 Hello everyone and welcome to JSA TV and JSA Europe the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals across the continent. I'm Jean-Marc Slim and on behalf of the team here at JSA thank you for tuning in to our second of three parts of our end of the year special broadcasting series. Today we will be exploring how cutting edge data centers are not only meeting the demands of the digital age but also spearheading sustainable energy practices. We were looking to mirror out benefits and challenges offered by new energy sources and get a sneak peek into what the future holds for energy efficient data centers and broad infrastructure deployments in the coming year. This is even more important with AI set to be top of mind and shifting climate requirements forcing change on operations. With that said it is my pleasure to introduce you our exceptional executive lineup which includes Louise Bunting, CEO of CarbonNet Neutral Technology Solutions and Foster, Senior Director and Global Head of ESG for Kinbrook Infrastructure Partners and Dr. Bala Wosra, CEO of Telehouse Deutschland and board member of the Climate Neutral Data Center PAC. Guys thanks so much for making the effort of being here. It's nice to see you all again and especially to discuss an important topic to our industry in the world in the age that we're living really. To begin with just to give a bit of background to our listeners and viewers let's maybe get you to do a 30-second elevated pitch sort of introduction of who you are and what the business they work for does for the industry. I'm going to go around the screen so I'll start with you Louise. Thank you. I am CIO for CarbonNet Neutral Tech Solutions. We advise clients on carbon measurement and carbon management. Prior to CarbonNet Neutral I was CIO for Yonder Group which is a builder and operator of data centers. Prior to that I was predominantly in financial services working for the likes of KPMG and mostly UK major investment banks, predominantly advising on data centers infrastructure and tech migrations. And I have followed your work over the years and I know it's quite throughout and I remember the presentation we had in central London I think in 2018 which was quite amazing. And good to see you again. Good to get to meet everyone on the panel today as well. So KPMG infrastructure partners invest globally across renewable energy infrastructure and energy transition infrastructure and businesses and technology solutions that support that. As part of that broader investment focus we have many awards of data centers that are under construction or planning across the US, the Australian and the Australian markets. And our focus is primarily on supporting those energy transition solutions and endeavours. It is quite an interesting portfolio of investments that you've done in the past two years at least that I can remember of. But it's very interesting and Bella. Thank you very much. So Telehouse is one of the global co-location providers fully owned by KDDI the second largest mobile operator in Japan and Telehouse has kind of 50 data centers worldwide. Me personally I'm nearly 25 years in the data center industry and recently I joined the board of the climate neutral data center pegged a self-regulatory initiative in Europe to be climate neutral in 2030 and the climate neutral data center pegged has actually more than 100 secretaries who are committed to our targets. Interesting I mean Telehouse part of the KDDI group one of the major players and then of course the climate neutral data center pack a massive movement within the industry and we know there's quite a lot coming up from the the pack next year. So we look forward to seeing the data that's going to be released. But then on with the questionnaire really the first question really becomes how are the cutting edge data center technologies be heading sustainable energy practices. So a bit of a general want to start but to paint the picture of what's happening. So I'll open it to the floor and who would like to go first. I'm happy to start. I mean first of all the question is what is an edge data center because everybody from my point of view has a different definition. Some call regional data centers edge data centers which are not for example in Europe and the flat d markets. For me personally edge data centers are the very small data centers where latency is a must and the sole purpose of an edge data center is to decrease the latency to the absolute minimum for example for smart cities just as one example. And then how would you say that kind of that they were having how do you bring energy. I mean first of all if you have thousands of edge data centers in the country then you don't need so much energy obviously to transport the data from let's say Scotland to London or from Marseille to Paris or in Germany from Hamburg Munich to Frankfurt. So that saves a lot of energy and a second if you have thousands of these small units then you don't need the same kind of redundancy which obviously decreases the amount of energy you need to be always on 99.9999% and then it's not so important if every server works or not so you just plug in a container wise edge data center and you don't exchange every single server if that breaks because you exchange the whole container in a few years. So these are some of the topics where you have really sustainable energy practices. And I mean life cycle came straight to my head as a keyword as well making things last a little bit longer but and how would you say data centers are kind of using sustainable energy resources in what they're doing and maybe you can fit into what you're doing as well on the ground. Are you talking about, oh sorry, no go ahead. I just want to make sure that I did understand the question correctly. Are you still talking about etch or the existing data centers? So data centers as a whole. So how are data centers making use of sustainable energy in this current day and age? I mean most of the data centers I know are buying power from renewable sources anyway. Sometimes they are simply buying certificates but there are more PPAs power purchase