The Sustainability Imperative: Will Fusion Power Save the Data Center

Like many corporations worldwide, CyrusOne is committed to procure 100% green energy worldwide by 2030 as part of its pledge to become carbon neutral. There are many elements that encompass a corporation's’ sustainability strategy which requires ongoing investment, flexibility and commitment.

In episode two we are thrilled to introduce Dr. David Kingham, a trained theoretical physicist and Executive Vice Chairman at Tokamak Energy, along with Tom Kingham, Director of Solutions Engineering at CyrusOne, to the podcast.

Guided by our Host, Matthew Pullen, EVP & MD Europe at CyrusOne, we explore how Tokamak Energy is leading the race against time to replace worldwide reliance on fossil fuels by developing technology capable of recreating the energy that powers the sun, and in doing so create the world’s ultimate sustainable source of energy – FUSION. We seek to demystify the science and explain what needs to happen to make fusion energy a globally available and secure resource for the world’s energy needs.

With Tom, we go on to discuss and relate the impact and importance of fusion for the data center industry and what it needs to do to ensure widespread adoption and answer the ultimate question, ‘Is fusion the only true sustainable energy solution for the data center industry?’

We hope you enjoy this inspiring discussion with our guests today and thank you for listening. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please don’t forget to like, share, comment and subscribe.  

Visit CyrusOne website.

Guests:
David Kingham, Executive Vice Chairman, Tokamak Energy Ltd
Tom Kingham, Director, Engineering Solutions, CyrusOne

Further Reading:
Why Fusion Energy is Essential for Global Energy Security and a Path to Net Zero

Transcript

Dr. David Kingham (00:02):

I think a lot of people feel the problem of decarbonization is essentially decarbonizing electricity supply. But when you look at the numbers, you see that industrial and domestic heating, transport, aviation fuel are something like three or four times larger demands of energy compared to electricity.

(00:26):

Decarbonizing electricity gets you a fifth, maybe a quarter of the way you need to get to. Then you've got to push on and decarbonize these other uses of energy. And hydrogen has a significant part to play in that.

Matt Pullen (00:52):

Hello everyone and welcome back to CyrusOne Connects Podcast. I'm your host Matt Pullen, EVP, Managing Director Europe at CyrusOne. And joining me for our second episode today is Tom Kingham, Director, Engineering Solutions at CyrusOne, and David Kingham, Executive Vice Chairman at Tokamak Energy. Before you ask, yes, they are related. We have a great episode lined up for you today focused on a crucial topic, sustainability in the data center industry. As you'll hear, sustainability has become a moving target and it is vital that data centers are ready to meet the unrelenting challenges that climate crisis poses and work towards a more sustainable future. Let's dive in. I'm delighted to welcome Dr. David Kingham who is executive vice chairman and co-founder of Tokamak Energy. Welcome David.

Dr. David Kingham (01:48):

Thank you very much, Matt.

Matt Pullen (01:49):

Now David, you're a renowned expert in this field and Tokamak Energy is really at the forefront of fusion power. Perhaps you can explain a little bit about your role at Tokamak and also where Tokamak is driving in terms of this really exciting field.

Dr. David Kingham (02:06):

Yes. So fusion is a sort of elusive goal of mankind to harness the ultimate energy source of the whole universe, but it's potentially harnessable on earth and could give plentiful clean energy for decades to come, for centuries to come. So we're tackling a very big challenge at Tokamak Energy. We're aiming to develop new devices to harness fusion power and to make it economically affordable and we're aiming to be able to deliver that power in the mid to late 2030s when we think that the needs of industry, the demands of everyone to decarbonize will be very, very great. We'd like to do it sooner, but it is a huge technological challenge and it will take us some time.

Matt Pullen (03:12):

For the benefit of our listeners who I'm sure are a bit more technologically savvy than I am. A simple question, what is fusion power? And indeed how might that have a material impact on decarbonizing the grid?

Dr. David Kingham (03:28):

So fusion power, the basic reaction is what powers the sun and all the stars. It's a fusing together of two isotopes of hydrogen to destroy mass and create a large amount of energy from a very small amount of fuel. Our company is named after a device called a Tokamak toroidal chamber magnetic field invented by Russian scientists over 60 years ago. And the device we're working on is a way of using extremely powerful magnets to compress hot plasma and hold it at high density and temperature for a long time. Essentially to recreate the sort of conditions you have in the center of the sun and to fuse the ions, the isotopes of hydrogen together to create significant amounts of energy.

