 Hello and welcome to JSA TV and JSA broadcasts, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jean-Marc Slim and joining me today in London is Jonathan Evans, Director for Total Data Center Solutions. Jonathan, thanks a lot for talking to me. Maybe let's start with you introducing yourself a little bit and talking a little bit about total data center solutions. But also, how are you doing anyway with everything that's going on? Let's start with that. I'm doing really well. Thank you. I've been very, very busy during the lockdown, because I haven't been travelling. It's been an opportunity to do a lot more work I've found in the last 12 months. You know, not having to cut flights everywhere and drive around the country makes a huge difference in terms of what you can do. And I think we can work far more effectively when we compact things into a meeting on Zoom. But of course, it's much more boring than going out for a few days after a meeting. So yeah, just to tell you a bit about myself. I started when I have college as a boat designer, but I couldn't make a living from boat designing. So I ended up designing computer rooms or data centers as they are now, but computer rooms as they were then. How does the leap year form boat designing to a data center this time? Just going to an employment agency and showing them all my drawings. And they said, oh, you can design computer rooms if you can design boats. I said, maybe I'll give it a try. So it's been a good living for me ever since. You know, it's been a great industry to be in and I've really enjoyed all of it really. So then in 2002, I started total data center solutions working with a company in Ireland called Global Switch as it was then and Citadel 100 as it is now. I then went to work in the UK for various co-location startups. And in 2010, I went to work for a company in Norway called Green Mountain. And they were located on the side of a fjord and in Norway in a spectacular location. The data center was an old NATO bunker and they were converting it into a data center. So that was really interesting for me because I got into the sustainability piece and I had to market Norway as a data center destination. And at that time, it was a completely different situation to what it is today in terms of people accepting sustainability as a big part of it. So I worked with a number of viewers and I went to work in Luxembourg for a company there. And all the time I was expanding the portfolio of GDCS to include other sustainable technology solutions. I now work amongst other things I work for NodePole in Sweden and for Eco Data Center for Climate Positive Data Center in Sweden. So that's where I am now doing a few different things a range of solutions really just to try and lower the carbon footprint and operating costs of IT. And you've been a big driver of the conversation around sustainability in Europe. Like you mentioned especially Green Mountain and Lux Connect as well. How would you describe the states of the data center market in Europe when it comes to sustainability and climate change and climate issues? Well, I'd say we're getting there now. We made huge steps forward in awareness and action for reducing IT carbon footprints. I started on it 10 years ago in particular in Europe and the Nordics. The US I think still lags behind a little bit but there are a few exceptions of course like switch data center in the US with this huge solar farm and battery solution and the hyperscalers in the US carving a bit of a path and reducing their carbon footprint as well as doing it worldwide. The only issues I have really regarding greenwashing which is a horrible phrase but it's the renewable energy certificates might fit that description Rex as they're called. You buy a megawatt of electricity generated from a renewable source and then you run your green data center in Germany. But of course you're not really running on green electrons. That's where it's had a bit of a bad reputation as perhaps not quite the green solution we'd expect. Yeah, well, it's interesting that you pick up on that because some of the conversations I remember having in the real world when we were allowed out there was that a lot of people talking in the backstage of a lot of the conferences they were talking about how it has cool to become green or it has become cool to become green but at the same time people are really talking about where the green energy is coming from. So they just want a seal of approval that they are green but they don't really provide information on how green is your green. And a lot of the times the energy they take from the green it's not as green as you might portraying your data center. Is that still happening a lot today? Yeah, it is I'm afraid. Yeah, it's funny enough we're just thinking about the fact that some other hyperscalers now are really trying hard to source green energy with on-site generation from big solar farms and battery solutions and wind turbine solutions. But a lot of the big data centers are still being built in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London and Dublin where they all have power issues and none of them are 100% green. In fact, they say that there's a 1200 megawatts of planned data centers to be built in the next three years in those cities. So we're still a long way from being a green industry in that respect and