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Welcome to the Healthy Spaces podcast, where we explore how climate technology and innovation are transforming the spaces where we live, work, learn, and play. This season, we’ll explore how technology and AI can drive business growth, and help the planet breathe a little bit easier.
- The era of the standard
data center is over.
- Okay, that's a big statement, Dominique.
- Scott, just think about it, right?
The technology is evolving so fast,
whether that's cooling
technology, the chip technology,
even the demand, right, around AI.
It's all changing so fast,
we just can't standardize.
- Innovation always
happens when we view things
as a problem that need a solution.
And this is actually one of those moments
where data centers are more complicated.
We have to design them
differently, so it's ripe
for sustainable innovation.
- Wherever there is a challenge,
there's always an opportunity.
I love your thinking there.
- So, if we've left
behind this standard way
of doing data centers,
what's the new way forward?
- Well, to find out, I
spoke to Oakley Roberts.
He's the president of data
centers at Trane Technologies.
Let's get into it.
I'm Dominique Silva.
- And I'm Scott Tew, and
this is "Healthy Spaces,"
conversations at the frontier
of sustainable technology.
- Yeah, I started working with
data centers back in 2019,
and it was a different world then.
It was before ChatGPT
was a household name,
and things were very standardized.
We're building, today,
data center structures
that are designed to last decades of time,
but the chips that we're putting inside
of those data centers,
they last a much shorter amount of time,
and it's creating an environment
of engineered flexibility.
And the data center is
a physical creature.
It has to sweat, breathe, reject heat,
and you have to match the lungs
to the local climate,
or the machine fails.
So, if you think about London
with a milder, kind of,
more human climate versus
Texas that's dry and hot,
if you think about the thermal swings
of the climate in Texas,
it's a very diverse, you
know, thermal environment,
and that's very different
than what you find in London.
The result is you have to apply, you know,
very different design
architectures to these locations.
- Well, let's dive a little bit
into this notion of different places,
different answers, right?
- We were kind of just
talking about climate,
but it goes far beyond that.
You move into the other factors,
like regulatory environment,
and, you know, just take,
like, Europe in general,
but if you come back to
Texas, it's a big state,
and a lot of these data centers in Texas
are seeking opportunities
to help find their land,
so open land, but also power.
Power constraints is obviously
one of the driving factors
in the infrastructure build-out.
And there's a lot of
energy in Texas, you know.
We're seeing the approach
to "How do we solve the
power generation challenge?"
is a different opportunity there
because of the source that's available.
And that creates different
design opportunities
around cooling data centers.
Those gas turbines that are
being used to help supply
power put off high-temperature,
high-grade heat.
And you can do things
like absorption chilling.
You can actually capture that heat
and use technology to create more cooling.
What excites me, whether you're
talking about our example
in London or Europe or in a
very different place like Texas,
it's a system design challenge,
and it's the opportunity to think about,
"How do we reduce waste?"
- Well, maybe let's
double-click a little bit
on that whole cooling aspect, right?
You've already alluded, right,
to the thermal management complexity
and the fact that we're
even looking to heat waste
as a power source, ultimately.
So, can you help me and our
listeners sort of break down,
"What does the cooling process
for a data center actually look like?"
Right?
- As we got into the AI era
and the silicon and the servers
and the compute technology
required to meet that demand,
it changed the amount of
heat that's coming off
of that due to these chips.
And the chips then had to be
cooled in a different way.
You couldn't just blow air
over a chip to cool it.
You had to start to use liquid,
and that revolutionized the way
that data center infrastructure
is being designed.
And so, the technology
that's being deployed
in a modern AI data center today
is primarily liquid-cooled,
direct-to-chip technology.
So, you're actually taking
water and cooling it,
and then it has to go
through a thermal system
that arrives at the chip,
where it then gets heated up by the chip.
And then you have to reject
that heat to the atmosphere.
One way to think about it
is "chip to atmosphere"
type of thermal management.
And that creates an
opportunity to really think
about how you break that system
down to provide the best way
to deliver liquid to the chip
and get it out to the atmosphere.