(04:34):

So we talk a lot to the upper E-teams in the US, advanced research projects for energy, and they have fusion development programs and they describe fusion as potentially having all the benefits of nuclear fission with essentially none of the drawbacks. So plentiful fuel, low land usage, high uptime availability, controllability of the fusion power, but no long-lived radioactive waste and no risk of meltdown. And so the possibility of locating fusion power plants close to major centers of population in the future.

Matt Pullen (05:27):

That's bewildering, but sounds amazing. But also understand there's other benefits of fusion. Medical isotopes, clean heat, so not just electricity in other sectors as well. And you touched on it just then, but could you expand on that?

Dr. David Kingham (05:45):

Renewables are fine for electricity generation unless you want a guaranteed constant source of electricity, in which case renewables typically have to be backed up with, well typically a gas generation of electricity. Now fusion has two or three main possibilities. One is generation of heat, which is then used to generate constant amounts of electricity. Another is just to use the heat directly for industrial processes in these sort of difficult to decarbonize sectors like cement, petrochemical refining or steel production. And then there's another possibility which is to use fusion to produce green hydrogen in very large quantities. And then you have an energy source that produces hydrogen, no carbon emissions, a storable source of energy, transportable source of energy. So, many possibilities arise if we can crack the essential problem of harnessing fusion power.

Matt Pullen (07:11):

There's been so much talk about hydrogen really being the fuel that will effectively replace gas and electricity. Could you just talk about that a little bit? Because there's naturally amongst layman, especially myself, this notion that hydrogen is unstable, dangerous, et cetera. But I think what you are predicting is a future where hydrogen can be harnessed, stored and delivered in a way that it isn't a worry isn't a danger to people.

Dr. David Kingham (07:44):

Yes. The challenge we are looking at is how to produce sufficiently powerful fusion power reactors that it's worthwhile using the heat and electricity produced by those devices to produce hydrogen. Now that hydrogen could be turned into ammonia or into high synthetic hydrocarbons to enable storage. I think a lot of people feel that the problem of decarbonization is essentially decarbonizing electricity supply, but when you look at the numbers you see that industrial and domestic heating, transport, aviation fuel are something like three or four times larger demands of energy compared to electricity. Decarbonizing electricity gets you a fifth, maybe a quarter of the way that you need to get to. But then you've got to push on and decarbonize these other uses of energy. And hydrogen has a significant part to play in that. The challenges of how do you distribute it safely? Well, petrol is challenging to distribute safely, but we do it all the time. So there's some learning to be done, but it's far from insurmountable.

Matt Pullen (09:15):

Of course it all sounds like science fiction, I'm sure to our listeners. So what are you doing? What needs to happen to make this all a reality?

Dr. David Kingham (09:26):

Yes, so the best that's been done so far in major government laboratories is about 10 megawatts of fusion for a short period of time, a second or less. The challenge is not really with the science, it's with the engineering and in particular we need to make very powerful superconducting magnets to enable the plasma to be held for long enough at high enough temperature and density. And those superconducting magnets have to be made of a new type of material, a new type of high temperature superconductor. And we are using rare earth barium copper oxide high temperature superconductor because it has astonishingly good properties of extremely high current density at relatively high temperatures.

(10:28):

So when I say high temperature superconductor, I'm thinking much warmer than absolute zero. So still about minus 200 degrees or minus 250 degrees, but an engineering achievable temperature. And the idea of using magnets to hold the fusion reaction in place is because if you have superconducting magnets, you get the magnetic field for free. You don't need to put lots of energy into the magnets to keep them going. Not like with copper magnets. Copper electromagnets need a lot of energy to keep them going. So we see the future as a combination of the latest generation of high temperature superconducting magnets with a particular type of tokamak device called the spherical tokamak, which is known to be a very efficient way of controlling confining a plasma.

Matt Pullen (11:36):

With the European Green Deal, for example, with the European Commission set on seeing data centers climate neutral by let's say 2030. And Europe, indeed, climate neutral by 2050. Do you see available funding? Do you see general support, whether that be political support, support in terms of enabling the local populations to understand and embrace what's going on? How do you see the UK government and indeed the European Commission supporting what you're trying to do?

