 I'm Dean Perine and on behalf of JSA, thank you for tuning in to our greener data virtual roundtable. Today, I'm joined by a range of specialists in the data center industry who are featured contributors to our upcoming book, greener data volume two that will launch on Earth Day 2024. Today, the group will talk about an important topic featured in the book, building the business case, unlocking the social and financial benefits of going green. We'll begin by going around the virtual table for some quick introductions. Panelists, let us know a little bit about your role, a quick snapshot of your organization and why the topic is so meaningful to you. Michael will let you kick it off. Hi, Dean. My name is Michael Boron. I am a broker and associate vice president at Cushman Wakefield. We are a global real estate services company and I work within the global data center advisory group. It's a global group of real estate and data center professionals focused on servicing the data center industry. My team mostly works on large site selection projects, capital markets and consulting services for both operators and tenants and end-users. Excellent. Thank you, Michael. Raymond? Yeah, Raymond Burrell, senior sales executive for EchoSense. We're based out of Nottingham and I am responsible for the Americas from the sales side of things and we are focused on thermal optimization as well as capacity planning for mission critical end users, data center owners and operators. I'm looking forward to this chat. Excellent. Thank you, Jason. Pete, I'm sorry, Raymond. Jason, you're next. Thanks, Dean. Jason Carlin with Flexcentral, I'm the chief innovation officer, which means I get to do a bunch of fun things and Flexcentral, if you don't know anything about that, is a data center operator, builder, provider with a range of cloud managed services and interconnect products really focused in the United States. 19 markets, 41 data centers across the country. Next one, Jason. Pete, now you. Thank you. Thank you, Dean. Pete, this bit managing part of Eden 7. We're part of the Cambridge Money and Consulting Group of Businesses. Principally, we are a consultancy business that helps organizations decarbonize and helps them with the strategy and really drive change into their organizations and across a number of different industries with particular interest into the data center industry and making sure the organizations are aligned to their customers' needs and making sure that their sustainability strategies and their sustainability plans really do deliver for their client base as well. Very good. Thank you, Pete and Francois. Hi, I'm Francois Serent. I'm a chief operating officer at the Data for Group. Data for Group is a leading co-location provider in Europe with presence in Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Milan, and Warsaw, five markets, and we have always been involved in sustainability over the last 20 years of working in data centers and I'm a big proponent of why green make business sense and I'll explain a little bit more. Excellent. Thank you so much, Francois. And thank you to all the speakers. So let's go ahead and jump right in. Innovative thinkers in the business community are coming to view sustainability activities in terms of market opportunity and value creation between ECOS. Economic and environmental progress are no longer seen as competing, but rather as complementary forces. With that question number one, in the data center context, what is some of the low hanging fruit in terms of aligning financial and sustainability benefits? Francois, we will go ahead and kick this one off with you. Yeah, there's many low hanging fruits still. We think we are already good on that, but there's actually many, many things we can do. I'm not going to talk about PUE or user deficiencies that much, but I think there's still very simple thing we can still do where you would both save money and be good for the planet. Let's say for instance in the data groups, you increase temperature a little bit with the latest recommendation from ASHRAE. It doesn't change anything really on operation. It doesn't cost anything. And then you improve your PUE right there and it's good to consume less electricity and it's better. Using renewable energy also is still a lot of people already do it, but it needs to be even more mainstream. Now in many jurisdictions, renewable energy is cheaper than conventional energy. So again, you save money and you are good on the environmental front. So you talked about the two echoes, economy and ecology. I mean clearly they are aligned in the data center industry. There are still many areas where you can optimize like I just said. Very good. Jason, your thoughts? Sure. I agree a bunch with Francois. For us I think it starts really very much at the design phase really before even building. So site selection and being able to change the design based on the environmental conditions of the region that we're in. For example, what we do in Oregon is quite different from what we do in Denver versus what we do in Atlanta. So it really starts at kind of a baseline at the design level of understanding what the environmental conditions are within those regions and being able to customize for that and then to also just be focused on helping our customers understand how they're using energy. We have a ton of data just on power utilization and how it's being used on our customer base and being able to help them understand kind of their thermal dynamics and what's going on. Asheray, the Delta T temperatures have changed a lot. It's kind of funny these days they have a customer come into your data center and say it feels hot versus what everybody was very familiar with 10, 20 years ago where it was very chilly. So things have changed a lot. There's I think things that we learn every single day. Liquid cooling is another area that can be much more efficient from the thermal load perspective. It's maybe more complicated from a lack of standards and things like that. But very interesting space to be in and very important with us to look at our impact on the climate and our communities. Thank you, Jason. Raymond? Yeah, I think I'm going to echo slightly a little bit of what Jason and Francoise are saying. I