And so, even the design
is broken down now.
So, if you're inside of
what's called the data hall,
where these servers sit and
these chips are being cooled
by liquid, we use part of
our system called a CDU,
or cooling distribution unit,
to manage what's called
the technical water loop.
And it's very specific
to optimize delivering the
flow rates to the chips.
And that CDU gets connected
to another liquid cooling loop
that's much larger,
called the facility loop,
that's connected to a chiller.
And all that is connected
to a heat rejection device
that allows you to release
that heat to the atmosphere.
As we were just talking about,
you can actually use that to say,
"How do we capture that heat
and not release it to the atmosphere
and try to do something
more useful with it?"
So, it's very complicated,
and it requires a very high
level of system engineering
and optimization to make that work.
And liquid doesn't cool everything.
We still have to use traditional methods
of what we call, like, air cooling
because there's many other things
besides the chip that produce heat.
We have space that it needs heat removed.
So, it's become a hybrid environment
where some of that air cooling technology
that's been around for a very long time
is being combined with this
liquid cooling technology.
- You know, the other day, I
had to explain the difference
between air cooling and liquid cooling
to a friend of mine who works
in IT and doesn't understand
anything about cooling.
And I was feeling particularly inspired.
So, I said, you know, "You're
going to go to the beach.
It suddenly gets very hot.
You've been fanning yourself
for a very long time,
but if you're not feeling cooler,
what are you going to do?"
And I say, "I'm going to go dip
into the water, right, swim."
I was like, "Aha!
You have just uncovered
liquid cooling, right?
But you can't stay under the
water for too long, right?
You still got to peep up your head
because you still got to breathe.
So, what do you do?
You fan yourself."
So, anyway, I think they understood.
- I could take your analogy in another way
that's really relevant to
what's going on in data centers.
So, what you described is
actually evaporative cooling.
Water usage is a very important
topic within data centers
because we have to minimize
the amount of water
that a data center uses to help.
In history, one of the ways
that you actually cool the data center
was just like what you described.
What you're doing is spraying
or cascading water over
these heat-exchanging devices
to use that cooling effect.
But that uses water because
that water evaporates,
and then it's not back.
It's not in the environment.
And so, a different way
of cooling yourself from
jumping in the water
is a cooling vest that is a
closed-loop system, you know,
and you could actually
connect it to a cooling source
that circulates cold water, right?
And there's different ways of doing that,
but you're not evaporating water.
So, in a data center, we're
doing a very similar thing now.
We put primarily what's
called a dry cooler device
instead of a water cooling device.
And a dry cooler device
is nothing more than just a closed loop.
So, you're not evaporating water,
you're just recirculating
water and then using the air
or the environment to
actually just remove heat
from that radiator device.
That sounds simple, but it's
a very complicated system,
but what it does is it
removes the need to jump
into the pool to cool off.
- Well, I still want
to jump into the pool,
but I want to ask you another question.
We opened up this conversation
talking about the fact
that chip technology is
evolving very fast, right?
And we're building data centers
that are expected to be around for,
let's just say, decades,
right, for the most part.
The technology that goes into
these data centers can change,
which will ultimately have an impact
on how they are cooled, right?
So, in your experience,
how are Trane Technologies
helping operators prepare
for a future that they don't really know
what it's going to look like?
- It comes back to this concept
of engineering flexibility
and thinking through the system
in terms of what is possible
and changing the variables
without having to change
your capital investment.
A couple simple ones you
could think about is like,
"Well, how much liquid cooling
do I need versus air cooling?
What's the temperature
of the liquid cooling?
What's the mix of the air versus liquid?"
All these things have to be
designed very specifically
for today, but you can think
about tomorrow and just say,
"Well, could I change it by 10%?
Could I change it by 20%?
How wide of a range could I have
so that my capital investment
has that flexibility in the future?"
And so, we spend a lot of time
thinking about that with our customers.
And it starts when you're at day zero,
like before you break ground.
And what that turns into is
more hybrid architecture.
