SkyLink API's Commitment to Sustainable Infrastructure
Aviation is one of the most complex and energy-intensive industries in the world. As a company that sits at the intersection of aviation and technology, we think about that every day. We cannot change how aircraft are powered — but we can control how we power the infrastructure that serves our customers.
This post is about where we stand on sustainability, and why we think it should be part of how any technology company operates.
Our Infrastructure Runs on Renewable Energy
Every API call made to SkyLink API — every METAR request, every ADS-B query, every flight status lookup — is handled by servers running on renewable energy in Geneva, Switzerland.
We made a deliberate choice to host our infrastructure with a provider whose data centres draw power from renewable sources, primarily Swiss hydroelectric generation. This is not an offset scheme or a certificate purchase. The electricity going into our servers is clean at the source.
Switzerland's energy grid is among the cleanest in Europe, and Geneva's position makes it ideal for serving customers across Europe, the Middle East, and beyond without unnecessary routing overhead — which itself reduces energy waste.
Why We Take This Seriously
We are not a sustainability company. We are an aviation data company. But we believe those two things are not in conflict, and that "we are just a tech startup" is not a good enough reason to ignore the footprint of the infrastructure you build on.
The decisions that matter most are the ones made quietly, before anyone asks — choosing where your servers live, choosing providers that align with your values, choosing not to cut corners on things that are hard to see but easy to measure. For us, running on renewable energy in Switzerland is one of those decisions.
We also think transparency matters. If you are building a product on SkyLink API and your organisation has ESG commitments or sustainability reporting requirements, you can document that your API data infrastructure runs on renewable energy. We are happy to support that with whatever information you need.
What We Are Working Towards
Choosing the right infrastructure is a starting point, not a finish line. As SkyLink grows, we are committed to:
- Keeping our infrastructure lean. Efficient caching, smart request routing, and minimal redundancy mean less compute for the same output. Our Redis caching layer, for instance, means the same weather data is not fetched and processed thousands of times — it is computed once and served many times.
- Measuring our footprint honestly. We intend to report on energy usage as our platform scales. Not with vague commitments, but with numbers.
- Choosing suppliers that share our values. From infrastructure to tooling, we favour providers who are transparent about their environmental impact. ## A Note on Aviation We are aware of the irony of building an aviation API while caring about emissions. We do not think the answer is to stop building tools for aviation — the industry will fly regardless, and better data leads to better decisions, including more efficient routing, reduced delays, and lower fuel burn. If our API helps one operations team plan a slightly more efficient flight, that matters more than the energy our servers consume in a month. We serve the industry as it is, while believing it should — and will — become cleaner. That is a position we are comfortable with. --- Questions about our infrastructure or sustainability practices? Get in touch through the contact form on our website. Originally published at skylinkapi.com.
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