think energy efficiencies in optimization from an energy standpoint is the easiest lowest hanging fruit right now when it comes to the fact that we're very busy building hyperscale data centers. Obviously there's a huge draw from AI and other apps that run that require a lot of compute. But we're really missing the boat on the stranded capacity that's already out there thermally and from an IT perspective. So I think, you know, before we get too far down the road with large capital projects, let's make sure we're using what we already have built the most efficient way possible, right? So optimizing that space, returning that cooling capacity back to you so you can then increase the compute before you decide where you need to build or how you need to expand is probably going to be the lowest hanging fruit. Obviously, selfishly, that's what our software really excels at is the optimization thermally. But it is, frankly, the lowest hanging fruit right now. So let's just make sure we're doing the right things with the energy we already are consuming. Very good point, Raymond. Thank you. Pete, your thoughts? Yeah, I think around the cost of things, it's clear, you know, those optimizations aside is hugely important and you can save on consumption and that's a fantastic thing. I think maybe looking at it from the other side of revenue generating and so making sure your message is strong to your customers. I think there's sometimes quite a mixed message on the strategy that's being delivered and how it's articulated to the client and how it's aligned to the client as well. And sometimes it gets very much important to the technical detail of it but actually really making sure that it can speak to the customer is quite important. So maybe that's more of a revenue generating opportunity rather than the cost saving opportunity. Clearly the cost saving issue is usually important. I think some folks agree with you. I'm seeing a lot of thumbs up coming from the listeners right now. Michael, final thoughts on the question? I'm going to echo mostly what's already been said but coming at this from a sustainability perspective for site selection, the lowest hanging fruit is always locating within a market that already has access to green power. The closer to 100% the better. Challenges are that a lot of those markets are seeing longer timelines to connect but even with that we're seeing groups look at sites with longer and longer timelines with the intention of securing that power. And we really are seeing impact investment decisions between markets. So if you have all things being equal between two markets but one has a cleaner grid, the cleaner grid is going to win most of the time. Very, very good point. Question number two, what new thinking will help position sustainability as a strategic business goal? The question again is what new thinking will help position sustainability as a strategic business goal? And Michael, we're going to stick with you on this one first. Yeah, I'm of the mind just working with our kind of thing. These decisions are largely going to be driven by end users as well as regulation within market. I mean on our end user side, we're doing quite a bit of RFPs and RFIs out to data center operators within market. We have dozens of questions that rank providers based on their sustainability and it does materially impact what our recommendations are. While cost is important right now with the overall economy, we're seeing more and more weight get placed on the sustainability metrics over time and they are seen as a risk over the life of a lease. So if you're approaching it from the tenant's perspective, they're trying to look at and assess a site beyond just even what the initial term of the lease is. So they're looking at the site five to 10 years, what potential regulations are coming down the pipeline, will that affect this site? How will that affect my co-cost of operation? It's a very expensive task to have to move those deployments into new facilities. So it's something that we're seeing more and more of. It goes beyond the initial financial terms of the deal and I mean because of that operators have to look at this. I mean we're already seeing it in most markets in North America and Europe, newer more efficient data centers and greener markets tend to have lower vacancy rates than older facilities that are less efficient. You can go into most markets in North America and you'll find that to be the case. Pretty good Michael, thank you. Pete, your turn. Yeah I think we're seeing it across a number of different industries, not just the data center side of things, but around that a collaboration has took quite a lot. Innovation is really important, so if we're thinking about what new things are being done, I think organizations are coming together and it might be competitive, maybe not so much, but you know within the same supply chain of a major customer. That is something that is talked about quite a lot and innovation forums around that. Also introducing and it isn't consistent across every business case that's ever been put together, but introducing carbon pricing into business cases. So really starting to get the business cases moving on the back of the environmental side of things. Now you know all business cases have to stand up on their own feet from a financial point of view, but sometimes they do get pushed back in the short term because they may not stand up to something that needs to be delivered in the next six months. So I think if we're seeing that more and more and it comes in different flavors to be fair, especially for your global business and how you keep your consistency in carbon pricing, but that may well be an element of stuff coming to you as it's part of organizations thinking. Excellent Pete, thank you. Jason, what new thinking will help position sustainability as a strategic business goal? Yeah, we talked a bit about data and since it's interesting right now just the impact of AI on our industry. I think I saw a stat yesterday that envidia ship 900 tons of H100 GPUs last quarter. They require a ton of power and space and cooling to go make that happen and don't see that slowing down anytime soon, which really means the impact of AI is from a consumption basis and