there's not much we can do about it when you build a data center in Frankfurt or London they just aren't running on green power. Yeah, well, they will start involving a lot more parties, a lot more hands will need to come into the game. But I mean, you mentioned the 1000 megawatts across those four big markets or five of them could go in as well. Oh, yes, I'll put one down, please. Yeah, well, now it has to be the big five. But then I mean, we also have about another 1000s coming between Portugal and Moscow with several other projects in several countries, especially Spain, Poland, Italy. We just have a few acquisitions in Italy as well. I mean, where do you see the green data center market going really and what lessons can co-location providers take away from the hyperscalers? Because they have been pioneers with a lot of things that are happening. The Nordics have been huge pioneers as well, especially with heat reuse and all the soft stuff. But what lessons do you think these companies need to take now to put into action? Because this is not something that you think about in five, 10 years time, you need to think about it now. Absolutely, I think one of the big things would be investing on on-site generation, you know, like Switch did, and like we're offering in the UK where you have big solar farms on fields next to it or on waste ground next to a data center. And then you have wind turbines as well and then big battery solutions to store the energy when it's being generated so that you can run the majority of the time on your green energy with a stable battery supply and only have to top it up with the grid occasionally. And that would give you much better frequency control as well because the frequency is a big issue in some of these countries now where they're running on some green energy and some gas-fired turbines and that type of thing. So the grid has become a little bit unstable in that respect. So the more they do with on-site generation, the better. And of course, they can try and move some of their data centers to the Nordics. At the end of the day, it's much easier to transmit bytes than it is to transmit kilowatts, you know? And when you transmit kilowatts across the ocean from Norway to England, you lose a vast majority of the power in the transmission losses. So it's much better to anything that's not, you know, not sensitive to latency can be put in the countries where the green generation is occurring. So that's another lesson I hope for you, telling data center operators to take away with them, you know? Yeah, that's definitely interesting because I mean, we've had this discussion before where not all the data needs to be as close to you as some more important data. For example, your Facebook data might not be as important to having close to you. Has it used to having medical data or autonomous cars, data, especially the edge? Absolutely. But so you could have the edge data centers around Sweden and you could have, sorry, around Germany and the UK and even while the big data being shown in Sweden, you know, you could data center, took on BMW as a client the other day, just for a lot of their number crunching, I guess you called it, you know? And obviously as a consequence, BMW reduced their carbon footprint and they reduced their energy bill. So that's got to be the way forward really, just have the edge data where it needs to be close to the cities and then the rest of it can be in big data centers out in remote places like the Swedish countryside or the Norwegian floors. But no, but that's interesting. I mean, you mentioned eco-data center, eco-data center as well. I think that's the one that was built with woods. That's right, yes. Yeah, through like all the initiatives that you've also been involved because you've been quite involved with eco-data center. Do you want to talk us through the initiatives that are being done? These are initiatives like that one, like building a data center out of woods. How viable is that to transport the technology into other countries? Well, you know, all of the technologies I'm involved in really, they can be copied in other countries. A wooden data center, it's not just made of any old wood, it's made of highly compressed wood, to the extent that it doesn't burn, it's just the outside of it gets a carbon layer and the inside stays structurally safe. So a wooden data center can be built anywhere really, like the Birle Airport Terminal is out of wood now. And of course, you've got an embedded carbon then in the data center from day one because the wood has an embedded carbon in it. And I was told the other day that to build the data center for eco-data center only took five minutes of growth from the Swedish forests. Now, how they work that out, I do not know, but that's what they told me. And so that's one of the initiatives. The other thing of course, when you're building a new green data center as a location, you have to be able to get rid of the waste heat from the servers. And if you can't do that, it's stuck really. And that's one of the things that most of the data center operators fall down on. Data centers in remote locations where they can't use the heat for anything else. That's something which is much more difficult to overcome. Obviously, eco-data center was put somewhere where they could reuse the heat for a local, would chip manufacturing