So, it's more heterogeneous
in terms of the technology
that we're using to
provide that flexibility.
Think about, like, digital
and controls and then,
"How do you even use
artificial intelligence
to help artificial intelligence?"
And we're building, like,
very high-performance machines
and systems for our customers
and for these data centers
so that they can operate most efficiently,
so they can have this flexibility
that's needed into the future,
so it can meet those local
demands of Texas versus London.
(upbeat music)
- You know, Dominique,
the discussion with Oakley
really struck me because
he used this term,
"engineering flexibility."
We're engineering today for very diverse
situations in very unique places.
Every place, every local
place we place a data center
requires an engineering customization
because there are different requirements:
water, energy, climatic conditions.
And so, we're engineering
at times for uncertainty.
I mean, we can't predict
where tech is headed.
We just know it's moving faster,
and this pace of change
really makes this flexibility
that Oakley spoke about
more and more important.
- And do you know who
else is feeling the heat?
Policy makers.
I mean, amidst all of this rapid change,
policy is also trying to catch up, right?
Because all over the world,
governments have spoken
about their ambitions:
"We need to scale data center capacity."
In Europe, for example,
I don't know if you saw
the headline, Scott,
Europe earlier this year announced
that they're planning to triple
their data center capacity
in just the next seven years, right?
Can you imagine that?
- Well, I thought it was
impossible for us to double
that infrastructure, and
now we're talking tripling.
- And so, we also want to
do that in the right way,
and that's usually what
regulations and policies are for.
So, how do we balance this
need to meet AI demand,
to scale data center construction,
but do it in the right
way, the sustainable way,
the resource-efficient way?
- And be careful not to let
regulations push us in a corner.
- Right.
And you know who knows a lot about that?
My next guest.
To answer the question of
how Europe is going to triple
its data center capacity,
I spoke to Michael Winterson,
Secretary General of the
European Data Center Association.
- Very potted history to
get to where we are today.
Ursula von der Leyen, so
she first became president
of the European Commission
in the beginning of 2020.
And they leaked very early
on both the Green Deal,
which we all know about,
"Europe will be carbon neutral by 2050,"
but they also leaked something
that no one really read except us geeks,
which was "A Europe fit
for the digital age."
And they made a statement in 2020
that this was going to be
Europe's Digital Decade.
And I can tell you very
clearly that both we humans
and them policymakers see that, so far,
the needle has not moved.
And in fact, since then, we've seen things
such as Mario Draghi's
competitiveness report,
where he's talking about Europe's failure
to be productive like America,
predominantly due to the
failure to adopt technology.
And then, last year,
we heard from a senior
executive vice president,
Virkkunen, who stated
that she wanted to see the tripling
of data center capacity in seven years.
And so, the idea behind the
Cloud and AI Development Act
is to define the ways in with which Europe
and its member states
can subsidize, support,
and develop this market space.
So, each member state will be asked
to write effectively a digital strategy
and then, behind that, a
digital infrastructure plan.
And then that will, in
theory, receive funding
and support from the European Union.
- Why do you think Europe needs this now?
- If I ever want to get
a regulator riled up,
I usually tell them
that their digital brain
is about half the size of the
North American digital brain.
That usually bothers someone.
And then you explain, you say:
- That would do it.
(everyone laughs)
- You explain that compute capacity
in Europe is roughly half the size
of North American
installed compute capacity.
And American businesses adopt
technology faster and quicker
and have benefited from it
more than European businesses have.
And so, Europe sees that they
fundamentally need to change the game,
and that has multiple issues.
One is cost of infrastructure,
where Europe is still more
expensive on a variety of fronts,
including raising capital and energy,
two very important issues
for us data center operators.
But the other one is actually making sure
that the technology is
available and can be used.
And in a world of geopolitical
issues, you realize
that Europe actually can't
depend upon remote technology.
And then the next thing,
which has become a major,
major issue, and we're
seeing it quite publicly,
is this whole issue of energy.
And we've been putting up our hand
for over two years now, saying,
"We are now being told
to wait seven to 10 years
to connect to an electricity grid."