the data center space is massive. So I think the opportunity to take AI and sort of apply it against some of the challenges that we're having and we're talking about here is also quite substantial. And so I think being able to use the utilization data, power data, consumption data and start to automate ways to be more sustainable and more cost effective and efficient is the right way. We've got a customer that is a massive SaaS customer that uses automation to really change their workload dynamics from a power consumption and cooling consumption capacity on demand without any human interaction all year long based on their seasonal dynamics and what their use cases might be during tax time or during holidays or whatever it might be. So I think there's really some great technological advances that are just right around the corner with the improvements around AI, the accessibility and IoT. Very good, Jason. Thank you, Raymond. Yeah, I think there have been some good answers so far. I'm going to take a slightly different tact. I believe that from the beginning of sustainability when the lead was brought out originally and we started to think about how do we be more sustainable when it comes to infrastructure. I believe life cycle costs need to be prioritized over first costs. So the first cost mentality right now is driving a lot of monthly, quarterly and annual decisions from all businesses and sustainability really drives home the value in a life cycle perspective. So if you're going to envision that iceberg showing the tip of the iceberg outside of the water, the bulk of the cost or life cycle costs are underneath the water and that's where you can crash and run into that and it can cause major issues for you later in your business's future without having those costs under control. So I think if we move to a life cycle perspective when making these types of decisions sustainably then obviously green wins every single day of the week. There's never going to be a scenario where you're going to regret all the trees that you saved or the amount of energy and the carbon emissions that you've reduced 10, 15 years down the road especially if you start to brand and associate your brand with this investment. So maybe construction costs go up 10% but then you're seeing realizing a savings over many years later 50, 60%. So at the end of the day I think having the courage to spend a little more upfront to design and build and manage and operate sustainably is going to deliver all the end results on the back end when it comes to your brand, your partnerships and the growth of your business, the stable cost structure. So if not even improving that by having these efficient technologies. So I'm thinking that's where the shift needs to happen. We need to stop watching the stock ticker and start thinking about our long-term impact of our decisions. I think some of our viewers agree with you based on the heart emojis and thumbs up coming around but Francois, your final thoughts on the question. Yeah and your question is around what new thinking I would answer actually what new context will position sustainability as strategic even more than it was before. I think the context is I think Jason mentioned a little bit about it is like the acceleration of demand with the AI coming in. We're seeing every single day of an announcement and we did ours this weekend of like billions of financing to build new data centers, gigawatts and super massive facilities. And the thing is data center used to be the super desired investments so communities were doing all what they had to do to attract investment. I think now I'm seeing the reverse happening is like now data center needs to convince community to welcome this huge facility and there is an increasing challenge of acceptability of the data center like community accepting to actually also data centers. And how do they accept? They accept if you're sustainable. So my bottom line is like sustainability is period like your license to operate if we want to continue to grow as an industry. We have no choice but actually to be sustainable. It's not just financial. We discuss about the financial aspect of it but it's a financial from an aspect of if you want to continue to grow and to serve your customers has to be sustainable and not just like using renewable energy being energy efficient but also look at more dimension of sustainability like use of resources, water is an increasing area of attention, biodiversity, land usage. In Europe land usage is a big deal and so reusing existing building rather than building Greenfield for instance. And so all those things are by default strategic right and they're you know right there like a front and center of any decision. And so clearly for me the era is now you have no there it's a good thing right you have to be have a sustainable credential very well established otherwise you're not just going to be able to build. Excellent thank you very much Francois and a great great answer is gentlemen. I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next question. Sustainability risk management SRM is a growing field that aims to balance potential to balance potential to balance the potential to address ESG risk against a business's profit objectives. How is your business working to address sustainability risk and what principles guide your mitigation strategies? I love this question I'm sorry that I put you're asking it but Jason let's go ahead and start with you. Sure we just published our first ESG report this year or 2022 but have had a very strong ESG program for the last probably you know three or four years specifically. I run our customer advisory council as well so I get to engage with a lot of our big clients to understand you know where their heads are at in terms of climate and sustainability initiatives and I I will definitely say it's you know it is top of mind we're actually holding another workshop here in a month to understand you know changing requirements and changing needs that they have and as you you may know the SEC has a new climate reporting standard that is hitting public companies here in 2024 so making sure that they can at least report out their energy you know consumption and sort of clean energy capabilities is