Dr. David Kingham (12:17):

Well, let's take UK government first. They've been funding fusion research in quite a big way for 50 years or more. The UK is home to the world leading fusion research device, the jet tokamak based just near Oxford, near where we are. And the government has recently brought through new regulation for fusion that will enable rapid development. So it's regulation that's based on proper assessment of the risk of fusion and categorizing it essentially similar to petrochemical plants or steelworks. So heavy industry but not nuclear in the sense of nuclear fission. So that's extremely helpful. The continued government research funding is very valuable to us.

(13:23):

If we look to Europe, there's a major fusion reactor being built in southern France, the so-called ITER reactor. Now that's a very expensive and rather slow project, but it's very ambitious and we can benefit from the material selection, from the scientific understanding that's gone into that device. But we think the future is much more compact spherical tokamaks.

(13:55):

If we look across the states, a lot of growing enthusiasm, as you might expect, a lot more private funding coming into fusion. So instead of a couple of hundred million dollars a year of private funding that's happened over most of the last decade, the funding levels now are running at several billion of new private money per year. So that's really accelerating things.

Matt Pullen (14:24):

Could you just explain in really simple terms the difference between fission and fusion, just so our listeners understand?

Dr. David Kingham (14:29):

Yeah. So fusion is the joining together of small atomic nuclei to form larger ones and release energy in the process. Now fission is the opposite. You start with a large atomic nucleus like uranium typically, and it splits apart in an efficient reactor and that releases again a large amount of energy. But in the case of fission, it also produces radioactive byproducts, some of which need to be stored for tens of thousands of years or more before they decay to not being radioactive anymore. So fission, as I said, it has... Essentially, fusion has all the advantages of fission with none of the particularly awkward drawbacks, but it's very difficult to do. So fusion is very safe. If anything goes at all out of normal with a fusion reactor, the reaction stops, there's very little fuel in the device at any one time so it's not a problem. Whereas an fission reactor, as we know, unfortunately there are bad accident scenarios that could happen.

Matt Pullen (16:05):

I found it fascinating understanding this sort of evolution from nuclear fission to fusion. It's incredible. So just in terms of timelines around making this a reality, the beginning we talked about it, you touched on the sort of timelines, but what's reality here do you think?

Dr. David Kingham (16:27):

It would be nice to think we could design the fusion power plant of the future today, but we have to do quite a bit of learning and technology development before we can finalize that design. So we are anticipating our next major device in 2026, a fusion pilot plant in about 2032, and then which capable of producing energy to the grid but only in pilot scale quantities. And then fusion power reactor at the sort of 500 megawatt electric output level by 2035, first of a kind by mid next decade.

Matt Pullen (17:15):

And if fusion's really the solution, how do you see the world's bridging between now and then, bearing in mind the sustainability targets that we've touched on in our chat, but also that are out there sort of headlines for the world?

Dr. David Kingham (17:35):

I mean wind and solar can no doubt do a lot more, but they are intermittent en energy sources. And so if you use a huge amount of wind and solar in a power grid, you need a lot of backup and very difficult to completely decarbonize an electricity grid. Nuclear fission could contribute more, but as we know, the time scales for new nuclear fission plants are very, very long because of the understandable regulatory environment. So I think that will get to 2030 and beyond with a deficit in the carbon reduction compared to the carbon reduction targets that are being set today. I think some companies will make great strides in decarbonizing, but a lot of companies and a lot of countries will just not be able to do enough.

Matt Pullen (18:46):

Yeah, I think that's the harsh reality. So on that basis we obviously need a lot more people involved in fusion trying to drive awareness and drive innovation and get to those timelines that you've talked about. So how do people get involved?

Dr. David Kingham (19:06):

Well, we employ about 200 people these days. So there's 200 people very actively involved. We have student placements and there are other companies around the world who also need to recruit people and offer placements, training programs, studentships. In the UK we have UK AEA who also employ a lot of people, increasing number of people and have various apprenticeship and student support programs. So I think there are ways into the industry. I think it will become an increasingly important industry, even just in the R&D phase. It will be employing many thousands of people in the UK and perhaps larger numbers in states in the future. And the upside of severe technological challenges is it's really exciting to make progress.