So, that's private
industry taking its capital
and investing that capital in
sustainable energy generation.
And we can't connect our solar farms
and our wind farms to the grid,
and we can't connect our
data centers to the grid.
So, we cannot deliver
sustainable IT in Europe
because grids are basically saying,
"Sorry, we're shut for business."
And we've been talking about this
with the European
Commission for a while now.
And so, it's driving us as an industry
to look at other markets besides
our primary five markets.
And so, we're aggressively
pursuing growth strategies
in the Nordics and in
Italy, Spain, Portugal.
Poland is now coming up,
Switzerland and Belgium.
So, all of these markets are
now becoming very interesting
to us because they
represent access to energy.
And, in a certain way,
that's actually good
because we're bringing the
technology closer to the markets
that are using that technology.
- And I'd love to also talk
to you a little bit about that
because building a data center in Norway
is going to look very different
from building a data
center in Spain, right?
And we know in Europe, when
we like to create regulations,
it's usually with the intents
of trying to standardize.
- Yes.
- What's your take on that
for the data center industry?
Is it possible?
- So, to be fair, in a certain sense,
this is a yes and a no type
answer to your question.
At a very high level,
there are some basic concepts
that we can standardize,
but you are absolutely right
that there are going to
be specific differences
in geographies in that you
pick certain design criteria
at the very highest of level:
construction materials,
levels of redundancy in mechanical
and electrical equipment,
cooling methodologies,
such as adopting free-air
cooling and variable cooling.
So, a lot of the basics in how you run
a data center can be standardized,
and then you adapt to the
geographical situation.
When we run data centers in Dubai,
we spend a lot of time humidifying
because it doesn't matter
how your air conditioning's working
if humidity levels are zero.
And that actually is the same problem
in Norway in the wintertime.
And then the other side is in,
we are trying to adopt models
where we transfer our heat to a demand.
And we typically see that demand drops
as you get into warmer climates.
However, one of our members
just announced a partnership
with a heat network that's
being built in Milan.
And so, there is going
to be an exchange of heat
directly to a heat network,
which benefits both
because not only are we obsessed
with becoming carbon neutral by 2030,
these 100-year-old heat networks
have to decarbonize themselves between now
and 2040, something like that.
So, they're also desperately
seeking new ways to get heat.
- Well, we've spent a bit of
time talking about heating,
but this heat only
exists because, in fact,
we have a need to cool.
I think, specifically in
the data center space,
the speed of innovation has been unlike
what I've ever seen, right?
Even in the built industry.
And it also means we've ended up
with a very wide and complex range
of different cooling solutions
that data centers can use today.
What's your take on this,
and how do you see this playing out?
- I think some people think
of data centers being built
for liquid cooling versus data centers
being built with air cooling.
I think, in most cases,
it's going to be a hybrid,
and data centers are
going to have to build
with both circuits available,
and we see this happening.
And in most cases, we are
actually able to share
a single cooling circuit and break out
both liquid and air cooling
systems on the same loop.
That's the dream that
we're moving towards,
and many of us are
heading in that direction.
- I think it's really interesting
that we talked a lot
about standardization,
and then our conversation sort of morphed
into the need for flexibility,
but these aren't different
concepts that can coexist.
- The standardization is we all agree
the need to do a hybrid data center,
and we all agree that there
are two or three ways to do it.
And then we engage the suppliers
in our industry, saying,
"We may build this way,
option A, option B,
or option C, depending
on cost and location."
And so, those vendors are taking
that standardized optionality,
if you want to call it that,
and they're designing their products
to fit that, which is great.
That's a novel way of us working together,
which we didn't in the past.
In the past, our cycles of
innovation were very slow
because we weren't sharing
information across each other
at the supplier level or
at the customer level.
And even the engineering companies
that were in the middle doing the design
and the build weren't collating
the information and sharing it.
So, we're accelerating the design cycle
through this idea of
allowing for optionality,
but quickly picking best practice
and then adopting it across the board.
- And hopefully, this new
model of collaboration
and partnership will inspire
other industries as well, right?