super important to them you know we've been part of the science-based SBTI science-based initiatives as well as IMAISIN's climate accord you know it's really trying to set standards and understand standards on Francois mentioned PUE it still seems like it's the lowest common denominator that most of us can get our heads around but it's it's got to go beyond that to being able to you know really provide you know almost a blockchain of electrons and where they're coming from and where they're going to to really track you know the the usage and really being able to prove to our customers where power comes from I've spent way way more time and I'm a technology guy talking to power companies in the last you know a couple years and I thought I ever would and it's the whole supply chain of of you know transmission and generation and you know where their renewables and and you know low emission or no emission capabilities are coming from and you know they've been sort of dealing with the supply chain issues just like anybody else which is why we have you know conditions in California and Virginia and others where it's just impossible to even you know get power from a traditional energy source so lots of dynamics and really you know spending more and more time as a company and I would say as an industry understanding what those dynamics are and planning for the future and getting ahead of it very good thank you Jason Michael your thoughts yeah so we're approaching this from from both the operator and the tenant perspective on the operator side for site selection we're trying to get ahead of what our clients are looking for they are looking for sustainable sustainable developments and platforms to to grow the scale has never been bigger so it's also probably the most challenging time to find those solutions but we're getting ahead we're finding sites where like we believe you could build a platform for one of the most sustainable data centers in the world in multiple markets but the timelines are often challenging for them right you have to work with the community you have to work with municipalities local governments you have to find partnerships you find that a lot with especially trying to try to fit data centers into for example district energy systems right in North America we don't have quite as robust a platform of district energy systems as maybe Europe but it's getting there there's a lot of interest and quite frankly there's a lot of value in that waste heat and reusing it for other uses but it does take time to put those partnerships together so we're trying to get ahead and and put those programs in place for our clients ahead of time and that ties back into what I was saying and RFIs and RFPs for our end user tenants as well I mean they see this as a risk the data center is it's been a lofty industry and there's been a lot of growth but at the same time like there are groups that have been left in the wayside there's been some bankruptcies over the last few years so like our tenants were educating our clients of the financial health of the operators that are providing their services as well as the sustainability metrics that are being reported on because these are seen as long-term risks if you wait for the regulations to kick in and all of a sudden big capital costs are required to stay competitive or stay within a regulation what does that mean for the operator does that mean it goes into a separate fund and it's going to get sold like these these are all questions that end users and tenants are looking at when assessing sites and again it goes beyond the initial term of the service agreement or the lease they're looking they're trying to look 10 15 years and beyond what's going to happen so really getting ahead of these trends I think is it is how we're trying to help our clients mitigate these risks excellent thank you very much Michael Pete how is your organization working to address sustainability risk and what principles guide your mitigation strategies well I mean I think I think the the important thing about this is it's about making sure that you've got strong governance in place and that organization I mean it's always kind of been there for organizations over time and it will really kind of drive them drive them forward and make them a more agile business as they as they move forward so I think getting as much information as you can and really kind of thinking about your landscape is is really important so I think the the organizations really need to kind of think about that and they need to really think about how they're positioning themselves and also position themselves against their customers needs and kind of reduce some volatility to their customers as well so we've seen that with the energy prices that we've had in Europe recently where prices have been very high and I think that from a business point of view both from a risk and an alignment to the customers needs is is crucial so organizations can make sure that they are aligned to to give their customers less volatility around that around that and also allow them to have the the relevant kind of security of supply as well so all of those risks are really nicely aligned to meeting what the customers are looking for in the future and and I think that aligns to also the customers kind of net zero aspirations as well as well very good thank you Pete Francois your thoughts yeah so on how is it a risk management or an opportunity management I mean we can debate for a long time but we take it more from a positive side that with the way we've organized is we call the data for good program where we have zero stream with the environment side of thing it's it's a fairly standard CSR program with like also the social responsibility and and the committee but more recently what we added is definitely a more detailed stream on governance and reinforcing the governance and measurement and the reporting we talked about some public disclosure that I think in Jason mentioned in in the US that is coming coming also in Europe with what we call the CSR directive coming into play where people will have to report anyway publicly and so we we also part of the climate neutral data center fact in Europe we are certified that we have certified our