agreements coming in place which obviously then supports the construction of additional hydro plants, solar plants, wind plants and because of the massive investments in the data center industry we as an industry are pushing the building construction of these additional sustainable power plants. Okay and let me bring that to you and see as well how you're doing that on the ground and work that's happening. Yes every different data center is going to require a different solution and that spans everything from your construction, your built environment and sustainable energy practices that have gone into those materials and how you construct something through to the design and planning of the data center itself and that you know comes down to your HVAC and efficiency of those different areas. Water supply is going to bundle in there as well because the two are so linked as they're going to how you operate the data center, the latency allowances and those types of things and then the efficiency is in the actual working itself and the long term energy supply. So there are many different areas for each data center that to look at it from a sustainable you know practices point of view you're assessing each one independently they say okay what suite of solutions are going to fit this the best and what we definitely see is that there is where you often find the more cutting-edge solutions you're often looking at pilot centers you're often looking at potentially early stage ones to roll that into operating kind of hyperscale data centers is it's a process it's a process you know to prove that they will I guess provide what is needed by the antenna you know obviously data centers is an area that people rely on increasingly increasing load increasing expectations increasing speed so I think what's what's clear for me to remember when it comes to sustainable energy practices with data centers is there is that process from going from testing and piloting and and assessing solutions right right through for direct sustainable energy supply the holy grail is really defined 24 seven early matching obviously that's what everyone's working towards to get you know plus with backup there's renewable as well that's an entirely you know it's a whole additional feast as well if you are a data center does require backup some puny but but some don't require backup and and then it's a case of trying to piece that together now in some situations if you have access to hydro you have to have an access to a decarbonized grid if you have access to a heavily heavily curtailed market where otherwise that that that renewable energy being curtailed you are in a slightly easier situation for many data centers what they're looking for is that trying to figure out that matching you know that that isn't the most sustainable energy solution at the moment the best one or the most available one is to match with solar and storage altogether and trying to piece that together into a 24 hour puzzle but it's a challenge and it's a big challenge depending on where your data center is what the underlying available energy supplies and what the markets look like and I think it's what's really critical is that every data center is looked at in isolation to find the best solution for that data center and on an energy and you know obviously the energy water side they work in correlation or inverse. I really like the balance that you bring around the 24 hour challenge because it is a challenge and I think that kind of segues into bringing Louise on the conversation as well because we're just chatting about the challenges around all this because we are initially likes to focus on the good we like to focus on the green on the green side of life but there are challenges when it comes to renewable energy to sustainability do you want to do you want to walk us through a little bit on some of the major challenges that you're seeing in the market especially within the European market so I mean wind always doesn't it's not always windy and the sun's not always shiny so unless you have access to hydro it's very difficult to get 24 seven electrical supply from renewables and on top of that is volume as well that you need to support so there is there are challenges with renewables but equally and when we go in and look at clients data center supplies we do test carbon density so carbon density basically is a factor of renewable energy source to the grid versus fossil fuel production and a lot of big companies have chosen to buy renewable PPAs which actually doesn't really impact their emissions unless their source is truly from renewables which is predominantly in Sweden where Norway where you have access to hydro and Scotland ironically so carbon density is is is a major factor so I think if you have a renewable strategy you don't think just buying a PPA is the answer because when we look at carbon measurement we're looking at more than that in addition to that I think there is a bit of a misconception around where around latency and how how how many applications are latency sensitive which means you could think very differently about moving your compute around to more locations that have access to 24 seven renewables so I think there is there is a holistic strategy that you know along with what Anne has mentioned you have to have a variety of different renewable sources but equally it needs to go up the stack and you start spending more and more timely like me and the best practices I've seen are where there is a lot more integration between IT teams and application teams along with a data center provider and that includes data sharing and other other data around access to renewables in different locations so they can physically or logically sorry move the workloads across so you have where it is shining you take you you can actually access that renewable energy so best practices I've seen are a lot more integration between client and and the provider themselves very quick follow-up question are you seeing enough of that or because we've been talking about collaboration for several years but are we seeing enough or we're still kind