They could be very fragmented.
- So, you say "hope";
this is real.
And in fact, we get a lot
of stick in the press,
but one of the major good
news stories that's happening
is that where we are innovating
in areas of mechanical, electrical
and heating and cooling,
we are forcing our vendors
to adopt new technologies,
and we are effectively funding
the research and development
of these products on our backs,
which they then incorporate
into technologies
that they take across industry.
And this has already happened.
- Now, Michael, I'm going
to appeal a little bit here
to your sense of vision, right?
And as someone who has
been in the industry
for quite a few years now,
if you have to imagine
what's going to happen,
especially in terms of
data center capacity
in the next seven years,
what would be your best guess?
Where do you see this is going?
- So, luckily, it's not
just reading tea leaves,
though I am drinking a cup of tea.
So, if you want, I can do that.
It's convenient.
No, we are running an
annual research report.
What the data basically says
is that from two years ago
to this last year's report,
we saw money being invested in the ground,
not just some of the high-level stuff
of "I'm going to build a
five-gigawatt something-or-other,"
but real money announced being deployed.
We saw that amount of
capital double in 12 months
from about 80 billion euros
to about 170 billion euros.
And so, I think there was
this real clear signal
to the world that Europe is
ready to invest in technology.
And if you wanted to sell in Europe,
you better be here in Europe.
- All right.
Well, Michael, since you
mentioned at the beginning
how much you thoroughly enjoy
influencing policymakers and regulators-
- Yes.
- I want to give you
the platform one more time
and ask you, what is that
one thing you just wish
that policymakers understood?
What would make your job easier?
- I think policymakers understand this,
but they are currently being pushed to act
by, I'm going to say,
a journalistic story that's
not fundamentally true.
So, the whole thing today is that somehow
data centers are taking
all the electricity
and raising energy prices, oh,
and that we're taking all the water.
The reality is our innovation
in cooling technologies
is such that we actually
take very little water,
less than golf courses,
and we reuse that water,
we recycle that water.
In the case of electricity,
we represent a huge growth opportunity.
We're not the cause of a grid problem.
We are a symptom of an
underinvestment in the grid.
We represent less than 9% of the increase
on the grid that needs to happen
for all of transportation,
all of heating and cooling,
heavy industry, light industry,
three times larger each.
So, we're not the cause of a problem.
We are showing that an underinvestment
in grids over the past
40 or 50 years is going to
fundamentally make it impossible
for regulators to
achieve their Green Deal.
They need to be making a
radical investment in grids.
And I understand it's hard.
These grids are regulated.
It's hard to raise capital.
It's hard to deploy the capital at pace,
but the speed with which these
grids need to be grown to,
not just for us, but for everybody,
is two or three times faster
than what the grids are
currently forecasting.
- You wish that policymakers
would understand
the urgent, critical
need to invest even more
in our grid capacity, our grid resilience:
- Absolutely.
- Rather than trying to stall
the developments of industries
that are contributing to the growth.
- Yes, because currently
we are being asked
to swallow more cost, which will slow down
innovation, slow down investment.
So, yes, it's either you want
this Green Deal and you want
Europe to have a competitive
sustainable market,
or you are going to be unwilling to do it
to the timeframe that
because you're not willing
to invest in these grids.
We're here to help.
We have capital.
We have technology.
We are willing to take some of the risk,
but this is an all-of-society problem.
It's not a data center problem.
(upbeat music)
- You know what really struck me
about Michael's sort of reframe
of the data center situation
is that, given all the pushback,
there's actually a lot
of opportunity here.
There's a lot of pressure.
I mean, we have the speed pressure,
we have the scaling,
tripling, for instance.
We have the demand for AI,
and there's also communities
that have expectations.
And what that's really doing
is forcing some true innovation.
Innovation in cooling and how
we reuse and think about heat,
how we improve the grid,
all of this simultaneously.
I mean, the interesting thing here
is that solving the data center problem
will help us solve some
other sustainability issues.
That gives us a gain, an overall gain.