carbon trajectory with SBTI as well so there's definitely a huge stream on on this part of I would say not governance from a human perspective but from a data and from a measurement perspective and frankly some days I I feel I'm just doing reporting right between our customers our investors and our and the the public authority we are reporting a lot of of data on on that so but we see this reporting as an opportunity also to to drive into to be more efficient in the day-to-day business so it's not just important to to improve right so that's how that's how we we do it and we will continue to do this but clearly this this is this principle and we also added a stream on very recently more like local territories and how we contribute to the community I think that's important back to my first comment on the new context about getting the permit to to grow actually and if you don't address the local communities you're not going to get that permit so doing specific outreach to local communities to explain what is the digital economy I mean pretty basic you know like kids in college they they don't always understand that when they play tick tock there is actually physical infrastructure and a server somewhere right it's not in the cloud it's actually in a very hard you know existing facility just around the corner so when you start like okay and that's kind of I think it's also important to to build that knowledge in that understanding thank you Francois and Raymond your final thoughts on the question yeah so lots of good answers Francois gave me up for a few different things there so I appreciate that I do believe and agree with you that the risks are opportunities at EchoSense we've we've released recently our compliance package for ESG so obviously being based in Europe we have a different response and a different preparedness for this for these directives that are coming online that have teeth and that are financially risks obviously for the company so those compliance and reporting we don't want guys like Francois spending all day making reports right we want to be able to streamline that process for him so that he can get back to doing what he does best so I think compliance and reporting are what we are leaning into to support obviously the company itself is founded on getting to net zero so you know we we're very in alignment very much in alignment with this I look at it financially obviously there would be penalties we want to future proof the Americas with what's going on in Europe and prepare us over in the States to be ready when we do have teeth when anything if something can't get through our Congress and it has teeth we're going to need to be ready for it and so ultimately I think that's a big risk the other risks I think are are coming from a branding perspective as well as a perspective of you know how conscious are you and how where are you of the community impact right so Francois is mentioning earlier what is the community impact and how vested are you in the local community so if you're not branding yourself with being forward thinking thinking about the planet and our resources right we've talked about the utility grid and what type of power you're getting how clean is this power how sustainable is this power source so you know all these things are a bit overlap a little bit but they're all risked to our way of life and our professional ways of life right so I think it's important to save the money it's important to be aligned properly with the community and with the future where we want to go but ultimately I think the the greatest risk is to the fact that you know we only have one planet one home that provides us all of this all the blessings that we have so ultimately the biggest risk is we are not we're not going to hand over a sustainable healthy planet to our next generation I think you know aligning with that as your your your tent pole that holds up your tent is very very positive way to address this and mitigate your risk and and I think financially is the easiest way is to to be compliant gather the data make sure that you're in in in compliance and that'll be the best way to mitigate it short term excellent Raymond thank you very much any other thoughts on this question before we move on all right then I am going to move on next question how do you see risk analysis from a sustainability perspective playing out in your conversations with your clients let me go ahead and read that one more time how do you see risk analysis from a sustainability perspective playing out in your conversations with your clients Pete let's go ahead and start with you yeah I think I think the whole kind of risk analysis sustainability discussion is a different discussion that's probably been had before across once again multiple industries um historically it can be very transactional um and just very much a um you know a deal by deal basis and I think there is a both a the risk side of things and an opportunity also um by having this dialogue with organizations and your customers just clearly shows where you are as an organization and I think it's uh you know been discussed already that you know sustainability will become a ticket to the game rather than just a selling point but also the risk management of what you're doing and the huge requirement of energy the right type of energy coming into data centers how it's sourced and what you're doing and also looking at various other elements you know price volatility as we talk about security of supply yeah there's a lot of work that's being done and requests that we see around adaptation so actually managing climate changing living with climate change as well so having those discussions with your customers and saying what you're actually doing and what your forward plans are are hugely beneficial and so that's taking those risks and showing that you're actually concentrating on those and turning it into an opportunity because organizations and especially you know some of the bigger organizations that are taking data and long-term contracts from data centers will want to know that they're within an established business that's got a plan in place so I think by having those discussions and highlighting the risk and how you're managing them could turn into