Matt Pullen (20:20):

Dr. David Kingham, I'm a little bit speechless. I'm sure our listeners will probably replay this episode over and over again because the reality of science fiction coming to bear in a relatively short timeframe is so exciting. I know of course that maybe the reality is we won't reach some of the climate neutral targets that everyone would like us to see, but let's hope that as you say in your LinkedIn page, science will save us, and I really hope it does. But thank you for such an amazing insight, and thank you for bringing it down to earth the way that you did. Thank you so much.

Dr. David Kingham (21:04):

Thank you very much, Matt. A pleasure to talk to you.

Tom Kingham (21:24):

The interesting thing about fusion is that it changes our perception on what is an important energy. That heat can be turned into electricity through a steam turbine. Brilliant, tried and tested. But what if that energy were to be used in other ways? That can it be used to create alternative fuels?

(21:47):

And that's where it becomes a little more interesting I think, in terms of what we might be doing from a gas generation point of view.

Matt Pullen (21:54):

So welcome Tom Kingham. Fantastic to have you in this episode of the podcast. Of course, we are reeling from the previous episode when we discussed fusion with David Kingham who happens to be your father, of course. The topic was absolutely fascinating, went completely over my head. But nonetheless, it was great to hear about the plans for fusion, the benefits, and of course the misconceptions. But what you are going to do for us today, which the listeners are going to find fascinating, is to really explain how we are going to apply fusion to the data center industry. So the first question I've got for you is how do you see fusion being utilized by the data center industry and importantly within what timeline?

Tom Kingham (22:51):

I think firstly you can imagine how excited he gets when we have our family get togethers about the future of fusion and keeps reminding me that he's busy pushing back the frontiers. But the key thing for data centers of course is that we are a baseload consumer of power. So the traditional renewable technologies such as solar and wind really don't suit our industry particularly well. So in terms of what we can expect from fusion is this ability to create very clean, near limitless energy that is consistent. We're not relying on variables to get it to our sites. And as the industry continues to grow, the demand for power is becoming incredibly significant. So it's a technology that really is very important for our industry.

Matt Pullen (23:57):

And in terms of timelines though, when are we going to see fusion making a big impact on the industry?

Tom Kingham (24:03):

Given the advances in the various technologies that needed to be invented along the way, like high temperature superconductors and things like that, that we're actually sort of 10 to 15 years away from this being a viable solution. Whether it gets to grid scale within that time, I think that's probably more of a political issue than perhaps a technical one. And hopefully that is the case because if we can solve the technical problem then the rest will come. So yes, it's exciting because at the moment as an industry we are consuming a huge amount of power and no matter how many renewable type investments we make into buying green power, there is still that element of carbon that sits within the electrons that come to our sites.

Matt Pullen (24:56):

Could you just explain what you mean by grid scale because that's an interesting acronym, but I'm sure it relates to this technology actually becoming readily available through national infrastructure.

Tom Kingham (25:10):

By grid scale, I mean centralized infrastructure such as power stations. So these schemes that are under construction at the moment, like ITER in the south of France is a very significant size power station that will be replacing what we've conventionally built, i.e. the gas combined cycle generation schemes or even the older fission power stations that we have. What becomes really interesting is if it can be made smaller and can it then go into more localized grids. Now that might be something that is a development for the future, but for the moment just getting this thing working and delivering us cleaner electrons is the significant part.

Matt Pullen (26:03):

Tom, I mean we are talking about 10 or 15 years before the fusion panacea, but obviously that's a long time. So the question really is what are we going to do in the interim?

Tom Kingham (26:15):

That's a tricky one on the basis that we probably wouldn't be sat here talking about it if the answer was fairly obvious. The reality is the most cost effective and efficient way for us to get power to a site is by using the power utility infrastructure, and on site we have our insurance policy of the diesel generators traditionally. So I think one of the things that we can be looking at is how do we deal with the onsite generation side of things? Diesel has been traditionally the fuel, obviously that is less desirable to be burning too frequently, and as a result looking at the hydro treated vegetable oils as a drop-in replacement for them. But that's very expensive and those generators are not meant to run particularly frequently.

Matt Pullen (27:10):

And I don't think they've run very well on my chip fat for sure. Because that's interesting, there's been a lot of talk about that, but also there's been a huge amount of talk around gas. And I'd just like to understand, I'm sure our listeners would like to understand, why is gas better than diesel?