of going overboard to get it done I can talk about the stuff that we did at yonder where we we did things like exposing we exposed all of our real-time electrical data down to to server level actually to clients as a provider that exposes all of our SLAs so if we have a problem on site the client knows about it instantly we took the view that that was actually being open and transparent was absolutely 100 right but what that allowed the client to do was basically analyze their entire state and look for better consumption smoothing out consumption across the estate and also move those workloads around to to areas where they've got access supply of renewables and that's when it gets really clever so yes we did it I don't know how prevalent it is at the moment certainly since I've been in carbon at neutral we've not seen that level of data sharing certainly not real-time in most sites and I think it's it's it's something that has to be thought of thought about by a lot of providers it is a cost it's a commercial risk but actually it's very much needed if we're going to start controlling carbon up and down the chain if I had to bet I would say it's not happening that much because we know it's on each that likes to share too much but what you mentioned actually about the applications and I'll open the question to everyone um knowing what the application is used for whether it should see closer further away from the user and all that that kind of brings a conversation of AI which is the the key world of this year um into picture so how are you guys seeing AI kind of affecting um the development from an energy perspective because these things are going to consume power like never before um therefore sustainability sustainability sources really become very very important to this conversation because we don't want to start building the gigawatts of power um based on fossil fuel so we need to really get the journey going along with the renewable energy side of things how is every one of you seeing that happening within the scope of your of your day-to-day work um and then yeah whoever speaks first goes first so before I'm coming to AI um may I mention that for example BMW and Daimler they went to Scandinavia for their high performance computing stuff especially design um some some simulations whatever and in the case of Daimler I know exactly that this consumes more power than the traditional uh office whatever ERP system and so on so so there are companies doing that going where there is a sustainable power power from you know energies like in Norway like in Iceland um for non-latency trim applications um whether AI is latency trim or not simply depends on what you want to do with that and yes I fully agree we'll see much more data center needs digital infrastructure for AI but I think that's the same we have now some of them will be latency latency sensitive oh that's not and for everything which is not latency sensitive we can go where we get power from renewable energies and just from last remark to what Louise just said about solar and wind yes it's not always windy so or the sun is not always shining so what we need really is a kind of storage capability to store power uh whenever it's not windy it's not sunny I do get that stored power um but but we need a lot so a few batteries will not resolve the problem yeah exactly because this is not about keeping the lights on literally the lights not the whole data center on yeah you can put power for that but not for the actual service um and and what's your view on it on AI are we going too fast um for the energy sources that we have um the first of all I think we will have more need for data centers um not not only because of AI but because of more digitalization I mean if you look what happened at the last 10 15 years it was the breakthrough of the smartphones uh remember the first iPhone came um to the market in 2007 that's just 16 years ago we haven't had uh tablets we haven't had smartwatches we we did not know anything about uber airbnb and and now we are using video conferencing as like like never before but there was no teams no soon no bebex whatever so there will be more digitalization more need for digital infrastructure and then in addition we'll get AI applications which obviously need a lot of digital infrastructure slash data centers yeah absolutely the technology is moving at the speed of light almost uh and let me get you the same question do you think are we going too fast for the the the resources that we have yeah I think one of the biggest issues that we are seeing currently is the ability for data centers to scale at the rate required by AI a lot of a lot of data centers are rapidly trying to make sure that they can put in place infrastructure that's needed what goes along with that is then a demand for resources so if you're looking for low carbon or more sustainable building materials it puts an increasing demand on those resources increasing pace of expectation for those more materials to be provided if we're increasing pace on the skills and the teams that are able to design and build sustainable data centers and it also puts increasing you know requirements on the energy sources themselves and that's where we are seeing that where the private scalers and the groups that have that great of purchasing power they are able to I guess you know create that at a faster rate or partner with you know groups like Quimrup and you know to support that build up and I think it is is going to be an area where Ben needs to be you know a similar level of opportunity for you know data centers aren't necessarily owned by the hybrid scalers as well which I think a lot of people are are trying to provide but it also becomes a you know the cost there there's a host of things that go along with that to try and get those solutions so the AI and the pace is one of the biggest you know areas that we're seeing it's also different you know redesigns of building systems that were going to be designed and now have to be changed in you know in their planning and what's happening to try and you know make the specification so we've