a longer term opportunity amazing answer there uh Francois your thought yeah I think I mean I'd like to add a slightly different approach to this which is risk analysis and time to market actually in the ideal world if there was no time to market you would go to the best site with the best grid connection 100% renewable energy you would spend a lot of time in designing and etc etc but then you would deliver capacity in 2035 and today I think what we're seeing the demand most of the selection is driven by availability more than actually the perfection of the the sustainable side it's a bit of a I would prefer not to but that's the real life and there is a race for data center capacity right now we're seeing that there is a you know more demand than real supply given we talked about AI and everything and so it's a bit of a it will normalize obviously and over the course of three to five years it will be a bit more I would say yeah I try to really optimize the sustainability part but for today I think I see our client just taking capacity where they can actually and it's a bit of a bitty but that's that's a reality and and up to us also as operator to to catch up real quick on the next generation of data centers and be able to propose this on real real quick and I think we are serving like a large corporate and hyper scalars they all have pretty ambitious sustainability goals so the risk I mean for us we have to use 100% renewable energy be efficient on the on the energy etc etc so that is not even a risk analysis it's just you're in the game or you're not right so from their perspective and but then with the mitigation of availability right and time to market I'm seeing a lot of shaking I'm nodding of the the other panelists Jason that includes you what are your thoughts yeah I mean it is a little bit of a interesting time right now just if you have capacity somewhere somebody will take it and it probably doesn't matter which I think is a bubble of that you know latency is a AI killer at the end of the day so ultimately stringing out you know capacity across different regions and states and countries you know limits some of the use cases that you can do there so I think it will eventually come back together but you know what I'm seeing with with our customers it really started maybe with with COVID which was an interesting time of just disruption you know kind of in our in our industry in the world right so thinking about risk and having more conversations about it and then you know talking about ESG and DEI kind of during that time because it was a very sensitive time in terms of just you know people worrying about their families and their health and and then sort of shifting a couple years forward and talking about sustainability and environmental goals there's a little bit of you know we're going to kind of roll into a recession and we're really worried about optimization and we spent a lot of extra money during COVID so how do we how do we make sure we're balanced the cost to you know our sustainability and ESG goals and then I would say now it's very much the conversation is okay ESG your goals prove it to me that you know you put your money where your your mouth is and I think that's we're seeing that more and more with our customer conversations you know which is why we've you know really focused on our reporting but also you know things like our green bonds that we did you know two years ago I think was the largest you know data center asset back security deal focused using you know green bond which you know ultimately requires us to make sure we're conforming to those requirements so I think you know customers want to make sure that you are you're able to prove it essentially today which I think is different from three or four years ago in the conversations very good Jason thank you Raymond your thoughts yeah you know I think um what's interesting I'll take a slightly different tack those are all great answers and uh I kind of covered it is I think from the perspective of working with your customer to mitigate risk you need to be willing to have the uncomfortable conversation you also need to be willing to help hold their hand through the process of understanding how how do you become more sustainable and how does that measure up with your financials and your your vision and your plan for your business I mean this is throwing a monkey wrench into a lot of people's goals and ambitions right to race out as they said find capacity and build and build if they have to take a step back and look at their business holistically and figure out what do I want to measure how am I going to report it and what am I going after when it comes to a sustainability perspective most clients are uneducated frankly at this point they're used to you know day-to-day doing what they have to do to get the job done they're not spending all their days becoming experts on sustainability so our job is to obviously hold their hand through this process and then and be able to ask the tough questions but also have solutions ready right if I uncover the pain and I put them in a state of of disrepair and they're a little concerned I need to have some solutions for them as well that will help them to address this but I think that is to me or the rubber meets the road is is having uncomfortable conversations get used you know get comfortable being uncomfortable and helping them to have the tough calls like I want to build I have capacity and I you know I want to spend this X amount of dollars in this perspective but if I don't tackle and I don't put money towards reporting I don't put this process together maybe that ends up impacting me in a way that I that I really can't handle in the next you know a couple few quarters etc so I just think that is important right making sure that you are able to work through these things hand in hand with your customer and that's really going to I think build and strengthen your relationship in the long run and at the end of the day hopefully get a sustainable metrics and you know installed and integrated thank you Raymond and Michael yeah number one completely agree with both Jason and France was point on this here vacancy rates are certainly a challenge especially when we're representing tenants