 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Welcome everyone to a special edition of Data Movers Podcast. It's the greener data edition. So welcome, welcome. I'm your host, Jamie Scott-Okitaya, CEO and founder of JSA, along with my fabulous co-host, top B2B social media influencer, Mr. Evan Kirstel. Hey Evan. Hey Jamie, hey everyone. Welcome to Data Movers, where we sit down with the most influential men and women in today's leading telco and data center world, supporting our network infrastructure requirements. Jamie, how are you? Really good, really good. It's crazy April already. There's so much, so much going on, April our month, our planet's month. We're excited to be chatting with you today. Likewise. So I see you're at home, although you have a fake background, so I won't ask about that. But do you have a lot of technology at home, smart technology, IoT, smart applications? Are you a techie adopter, as well as being a thought leader? For sure. My husband drags me along. Yeah, he's a tech guru. And so ever since knowing him actually, his homes and then our collective home has been very high tech. Yeah. And so there's tech that really is fun and sort of entertainment. For example, I have my Phillips Hue lighting and when it rains, the Phillips lighting turns purple, so purple rain. I enjoy all the gadgets and all that stuff, but any beyond entertainment, any use cases for your gadgets or tech that are kind of actually for good, either for environmental reasons or energy saving, things like that. Well, I'll tell you, this Grinner Data Series podcast have been giving me so many great ideas. Both Dean Nelson and Bill Claimin had given us some apps that I'm like, I need to try out, making sure I'm regulating my water usage at home and energy efficiencies. So I'm excited to definitely get more green with my tech. Right now I'm in baby mode. So my biggest tech probably be Nannet to making sure that my baby's breathing and sleeping well at night. That's a good use case, yes. Yeah. I need something that keeps my plants alive in my home. So maybe that's a good use of technology. Maybe self-watering, I'll have to look into that. Well, maybe our next guest has some ideas for tech inside the home as well. He's a visionary. I'm telling you, anyone here, it will be our friend, Wes Swenson. He's the CEO of Nova Data Centers. Welcome, welcome Wes, to date number one. Thanks for having me, appreciate it. Well, yeah, welcome Wes and we've chatted before and we'd love to get an update from you on the chapter, the content you contributed to the Grinner Data Book. It was called, It's Not Easy Being Green, Data Centers on Holistic Environmental Sustainability. That's a mouthful, but why don't you break it down for us? Yeah, I mean, I attempted to really define kind of the large spheres of environmental impact that data centers have and what we can do to remedy that, pretty quickly as a data center, describing things such as indirect emissions, from our energy providers. How can we influence that with renewable energy, solar, wind, storage, and then direct emissions, like, you know, selected catalytic reduction on generators, you know, when we run those generators for downtime or for testing. And then of course, you know, I'm a big advocate of waterless cooling, using zero water to do cooling, regardless of the environment you're in, whether it be high desert, cold desert, the plains, wherever it is, I think that data centers should really shift towards waterless cooling, either through free cool or what they call dry cooling with compressors. But I'm a big advocate of waterless cooling in the market. Yeah, absolutely. I was so fascinated by the way, guys, here's the book, Early Preview. Wow. I know, it's so cool, it's so amazing. But in your chapter, sorry, getting back to you, Wes. Yeah. In your chapter, I was really fascinated by how you talk about growing up in the 70s and the 80s, really influencing your view on the environment. Can you tell us a little bit more? Yeah, I'm dating myself a lot here, though I don't look, you know, like I'm born in the double odds either. But, you know, so I grew up in a time where, you know, we had console TVs, a Curtis Mathis, if anybody recalls that, we had like six channels. And, you know, so we had a pretty small world or influence at that time. And I grew up in an age when we saw Vietnam updates and then later, you know, the Cold War and Ronald Reagan. And then, you know, and during that time, you know, Earth Day started and, you know, even when I was in elementary school, there was a lot of talk about stop the flow and stop the drip, a lot of water conservation. And we had a lot of amber advertisements. I don't know if you remember the crying Indian, you know, with- Oh, classic. Yeah, the Native American and pollution. And so that had a big effect on me. But then in 1980, you know, I saw Cosmos from Carl Sagan. And that had a really profound effect on me as a young adult. You know, I just thought of the world a lot differently as Earth. And then later, as he called it, the pale blue dot, our place, you know, on Earth, then the solar system and the universe that, you know, we only have this one planet. And to really, I mean, it had a big impact on me. And then of course, you know, as we emerged from the Cold War, we had, you know, more time to think about more altruistic things, if you will. At least I feel that way. And I think the environment became, you know, a much bigger storyline, which it should have always been probably that maybe we just never really had the convenience of thought at the time. So for me, that's how I grew up. And that was how I was influenced, but it had a big impact. I would say Carl Sagan and Carl's most had a huge impact on me. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty deep. Yeah, I grew up with a father and a Volvo belching diesel smoke out of the back with no seatbelt on. So yeah, it's definitely times have changed and it's brand new thinking about the environment from that time. And, you know, just observing many data centers are getting a bad rap, some deservedly so on environmental impact. So what should the viewers, listeners take away regarding the current state of the art and data center sustainability and how to create greener facilities? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that if you think about data centers, these are like cruise ships, not speed boats. They take a lot of time to turn. They don't just flip around, right? Like a speed boat. So they take a lot of time. These are really, you know, there's a lot that goes into site selection, the design, the build and then the equipment of the age, right? So what we used to build 10, 15 years ago is different than what we build today. So it does take a deeper understanding again that these are not speed boats, that they take time to turn. But I think the biggest impact is that if you're doing a new build today or what we call a greenfield build, you should really be putting the environmental sustainability at the forefront of design when you're building one of these. As far as older data centers go, they can still have an impact in the change out of equipment. Even the slightest thing like moving to renewable energy with your energy provider. You know, we can be big agents of change and influencer on the environmental side of power which has a big impact. And then I think on waterless cooling that is generally something you can change out that is not always economically feasible. I would also say that it's up to the leaders in the data center industry to influence this change before say governmental impact changes are required. You know, they don't require data centers to go to renewable energy today but we can take the step towards doing that. I mean, why should we be told to do that? Quite honestly, we should take the first steps. I don't think it's like even, you know a lot of emissions control in a lot of these cities, some do require a selected catalytic reduction on the generators and some don't. To me, if you're installing a new generator, you should put it in. Even if it's not required, you should take a step. Things like that, I think are really up to the leaders in this industry to take steps towards rather than being told to do it. Well said, well said. And really that's one of the big pushes I'm hoping that comes out of reading greener data is that this is of the industry for the industry by the industry that we're taking the charge here and we have so much ground we can cover collectively as we are a big percentage of that global energy consumption. And you know, when I think about your amazing data center campus in Utah, which you opened in September last year, gosh, it's a pretty big, and oh yeah, wow. But anyway, I think of you as sort of a poster child if you will for how data centers can be more green. You really did so many wonderful things right. Can you tell our viewers, some of your data center sustainability features? Yeah, so this was a brand new design, something I'd been contemplating for years of a really large scale facility, but of course, renewable energy as part of that component through our energy provider, waterless cooling. So we use zero water to cool the facility and we achieve ratios, incredible ratios of say, for every kilowatt it takes to power a server, it takes 0.2 kilowatts to cool it. So it's very efficient on cooling. We also use ambient air. Part of the reason we selected the site we did, it sits at about 5,300 feet of elevation. And so we're able to use the cool winds coming in from the west that hit the mountain side and come into the data center. So we use that cool air also to accompany the cooling. We did almost three feet of insulation between the exterior and the interior of the data center. So it can work just like your home. So we have almost three feet of insulation, just the exterior walls are 14 inches thick. Again, just to cushion that energy consumption, we used low emissions, interior products, recycled materials, as many local vendors as we could use. We have a lead silver data center and office building. So we've done a lot, but it goes all the way from A to Z, which is site selection to even using a lot of local vendors just to reduce the amount of emissions that we produce to produce the data center. I think even the angles of the data center were chosen so that the equipment wasn't south facing so that the equipment is both east and west taking the shadows from the east during the day and the western winds in the afternoon. So a lot went into it in the design. Incredible. Well, it's on my bucket list to take a tour of the facility and then hang out for a couple of weeks in the mountains, by the way. All right, but until then, here at JSA and its clients, there's a lot of focus on greener infrastructure and the evolution of a cleaner data center environment. So where are we on this journey, do you think? Are we at the beginning, we're the first or second inning? Give us some context. Yeah, I mean, I consider it to be the early stages, quite honestly. I mean, if you think about it, the internet's 30, 31 years old, right? Since the Netscape browser. So I consider anybody I meet 30 years old to be pretty young. And I think the same of the internet, which and really data centers are just a byproduct of that. We've come a long way from just using a browser to now the internet of things and AI, driverless cars, we've come a long way in 30 years. So I really consider it to be at the beginning of the journey. I don't see an end to data centers, but I do see over the next 10, 15 years, kind of a refresh of older data centers built in the early stages that just are not efficient. They don't really serve the scale in which we do today, but I do see a big refresh coming on older data centers that maybe they're just not worth it to refresh. And it's just more efficient to build a new one with some of the new technology, especially the environmental technology. So I think evidence at the beginning stages. And then let's push the spectrum even further. Let's talk about the continued evolution of data center operations. Do you think data facilities will be dramatically different 50 years from now in terms of sustainability within their operations? 