we've seen that to some extent on the balancing side though AI is fundamental to being able to better control and dispatch energy so when you're looking at battery optimization when you're looking at long-duration storage capabilities other solutions that may help the energy transition range assembly with data centers AI is a supporting factor in being able to better optimize better control dispatch of battery fleets or other storage you know with the long duration you know short duration storage facilities and control them and the third area where we're really seeing it also come to light is in the ability to actually track and trace your carbon is where you know people are talking about long duration short duration storage green hydrogen whatever the storage solution is that various people are talking about in different ways of piloting each of them requires a means of actually tracking and tracing what the carbon intense is for you know and auditing that for that to be useful in the industry and it's one of the complications for data centers to be able to to track and trace the carbon intensity of the various fuel sources that any single day of center is going to rely on Queen Book has come up with a tool Queen Trace in order to do that you know across our portfolios but that is you know that's one area that is supported by AI and will increasingly be supported by AI that is going to be helpful in the consumers the data centers the providers in understanding when and where is you know our more sustainable measures needed and how can we meet you know those demands better than maybe we are today I think you raise a lot of valid points there because I mean AI is part of the solution doesn't have to necessarily be part of the problem you know especially when it comes to monitoring but actually on a side note what you said about redesign as well I was at a conference a few weeks ago in Toronto with trucks of research and I was amazed because we know meta went back to the drawing board with some of the projects but I was amazed how much redesigning is going on in the industry itself I need a six-month cycle now if you haven't if I haven't broken ground yet you haven't started getting your walls up you will go back to the drawing boards if you if you have few months delayed or something one company had to design twice that another one was redesigning for the first time after six months of having the plans done I found that fascinating something that I think we kind of I don't know if we mislead on a larger scale but I think it's happening everywhere and people are becoming more comfortable about talking about it but that so there was just a side note I'm just diverging now but let me bring the questions to you as well Louise about AI and your views and we will talk about current monitoring more in detail as well in a second but just give your general view of AI versus sustainability so I think what's interesting about the high density compute which is I mean Melo's head actually around the fact that there's a proliferation of digitisation it's not AI has been around for for years right probably all of us have got deployed in one way or another something that we use but it's the necessary compute to do high levels of transactions on AI and it is a that is a particular problem for data center providers and that that redesign element that Anna's mentioned is it is difficult in legacy data centers so unless you build modular data centers which ironically is a more sustainable way to build so you're building as you need it you're probably going to have to redesign every two years as a minimum. Quantum compute will come in again we'll be with this in probably four or five years and that's another redesign a complete change so so it is about creating flexible spaces and AI is one such technology which forcing that at the moment but there will be others and they will change. I think as Anna's mentioned you know AI can be useful around predictive and analytics and give you really clever analysis upfront around what's going on in your environment so most providers are probably using it one way or another and there is a really good application for the technology but equally AI is not the answer for everything right you need to have automation and probably robotics and a whole bunch of other things to to make things really much more efficient and that can reduce costs so but but I think moving to different cooling technologies so you're using chip based cooling and and and improvements actually designing a data center will have an impact on power draw and equally I was on a I was on a conference a couple of weeks ago actually with them the CIO of Sainsbury's or the XCIO of Sainsbury's and he was saying we're really bad at shutting things off we bring lots of new things in but we don't actually turn things off and I I know when I did UBS data center exits we turned off 20% of the applications because we left the data center so I think there's a whole there is a lot like the piece here and the way that IT has managed that we shouldn't just be introducing new stuff we need to be checking stuff off as well. Yeah I mean I remember and I think sort of relates to it a little bit I remember in 2015 when I started getting to the industry there was this report that came out that 30% of the world's servers are ghost servers they're online they are running they're wasting energy but nothing is happening and and equally traditional disaster recovery techniques all of that you know you are you're you're running your sites inefficiently but that's an IT problem data centers are the more information they provide the more data they provide to the IT teams the more active they can be with looking at their environment and being a lot more aware of the carbon that's been used and as Anna's mentioned you know sharing carbon data and being being able to see that it's critical and and that's necessary to go up in that fact and make the day themselves more efficient because the IT is being run efficiently. Okay I think from what the three of you just said I think another word that comes to mind is flexibility