Tom Kingham (27:30):

Well, gas on a political level has been designated as the transition fuel for us to get to this ultimate green position and hopefully fusion is our answer for that. So natural gas, it burns cleaner than diesel, so it is a better fuel for us to use, but the reality is it still has its own fair share of emissions problems. So it might help us get to where we want to go, but I think where it gets interesting is what is the future for natural gas? What are the drop-in replacements or the equivalent of your chip fat for the gas supplies that go to those generators?

Matt Pullen (28:15):

Just focusing on some live examples. I know for example in Dublin for a few years now, gas generation has been a factor. Are we going to see a lot more of that? Not just because there's a move to green, but because Dublin as in a number of other major cities with big data center demand, Dublin's going to struggle to effectively provide grid power. And to your point, the local population probably aren't that keen on generation coming through the diesel generators on site. So what do you think? Are we going to see a lot of gas generation in Dublin for example?

Tom Kingham (29:01):

Well, I think we're going to have to, and it's not going to be just Dublin, they just unfortunately are probably the first to this position given their fairly early start in the European data center landscape. The bit that is concerning is obviously the amount of growth there is in the data center industry and the requirement for much larger power connection agreements that just are far exceeding the expansion of the infrastructure to provide that power. Infrastructure update projects take five, 10 years to realize. And so we really do have to be looking at onsite generation schemes in order to be able to satisfy the demand that we're seeing from the industry.

Matt Pullen (29:50):

Is this going the same way as a number of situations within the data center industry, which is that the private sector are going to be effectively funding infrastructure on the basis that local and central governments can't move quickly enough to provide the renewables infrastructure that's really needed?

Tom Kingham (30:12):

Yeah, I think the issue in Ireland is twofold. One is the need to upgrade the core infrastructure, the cables to get the power to where it's needed. But also the offset for the renewables generation. Because I think as we spoke about earlier on, the growth in wind and solar generation is fantastic and is being funded by our green power contracts. It comes with its own problem that it doesn't represent a base load generation. For places like data centers where our power consumption is pretty consistent, they don't really help. So by building gas generation schemes on site, we can actually help the utility providers with supporting their ongoing efforts to increase the renewable mix onto the grid. And that is certainly what we are seeing with the Dublin situation. But I think it's quite important to realize that as a data center industry, we are prepared to be part of the solution, I should say, rather than part of the problem. And this is of significant benefit to the grid operators to be able to have dispatchable generation on site so that the renewables mix can be improved.

Matt Pullen (31:40):

What's clear is that when you're talking about renewable power in a data center context, data centers are taking power from the grid, but it's renewable in the sense that, as you say, through the power contracts, money is being channeled into renewable investments that ultimately will change the mix of the power that's effectively distributed through the networks. You've used the term stable, you've also used the term dispatchable. So it'd be good I think for our listeners to understand those terms in the context of what we're talking about because, of course data centers rely on stable power and also the utilities are looking for data centers to provide dispatchable power.

Tom Kingham (32:34):

The power consumption from the data centers remains pretty constant all the time. It's not something that will go up and down depending on whether the wind is blowing or not. So it therefore doesn't tie particularly closely to the power that is generated from a wind farm, for example. So yes, great, when the wind is blowing, those electrons can be far greener to the data center, but when it isn't, then we have to have something that is going to make up the shortfall. And that's really where the dispatchable generation comes in, that if the grid is suffering from not having enough renewables on available to it, it's a dark day and the wind isn't blowing, then having a power station equivalent on our sites that can be effectively switched on to support the grid. That becomes a really useful tool for the energy providers to make sure that the security of supply to residential properties and other commercial properties, it's still available.

(33:36):

And in terms of that dispatchable generation technology, I think the most obvious one at the moment is the gas generation plant. But there are also schemes such as using onsite battery storage. The thing is from a data center point of view, you'd have to have a pretty significant sized battery to be able to provide enough energy to support the data center simply because of the density of power that is consumed by these facilities.

Matt Pullen (34:09):

Elon Musk comes to mind, of course. There's all sorts of offers we understand from Mr. Musk in terms of providing batteries to really help support grid power in all sorts of parts of the world. As you say, you need an awful lot of batteries to provide power. So is that really a solution for the data center industry?

