.

Johnston also announced a US$10m investment in a multi-year energy efficiency project.

Another part of the company’s Green Program is participation in the Climate Corps Program of the Environmental Defense Fund. This is a summer fellowship program that places MBA and MPA students in companies, cities and universities to build the business case for improving their buildings’ energy efficiency.

Along with announcing the solar projects, QTS announced that it would commit to another year of participation in the program.

The relationship of the data center industry with renewable energy has been a hot topic this week. On Monday, at the Uptime Institute Symposium in the Silicon Valley, Greenpeace senior IT analyst Gary Cook made a speech, calling on the data center industry to use the influence it has with governments and energy companies to push them to put more renewable-energy generation capacity on the electrical grid.

On Thursday, Apple announced it would commit to powering its entire 20MW data center in Maiden, North Carolina, with renewable energy. The company plans to achieve this with a combination of onsite solar and biogas-fueled generation and direct renewable-energy purchases from local and regional producers.