I think that's going to be very important on how things are built going forward so just I mean just out of the blue just can we talk about how how can you be flexible in this day and age how can we be flexible about budgets with all the demand that we have how can we be flexible when we have to redesign facilities every six months if we haven't built them or every two three years if we build them because predicting things is becoming harder and harder and harder so how do those things that have been usually very static around strategy business plans budgets how do we flexilize that a little bit more for an AI world I don't know if this is something you guys can share some lights but just yeah just your thoughts on flexibility. I mean a data center is a real estate so per definition not so flexible to be honest and whenever I design a data center then I need a building permission in most countries which decreases the scale of flexibility tremendously because if I want to increase for example power density in the data center I need to install more equipment which means that I need to really sign all my my electrical mechanical infrastructure and that will impact in most cases my building permission so I think if you don't put in the flexibility in the design from the very very beginning it's very difficult. That's interesting so it's really from the get go and any views on like how to be flexible from an investment perspective. I mean what we do is and this is true for telehouse and all other competitors we do build out in modules we don't put there five modules in one go and then we sell only one and we are left with the four others we'll build step by step. This gives us flexibility whenever something changes. On the other hand the typical life cycle of a data center is 25-30 years so nobody knows what will be in 25-30 years. If I remember the beginning of the colocation industry which is 25 years ago 98 was the liberalization of the telecoms we were talking about power densities of five six hundred watts per square meter that was nothing. I mean now we are talking about five or ten times that power density in modern state of the art data center. However there's something which will change a little bit the game. If we are talking about for example the new energy efficiency or in Germany or the energy efficiency directive on an EU level. In Germany there's a request for new data centers to have a PVE of 1.2. 1.2 means it's very difficult to achieve that with air code service and that will change the design of future data centers in Germany to liquid code service which is a good way forward. The same is true for existing data centers in Germany they have to achieve 1.5, 1.3 and talking about the climate future data center we've committed ourselves to the certain PVE thresholds in world and cold climate. That means some of the existing data centers need to be completely redesigned. I believe they will be shut down redesigned completely and then reopened so that will change the game. Interesting and and from an investor perspective as well what's your view around the topic? Yeah so every time you know we're looking at investing in data centers it is one of the key questions that's asked is if we do if we are in a situation where this you know essentially has to be redesigned in some way or repeat of what does that look like from an investment perspective. In practice though you are always designing these data centers and those tenants are on the expectation that they're going to be there for the 20, 25, 30 years of building so it does differ slightly I mean there's a lot to I guess the standard real estate asset class but it does differ in that perspective where it is really it is you know it's a co-designed with the tenant in not building building that then someone you know moves into it is very much built for purpose and built to the designs that the tenant requires so they're also constantly moving forward and I think the you know it's getting one look forward is the technology aspect and saying okay what is the data center fundamentally going to look like operational equipment kind of mechanism in the future and the other way is to also look at it from a decalmization or regulatory perspective and say what are data centers going to need to be doing in five or ten years or two years and therefore what we are always aiming to do is to then future proof that as much as possible maximizing the energy efficiencies, maximizing conservation, any areas where there could potentially be additional risk I think the data center industry is very keen to minimize that minimize the overlay of regulation not be forced to a point of regulation by actually taking the initiative to get it done first and so that's one of the key areas of that future proofing is to to design those measures as much as is possible I mean backup is one of the ones where I think a lot of data centers know they're going to have to shift at some point and that's often built into the investment case where there's an assumption that for five or six years it's going to rely on one backup and then there's a switch potentially at some point in time other data centers aren't looking at that switch out from a cabbage perspective it's it's really from a I guess you know identical biological fuel switch up where you know there are some instances where you're saying okay well how can we switch out the fuel without actually having to switch out the equipment or the the capital the cabbage that goes into it very interesting and uh and Louise well I think you've got to simplify everything I'm going to be really but I'm going to be contentious here because we've been over engineering every layer of IT for years data centers infrastructure and apps and um we had an interesting one because we yonder actually supplied hyperscale clients but we knew they're like some of the client's self-build sites were a lot simpler in their design than ours were and they certainly we were because of the nature of SLAs and the way that we were being commercially sort of compelled to do things it was it was completely over the top for what we were