like it when when your options are limited by what's available on the market I mean you can wait sustainability all you want and all of those metrics but if it comes down to two options there's not too much that you're ranking and that has led to a rush to market for operators as well focusing on what's available now what can they what can they get to market as quick as possible and like some of those some of those sites are in are being selected in less than sustainable grits but you know what I mean there's unprecedented demand right now and those sites will perform well hopefully there's as many other strategies as they can to increase the efficiency and and reduce the overall impact I mean that's really that's really a challenge that we're seeing right now and I would just add on to the the tenant perspective in speaking with our clients and really trying to understand like what's driving these decisions to focus on sustainability one thing that has come up over and over again is it's not just them and your client that you should be focused on it's your clients clients and your clients clients clients they all have these goals they all have these metrics that they're that they're pursuing when they're pitching on business they're including ESG and how their organization pairs up with their competitors right so again it goes it goes beyond just the pure financials of of the projects and the deals that we're currently working on and goes into I mean really the the overall operation of of their company sometimes it has to do with their financing sometimes it has to do with winning new business right but I mean the more you look at it there's there's a significant network effect to these requirements when one company when one company implements these the sustainability goals it can drive many other companies to adopt those same strategies excellent Michael thank you very much and gentlemen I'll bet you didn't know that we've already talked for 42 minutes so we're gonna we're gonna move through the next two questions a little quicker but I definitely want to get to those excuse me and we may end up going a little bit over and that's okay so next question when it comes to business case development how can operators link it back to overall customer need net zero ambitions and carbon reporting I'm gonna start with Pete on this one yeah I'll be I'll try to be as brief as possible but it's a good good question nonetheless um I think he's um it's really about knowing your customer and really understanding what they really require um we've worked with a data center provider who's who's really trying to link up with their larger customers who are for a long-term sustainable sourcing of renewable energy for example so it's looking into that I think there's a lot of talk about scope one scope two and scope three and everybody is scope three of somebody at some stage and so it's making sure you are aligned to to your to your customers and ultimately that's how that then filters into the business case but ultimately if you get your business case right and you can show there's a customer demand for it and a customer requirement for it and you can identify that and show that and then that should be able to you know create a really good solid structure to any business case because there's a need and I think it's a line into those needs but understanding and identifying those needs and being able to articulate that awesome thank you Pete Raymond yeah um you know I'm thinking my mind immediately jumped to when you said operations uh acceptance of new technology new directives and new goals and training of those folks on the on the ground level is something I've been focusing on a lot more lately as I find the higher ups and and the business may make decisions on how to embrace sustainability and ESG but then getting it to water down to the local level and actually getting those gentlemen to embrace it and to see the value and to do it on a day-to-day basis I think is actually an important conversation to have so not exactly answering your question but I think from an operational level on the on the local level at the bottom level we need to spend time educating and empowering those guys because they're the ones that I actually have to make the changes in their day-to-day routines and lines to impact and to integrate these these sustainability metrics right so whether that's running new reports or doing new activities or new methods of procedure etc so I think that's important to to get the low level the the I would say low level but the boots on the ground bought into this and trained up very good Raymond thank you to Francois yeah I mean when you when you look at the data center operators and the way they sell to the customer on the large basis it's rental plus energy right the rental market the rental piece is fairly I would say consolidated and mature the energy piece is more interesting because it's always a pass through back to back to the customers and with what happened in the energy market especially here in Europe where conventional energy has gone up to 100 and 100 of euro per megawatt hours it has created an interesting dynamic on the energy side because you make the business case for specific solution for on-site energy or renewable energy a lot more interesting to customer actually and so where the he didn't used to be such a differentiator it is starting to be and it will be more and more and especially now that also with a grid infrastructure being a bit constrained you seeing site with no guarantee of supply 100% of the time so what do you do then and then you can start having interesting a solution on the energy side so I could spend hours on that but really I see the future where you can work a lot on the energy part of the equation I feel like we probably should spend hours on that at some point but unfortunately we're going to move along Michael your thoughts yeah so I mean for the business cases sustainability can't you can't stress enough how important it is right now I think there's a little bit more weight that's put on financial decisions because of what's going on in the overall economy there are challenges there but at the same time when operators are implementing business cases now