50 years, Jamie, I can barely think about five minutes ahead of time, but okay. Maybe five years we can. I already said 10, I had to go bigger. Okay, 500 years. I'll take a shot at it, Jamie. Yeah, I do think it will be considerably different. I think that you'll see things, maybe you like nuclear fusion, hydrogen. I think we could see different energy. I would bet within 50 years, we have part of this energy issue solved, at least in the more developed world. I could see this being solved for the most part. And that could be a combination of fusion renewables and hydrogen and things like that. I also think that we could, and I hope, you remember we're a byproduct, data centers are a byproduct of really usage by everyone and then the chip makers, right? That provide the chips to the servers that provide it to our clients. My belief is that we'll see rapid development on more efficient semiconductor technology and we'll see lower heat volumes and we'll see more efficient chips over the next several decades to where I'm hoping that the energy used by a data center becomes really low. I mean, we went from a phase where 10, 15 years ago, it was two kilowatts per cabinet. Today it's 10 to 15 kilowatt average. So we're doing more in the same footprint that I really do think that eventually those semiconductors will become more efficient and you could see data centers use a lot less energy, not only for the servers, but also for the cooling oil servers. Wow, amazing. Maybe the data centers could produce energy one day. Maybe we could at least certainly heat from homes. I can tell you that with what we produce, but I agree, Evan. I mean, yeah, it's who knows, but I do think it will be dramatically different in 50 years. Well, that's fascinating, but enough shop talk here. Well, we'll switch gears a little bit, our rapid fire, fun facts section about you, or we try to embarrass you or no, just find out something interesting about you. I'll do my best. Your background. All right, I'll start with the greener data chapter. You pulled a Kermit lyric out of the hat there for that, but for those who remember the Muppets, which probably aren't many people watching, what was your favorite Muppet? I've got to go with Oscar the Grouch, because... Yeah, he's pretty good. I like the Contrarian, right? And I vote for the underdog. So I've always been, always had a affinity for Oscar. Funny, that's, I would have never, I would have never peered you with him, never. But hey, what would you give, what would you say to your younger self? What advice would you give? I would say, what's the worst that could happen? Basically, right? I mean, if you take a chance, like what's the worst that could happen? You know, in business, especially in taking chances, taking risks, I mean, what's the worst that could happen? If I could tell myself that more often. And also, I think when you look up to people, they put one sock on at a time like anybody else. And we're all of the same carbon-based material. And a lot of times, it's just luck of the draw. But I really think what's the worst that could happen if you try? What's that? Fun, fun. Okay, hobbies, what are your favorites? What do you do when you're not building green data centers? Probably just outdoors, anything outdoors, hiking, biking, snowshoeing, fly fishing, you name it. Well, you're in the right place. That's how I am. I am, I'm in the heart of it. Yeah, so yeah, I would say anything outdoors. Can't go wrong in Utah. No. But now what companies do you admire for their sustainability efforts? You know, I'd say at least in, my world, Apple, I'm really, I'm amazed at what they do with their facilities and the surrounding communities. I mean, I've seen and driven by a lot of their locations and I'm just gobsmacked about the amount of solar and shading and just really, even down to a lot of times, data centers can be quite ugly, let's say. They do a lot for the aesthetics of their data centers and around the community. So I'm really appreciative of that, that kind of detail. I mean, a lot of times to me, that is, it may be 10% more cost, but it's like 80% more thought. Cause I do it myself and I know what it takes to make something look easy like that, right? But it does take a lot of forethought and I'm probably most appreciative of what they do as a company. Yeah, I love the recycling they do as well. It's just amazing to see that machines and the processes and inaction, very impressive. Speaking of which, we're traveling a lot more. Give us some advice of a place to visit in the world that you've loved or one of your favorites. I'd have to say it's Rome. I love Rome. Yeah, I love Rome. I love the art. It's just such a, it's an incredible city in the fact that it's modern. You have the Roman Forum when you drive by. It just is really like the coolest city. I've found everybody there to be extremely friendly. I love Rome. It's one of my favorite cities to go to. I'm too. I love that you said that. Yeah. Well, you're biased as an Italian. I know, I know. My daughter's middle name is Capri. I love it. All right, I'm going to give you a last one, easy one, but what is one book that you would recommend others to me? Well, other than greener data, Jamie, of course. The Bible? The Bible. Yeah. You know, I'm a huge fan of Count of Monte Cristo in fiction. It's a, it's a huge read that it is, it is one of those books. When I started, I can't put it in and I read it at least once a year and I just love, I love that book. And then nonfiction, probably one of my favorites is Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Just about science and myth and how we as humans have kind of adapted a lot of myth and really there's a scientific explanation for it. But fiction-wise, yeah, I love Count of Monte Cristo. Total escapism for me. Love it. Well, thanks for joining us, Wes. It's been great hearing from really the cutting edge of innovation on sustainability and data centers. It's so impressive what you're doing. I look forward to keeping in touch and touching base on current trends. It's been my pleasure. And, you know, I want to say, guys, check out our other Data Movers podcast with Wes as well where he really gets into some of the details of the design, the, you can tell he's an innovator and a designer and artist, a Renaissance man like we heard today. So you can do that at jsa.net slash podcast and go ahead and look up this one, which will be airing, of course, and we also release episodes every other week on Wednesday morning. So check us out. Awesome, thanks for having me. It was a pleasure. Yeah, always a pleasure. And follow us on Twitter at JS Goddow and Evan Kirstel and we'll engage you more there. Thanks, everyone. And thank you, everybody. Again, thank you so much, Wes. Your team at Nova, amazing. And everyone, please be safe out there. Happy networking and think green.