what was needed actually and what was being done by the client themselves so there was there was a we have I think we have to present options to clients to simplify the environment and I know when we presented eco options for example and explain things in a different way it had a different impact on client decision making and the only way you're going to build in a simpler way is to do that I think interesting I think because we are almost getting to the end sorry what's the other thing Louise the point is one of the most valid ones is sometimes in the case of what do you not build what do you know what do you do less of where can you simplify where can you cut things out it's one of the most critical things sorry no no no I just want to interrupt because we want you guys to talk so no that's cool I was going to ask I think we are reaching almost the last five minutes but I was going to ask around the the clients needs that have been shifting they have been shifting but how much have they been shifting what what have they been shifting towards to and maybe I'll start from you Louise and end up with you Bella and then I think we might close at that point we'll see if we have time for another question black carbon data oh my gosh the data center providers don't know they're in body carbon from their build cycles and can't provide ideally real-time data in the electrical consumption at a granular level now they will have to in the next three or four months because or possibly by the end of next year because pretty much everybody's on carbon reduction journey and later is key and a usp at the moment but we'll be mandatory soon interesting and definitely agree with Louise it's the the transparency around carbon and that extends all the way from supply chain right through to end of life provisions and and how that's being catered for that's you know a client need and on top of that then it's the technologies and solutions that enable that to be improved that's where we're you know in industrials in the environment in you know HVAC solutions those are that's where we're definitely seeing some of the biggest areas of focus and need okay interesting and Bella yeah the main need of our clients is availability redundancy resilience and then they've not changed in the past 10 15 years and I think it's even more important than it was 10 to 15 years ago however in addition to that I fully agree with what Louise and I said it's now in addition to that availability availability always on its sustainability it's reducing carbon footprint etc so the challenge for us as operators became even more difficult hmm okay I think we time manage this very well so we do have time for one more just final question so how so are we confident that data sensors will be green or very much more sustainable 100% sustainable by 2030 and what is the one thing that's lacking in the processes in the strategies in the investments they are seeing in the market what's the one thing that's missing and are you confident we're going to achieve the goals that we've set ourselves for 2030 I'm gonna say action there's a lot of talk very much action and if we're gonna change 2030 is not far away there has to be more action and not just pledges and commitments and discussion groups but actual action yeah we are about 20 quarters away something like that so it's not it's not that far and yeah sorry oh yeah I mean one of the the base areas that's lacking is I think this is it's not always lacking but there is that need to support the technologies and the solutions that are going to get data sensors to where they need to go there is a lot of you know as Louisa said there's a lot of head there are a lot of headlines out there about things that being done which can then also create a full sense of what's possible you know we all know the battery fleet cannot support the data center at this point in time over the long term but that makes a lot of headlines you know there are other things so I think that that level of honesty as to what is really feasible right now and what we need to invest in to drive other solutions or pilot other solutions prove other solutions whatever it is to get them to the point where the data industry is able to use them on not sacrificing on you know on our time and other things interesting and Bella final final words yeah so I mean the the main energy we use as a data centers obviously power and in order to be climate useful we do need power from renewable sources and we've discussed that earlier that solar wind is not always available so what we need is the support from the countries the politicians the energy providers to do more to build more and for as mentioned earlier to have big big storage systems where you can store all the solar and wind energy for times where you don't have sun and wind it's it's all about the flexibility the integration more conversation and bringing the other parts of the industry so the energy is as well into the conversation more often which are so overshown even a conference is that the easiest way to see the actually not involved in the conversations when you go to conference and they're not there so that's very interesting but because I think this is all we have time for today and I mean we could have gone down the route was also nuclear power hydrogen but I think we're going to leave that for for another time with that so I mean thank you so much for all of you for making time to talk to us and now we're half of the speakers I would like to thank everyone for tuning in either here or LinkedIn YouTube X or JSA.net our next session will take place in a week's time on November the 15th at 3 p.m. UK time and we'll delve into how private equity back platforms Greenfield and Brownfield developments real estate and M&A will shape Europe's digital infrastructure deployments in 2024 so make sure you visit our LinkedIn page to sign up for November the 15th and with that said we wrap up today's conversation look out for the playback of this session coming to JSA TV YouTube LinkedIn X and more and for me and the team at JSA Europe happy networking bye everyone thank you bye