you're not talking about the next six months the next 12 months you're talking about the next five years if you wait for us to get through the current economic turmoil quite frankly it will be too late to start implementing those strategies these things take time there's a lot of capital involved so I mean those those that will succeed here and and really start creating some competitive advantages are already working on it and they've been working on it for years so it's it's not so much it's not it's not a want it's a need it's a question of how how quickly are you going to lean into sustainability as an argument for your business case very good and Jason to put a button on this question no I think ultimately you know not having these capabilities as part of the business case really just as a non starter right so it's it's got to be there otherwise the opportunity cost you're not going to have any customers left right because ultimately I think it will you know be a requirement but I think to Michael's point as well it's you know the the power capabilities and just the demand cycle is in this weird state where you know right now if you can go work with the with the local or state government that has you know good power capacity and has a good road map it's just easier to get things done and easier to move faster and we're starting to see you know a lot of shifting workloads out of traditional tier one locations in the US to you know these tertiary secondary markets that continue to be you know some of the fastest growing markets in the world now so you know things are definitely changing but the focus has to be on these or you just can't you won't be able to compete in the market excellent Jason thank you very much for that all right guys we're gonna we're gonna jump to the speed dating round of the round table today I'll give you each 30 seconds to answer this question let's look at some fun here um what will sustainability sustainability's role be in the competitive landscape and so um by by talking about sustainability as a key differentiator what will sustainability's role be in the competitive landscape and Jason will just kick it back over to you I mean you're already seeing it it's it's the you know what's the magic quadrant now of your sustainability capabilities as a data center operator so it's already starting to happen and and you know the transparency is rising for sure which I think is a great thing to help the competitive dynamics and making sure that we can continue to stay relevant but also the competitive dynamics help to make sure that we you know continue to innovate and stay relevant with our customer base awesome Jason thank you Raymond yeah I mean I think Jason nailed it on the head here you can't be competitive if you're not already frankly and I think Michael hit it on the head if you haven't been working on this and you're already not actively doing projects and taking steps you're going to lose uh outmarket share pretty quick so obviously I think at this stage of the game you need to be uh promoting your plans and your visions for how sustainability is going to be integrated and you need to be very transparent about the challenges right and then I think at that at the end of the day it's a lot easier conversation when you're promoting where you want to go being transparent about the challenges and then you can have more of a collaborative connection with your customers hopefully aligning with all the the larger the logos out there that are our clients clients right and what they want excellent thank you Raymond Michael yeah I'm gonna reiterate a couple points I made earlier like vacancy rate is already higher and in older facilities that are less efficient that will continue to be this the case I mean if we if we see energy costs continue to increase like they have the benefits of locating it in a more sustainable site will only become more pronounced so I know this is a trend it's it's going to continue and it's it's it's really a need for operators to stay relevant and competitive thank you very much Francois yeah I'll repeat myself from the beginning I think sustainability is a license to operate and is a license to grow I mean you won't be able to and I'm repeating what you a lot of just said is you're not going to be able to to expand your business without sustainability and the bar will be rising the legislation and the jurisdiction and the customer expectation and the citizen expectation will always continue to rise look at the latest at german law where you need to use pu etc there's just a start it will get stricter and stricter and so you better start early and be the first mover very good and Pete final word yeah I think he's been said it's a it's a ticket to the game if it's if it's done right and well in the future it will be definitely a ticket to the game it's done right now it might give you some some advantage and but ultimately if you're not on top of it and you're not doing it right and you you know the word greenwashing is there's not been used too much but it should be used a lot you know if you cut a corner here and there you will be found out because your competitors are going to be doing a better job than you and then to the point in front of us so you know regulation will come and get you because you get tighter and tighter as the years go on so uh so yeah you better be doing it right and it will uh because ultimately it will be a uh a norm over time very good Pete thank you very much and thank you to all of our speakers for your insights on this very important topic today I was tuning in if you enjoyed today's roundtable please keep an eye out for greener data volume two one day 2024 and in the meantime visit greener data dot net for sustainability content and resources for our next roundtable on december 7th at 1 p.m eastern we will be joined by telecom ramblings editor rob powell we love rob over here uh to moderate a panel on the topic new year predictions for infrastructure and sustainability and that my friends is a wrap a look out for the playback of today's roundtable coming soon to jc tv and jc podcast on youtube itunes i heart spotify and more in the meantime please join the panelist and i back in the networking lounge and happy networking