These innovations can be
applied to other areas
of our economy, of the world.
Things like hospitals, factories,
schools all stand to gain
because of the innovations
that we're in the middle of right now
because of data centers.
- So, both Michael and Oakley
actually landed on the same point.
The answer is all about making
it a hybrid of technologies.
There's no such thing
as one-size-fits-all.
It's also about designing smarter systems,
spoiler alert for the next episode.
It's an opportunity to design
intelligent AI controls
that respond to requirements in real time,
and this opportunity is huge.
To be fairly honest
with you, I don't think
there's ever been a more
exciting time to be an engineer.
And on that thought,
let's go back to Oakley
to hear what speed really
means for his teams.
And that includes engineers,
but also customers, that
whole data center ecosystem.
(graphics swoosh)
- It's an AI race.
You hear that a lot.
People say that, and it is a race.
The race is about speed to deployment,
and the race is to get to the finish line
because at the finish line
is a tremendous demand from all of us,
humans, businesses, everyone
that's demanding access to AI.
And so, that race is about
speed and speed to deployment.
And how you get there is a big driver
of how we think about system design.
And the way that you take all those things
and actually make it happen faster
is through things like
modular manufacturing.
Recently, we acquired a
company called Stellar Energy,
which is a company that's a leader
in modular manufacturing for data centers.
So, you're able to package
all this technology
instead of thinking through, like,
"Well, how do I deploy that
in a construction project
onsite in Texas or onsite in Michigan
or onsite in Virginia,"
which are very different environments.
And when you move it into a
modular manufacturing approach,
which means that when
you're designing the system,
you're actually designing it to be built
in a controlled environment
that can be replicated
consistently over time and fast.
On the thermal side, we take
all that system engineering expertise.
We're able to put it into
a package that we can tweak
and nudge for these different sites
and then ship those modules
to the data center site
and then put them together
and get them running.
And it creates a differentiated
speed to deployment.
- It's really important,
not only tackling this issue
of speed of deployment,
"We got to go faster,"
but I'm guessing, and correct
me if I'm wrong, Oakley,
it also sounds like it's much
more iterative as well, right?
- There's a convergence of
a couple of these topics,
and the future's a little bit closer to us
than in this data center
industry because of the speed.
It's also about, "How do we
get speed to deployment?"
Things have to be iterative.
You have innovation around the chip sets
and the silicon that's coming
out within the timeline of,
"Hey, I've located and identified a site
that I'm going to develop
into a data center."
If that's kind of like day zero
and the finish line is the data center
is running and operating and producing,
what happens in between those
two dates is very dynamic
because the technology can
change within those dates.
The regulations can
change within those dates.
The way the community wants to work
with the data center can change.
So, there's so many things
changing within what used to be,
like, that was very rigid.
In between the start and
finish, that's pretty fixed.
Like, things don't change, right?
Things change outside
of those two bookends.
And that's not the case anymore.
So, that flexibility is so important now,
and it comes back to, like,
we're talking about modular manufacturing.
Well, if you've designed
a system to be modular,
if something changes,
it's much easier to tweak, nudge, adjust
than if you're trying to do a
one-off construction project.
It's a different way of, you know,
to modify and change things.
So, innovation pace is so fast here
that you have to be super engaged in it,
but you have to be very flexible
within that, even within that process,
because the future actually arises
inside of those two bookends.
- Okay, that is a wrap.
And I love where this landed.
The era of the standard
data center really is over,
and what replaces it is
engineering flexibility.
It's consistent enough to repeat.
It's modular enough to adapt
wherever it's being built.
And the part that excites me,
doing that fast is also our
chance to do it sustainably.
We're not waiting for
the future to arrive.
We're building it in every
climate alongside our customers.
I want to say a big
thank you to our guests,
Oakley Roberts and Michael Winterson.
- And thank you for listening.
This has been "Healthy
Spaces" with me, Scott Tew,
and my co-host, Dominique Silva.
We're back in two weeks
with another episode,
so please be sure to like and subscribe
so you don't miss out.
(upbeat music)