Sustainable Data Centers – Luke Kipfer, Powerhouse Data Centers

This is texturing TV. Designing data centers with sustainability in mind is a top priority for my next guest on Tech strong TV joining me now is Luke Kipfer vice president Datacenter Development and Construction for American Real Estate partners and Powerhouse data centers Luke. Thank you so much for joining us on techstrong TV.

Thanks Bonnie. Glad to be here. Well, tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into sustainable data centers.

Yeah, absolutely, you know my background I come from the trades, you know, right out of high school. I want to work for a mechanical contractor. So, you know, I grew up in construction.

I've been in the industry my entire life and as as I developed throughout my career was able to see really some of the inefficiencies that are involved in design and construction and you know what that has in terms of a carbon and a sustainability footprint through through the entire life cycle of instruction development. So it's really something that I've taken to heart, you know, especially as powerhouses as rolled out our new data center platform. And what are some of the objectives and challenges in developing data centers specifically for the real estate industry?

The challenges are taught, you know, there's a lot of constraints especially for the data center Market, you know height what we call hyperscalers, you know, the major players and developers in the game are moving very quickly. So they're looking to you know, optimize land usage. They've got the power density and requirements for sites and just grown exponentially over the past few years and you know data centers as a whole is it's a very new market and it's moving very quickly.

So it's, you know, being able to adapt to the compute needs that you know, the biggest users have today while still being able to do it in a sustainable and responsible manner. Well moving a little more deeper into sustainability. Can you describe a Powerhouse data centers and the unique technical Real Estate Solutions that they offer.

Yeah, absolutely. So we're Powerhouse data centers where the technical real estate division of American Real Estate Partners who's been a developer for for over 20 years recently have moved fully into our data center brand fully into its own separate platform Powerhouse data centers. So what we do is we acquire land sites.

We take care of all the utility in coordination entitlement zoning the design of the site the site development and the construction. So what we do is we really do a top-down process when it comes to sustainability starting very early, even in site selection slight planning then going through their design and construction how we run our job sites all the way over to how we we commission our projects and turn them over to the end user. Now how does it work with the infrastructure Masons?

I understand there's been a recent announcement regarding climate Accord and and meeting those standards. Can you explain what what that under what that really took to make a hat make it happen? Yeah.

Yeah. So infrastructure Nations has been a professional association and in the digital infrastructure market for some time and they had four really key values and sustainability was always one of those in the past year March 2022 is when they rolled out the climate Accord and that's really a specific Action Group to focus on sustainability within the digital infrastructure. It's several different, you know key focuses on that but really it's transparency within the the digital infrastructure Market on what what we're tracking how we're building and really putting together, you know Common metrics so that As we're we're different developers doing the same tasks.

We're tracking the industry and in the same method so we can really compare to see one where we're at today and two have a measurable difference moving forward. Well, I'd like to break down some of the details in sustainability design for data centers. For example, one of the things I was reading about is how it starts with the trees.

Can you walk us through that process? Yeah. No, I mean it goes to the basics.

Right? So, you know when we're looking at site development, you know as as land, especially in competitive eras, like Northern Virginia is getting tougher to find, you know, there's no more easy sites to find and develop data centers. So, you know, we're looking at sites that might have existing facilities that have to be torn down we might be repurposing other facilities.

There's not a lot of good clear land to do that. So when we do with these things, you know, we try we plan our development so that you know, we're we're preserving things like old will trees, you know, Landscaping buffers between neighbors really understanding that, you know, we're trying to put a lot of infrastructure in a small area, but planning around the you know our existing Conditions in the most, you know, sustainable weight possible. and what kind of construction materials do you look for when you're designing these so specifically, you know we What we control as a developer is a site development and the core and shell construction.

So two major components of that are stealing concrete. So when we Source our seal our seal, we specify a certain amount of recycled steel needs to be used in that and then the that that's been around for a while steel is one of the most widely recycled components in the world. So recycled steel has been around the one place that we're really making a lot of Headway is in concrete, you know concrete, excuse me is, you know, responsible 50 to 85 percent of embodying carbon and any building project.

So there's a lot of opportunities for sustainability improvements and concrete so specifying a low carbon concrete is one way or really able to you know, help build the more Sustainable Building. There's a couple different ways to do it, but you know really from Side, it's steel concrete and then our actual construction operations. Do you ever come up on any challenges kind of getting everyone on the same page construction any you know the material Gathering just the whole process but everyone being on the same page that we're going to do things a little differently.

Maybe then we've done it before. You know five years ago, I would say the answer is definitely yes, and it's amazing how within this space so many of our partners have pivoted so quickly, you know, if five years ago if we started a an RFP interview response with sustainability people would look at you funny nowadays is expected. You know, it's it's not so much a spec that that's very deep within a document.

You know, now it's front page now everybody's talking about it. So it's certainly been a really great shift within the digital infrastructure Market that it's not just us that is is driving this forward. It's our general contractor.

It's a subcontractors. It's a designers. It's a local municipalities we're working with and then, you know, ultimately it's really in our industry that and users the hyper scale.

There's you know, our my major clients that are driving these changes, but it's amazing. That everyone's been able to get on board and really buy into that. You know, this is this isn't a fad.

This is the way the future and these are the way things that need to move. Do you find that there's a crossover since you've been in the real estate industry where we're talking about data centers, but have you found interest from the contractors municipalities and others that you work with that maybe we can apply these principles to other design projects. Yeah, you know I I specialize just in the data center space but you know, certainly you know arap are are real estate portfolio as a whole has really shifted towards prioritizing and sustainability.

And yeah, I mean certainly local municipalities. It's space planning has always been certainly, you know, something that's been a Hot Topic but you know in terms of the entire sustainability picture of the project and the job site we've done a great job with some of the local newspelities working with them to be able to you know, Advance our sustainability initiatives. That's great.

And now that we're well into a new year in 2023, where do you see Trends going in terms of sustainability and data centers? The one the one area I really think that that needs Improvement and will improve is a collaboration, you know data centers as a whole. I don't want to call it a secretive industry.

But you know, every organization every design team really feels like they had you know, the Special Sauce they had the secret way of doing things and it was better than everybody else where in reality it was it was really a lot of separate organizations solving the same problem, you know potentially in different ways and some of them more efficiently in different ways. So I really see and this is one thing that I Mason's climate Accord is driving is collaboration Beyond, you know between teams. So if I'm building a building someone else's building a building down the street someone else is building a building maybe in a different Market, but we've all are moving towards the same sustainability goals and you know facing the same sustainability challenges so really coordinating in our efforts and you know, Working together as an industry versus what you know, just just separate organizations trying to sell problems is really going to help compound the efforts moving forward.

It's really going to speed up our you know, our move to prioritize that in the market. Well Luke, thank you so much for joining me on techstrong TV. This is a fascinating topic and it looks like we're going to be seeing more of these sustainable data centers in the future.

I appreciate your time today. Awesome. Thanks, Lonnie.

Appreciate it. All right. Well stay with us.

We have a lot more Tech strong TV coming up.