plant under the local district heating. So yeah, those are the two takeaways from eco-data center. The other things I'm working on are the battery storage and the solar farms. And we're doing that with a new type of business model, whether it's no-cap-ex or op-ex. We provide all of the multi-megawatt batteries and the solar farms with no-cap-ex or op-ex and sharing the savings in the reduced power bill. So, and also there's a carbon footprint reduction. That's a nice, simple way of reducing your carbon footprint with no cost to you. The other thing I'm really passionate about at the moment and I have been for some time is emotion pooling. I don't know if you've come across that yet, Joel, but I find emotion pooling really, really interesting. It's quite a big one. It's quite interesting to put essentially servers into water, but it's not water. Yeah, I mean, essentially, you've got something like a chest freezer which you fill with a non-conductive liquid and then you put the servers into the liquid and it's so effective at taking away heat compared to water. You know, you don't get many cars which are still running on air-cooled engines anymore because it's just not an effective way to cool something. It's about using immersion pooling. We teamed up with a company called Green Revolution Cooling in the States, actually. And they've been doing it for 10 years now and it's becoming a bit more accepted over there but it's still not much accepted here. But using it, you know, you get what, three or 4% of the power demand that you do from an air-cooled solution and then much smaller as well, you know, much less space required. I mean, I really think immersion pooling is going to have a huge impact on data center design in the few years. And I think everybody involved in it, especially the investors should keep an eye on it because if somebody can build a data set that's 30% cheaper in two or three years' time than what they're spending today, then it's going to make a big difference to their business model, you know. So that's another thing. So that's their money. Yeah. And obviously, you know, I like IT Renew. You know, they reuse existing HPC servers and they save about 25% of the carbon footprint to building a new rack, a new set of servers. So that's a nice technology as well. I'm trying to look across all these different things. I've also just come across a company that turns hot water into electricity. I'm really interested in that. Well, I haven't heard of that one. What was that? It's a completely new solution and I'm really excited about it. And it works on ships. I want to find out if it works with the immersion pooling. Okay, that's interesting. That one I haven't heard about before. No, no, I'd say it's fascinating. If it works, it would be brilliant because then you don't have to worry about reusing the waste heat from the servers when you're in remote locations. You can use it to generate electricity and stuff it back into the grid. So that's something which is really interesting for me. It makes the whole process much more straightforward. But I mean, one thing that you actually said, and this would be, I think our last question as well, was that you have to have the consideration of building your data center somewhere close enough where you can reuse the heat to transport to somewhere else, to heat houses, schools, hospitals, whatever you wanna heat with. I mean, that's quite interesting because that's the new consideration of building the modern data center. What other considerations do you think operators and collocators and even investors have to look at when it comes to building data centers of today and the future? Because I mean, everything we're talking about, saving the climate, saving the energy, gain, gain, gain, renewable sustainability. All those things have to be done today because five, three years time will be too late and they have to be done today. I mean, all the projects are breaking round now. That's right. That's right. What do you think they really need to look at now? What are the top three considerations they need to have when building the modern data center to make it green and sustainable? Well, I would say on-site generation is number one. If you can, or green sourcing, obviously. That is the key to it and that can be done anywhere, really anywhere in Europe. As long as, I mean, you can't do it in London. You can do it in most places. The other things would be if you can locate data centers in the Nordics, you know, because obviously that's a no brainer in terms of reducing your carbon footprint. And as I said, I'm really passionate about emulation cooling. I think that's going to have a massive impact on data center design and power consumption. Those are my key takeaways, I guess. Okay, Jonathan, thank you so much. There's so much stuff there that we need a proper follow up at some point, especially the ones that are electricity, I really like that. It's all on my website. I'm really just about to watch an electricity one. I'm definitely going to check that one out. Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for talking to me and taking the time to share your insights. And thank you to our viewers at home as well for watching JSA TV and JSA broadcast. And don't forget to also check our social media channels for more news from us. Until next time, happy networking.