Tom Kingham (34:33):

Well, he did the interesting scenario in South Australia where he bet that he could deliver a power system to support their renewables program. I think it was in a hundred days or something crazy like that. So in terms of us being able to deliver something rapidly, yeah, it probably is the right sort of technology for us to be looking at. But the scale of it is a little in excess of what might be considered reasonable for a data center. The other element is it truly green because of the amount of lithium that is being consumed in that and is that really best suited for a static application? Batteries are to a certain degree portable, therefore are they not better used for a mobile type application as opposed to a static one? But in the interim it may well be a very good solution for us to be putting in because it can help with the short term capacity needs.

Matt Pullen (35:32):

So effectively what we're talking about is waiting for fusion and in the meantime really trying to rapidly move away from diesel, taking away my fish supper by removing my chip fat and putting it into those generators. But in reality, moving to onsite gas generation to help support the grid as well. But also thinking about where there is a reasonable scale application for batteries. At the end of the day, do you foresee fusion eventually replacing these other energy sources over that 10 to 15-year period?

Tom Kingham (36:15):

The interesting thing about fusion is that it changes our perception on what is an important energy. Fusion is primarily creating a great deal of heat so that heat can be turned into electricity through a steam turbine. Brilliant, tried and tested. But what if that energy were to be used in other ways? Can it be used to create alternative fuels from that? So can it be used to create hydrogen and then ammonia using the heat that is generated by the fusion reaction? And that's where it becomes a little more interesting, I think in terms of what we might be doing from a gas generation point of view because most of the manufacturers of gas engines now are making them hydrogen ready. So there is a view, an expectation that at some point in the future that natural gas infrastructure may well be supplemented or replaced by a hydrogen infrastructure.

(37:24):

And therefore what we want to try and do with our onsite generation is make sure that we are not precluding ourselves from that potential future fuel that comes into the mix as well. And I think with all of this, we are not necessarily going to get away from having the need for onsite generation, whether it be standby or primary because we are still at the mercy of those overhead power lines that could get hit by lightning strikes or the underground cables that are subject to upstream switching or necessary maintenance that occurs on the utility infrastructure. So we still have to get the right solution in place for onsite anyway.

Matt Pullen (38:09):

It's fascinating the notion that the gas distribution infrastructure could be used to distribute hydrogen. I mean that would be amazing. But I guess in the interim, and when you start thinking about hydrogen at a local level, aren't there quite a few issues in terms of transporting and storing hydrogen on site, particularly at the scale that would be required for data centers? I mean, I've heard of companies, innovative companies that are looking at converting hydrogen into a gel format and in another format that can easily be transported and stored. But I mean it sounds fraught with risk and sounds like there's still quite a lot of innovation that needs to occur.

Tom Kingham (38:55):

The issue with hydrogen is that it does take a lot of energy to create it at the moment. Now the best way for that to happen is by using the excess renewable energy to create it in the first place. But hydrogen is a very light gas, so it is quite difficult to contain it because it will find even the very smallest of holes that perhaps natural gas won't be able to work its way out of, hydrogen will. That's where things like the work around ammonia becomes interesting. But to create ammonia requires a lot of energy in itself through the Harbor Bosch process. There are a few more things that need to be worked out along the way, but the most important thing from our perspective is to make sure we don't miss out on any of those opportunities.

(39:46):

So hydrogen is clearly going to play a significant part of this fuel transition to green. But whether it is in hydrogen in its purest form, or whether it's gels as you say, or ammonia, there's a lot of work going on this front and there's a great deal of investment in it and we have to wait and see, I suppose.

Matt Pullen (40:07):

It's really interesting all the initiatives that are going on in the industry. Fascinating. And it strikes me that the data center industry is really playing an important role in terms of accelerating the timeline of fusion. Do you believe that, is that correct?

Tom Kingham (40:22):

It's more than just the fusion element of it. It's the renewables agenda in its entirety. We are a substantial consumer of electricity and I think most if not all of the data center operators are now procuring renewable based power contracts. Therefore, they are investing in the renewable developments around the world. So yes, data centers have an incredibly important role to play in the developing of future fuels and increasing the renewable mix into each of the utility grids. What I think is really important for us over the next few years is to ensure that we are able to invest a little more in the direct applications of this. So for example, in those onsite gas generation schemes with the view of being able to transition to future fuels like hydrogen or alternative biodiesels or anything that might crop up along those lines,

Matt Pullen (41:26):

Tom, that's great. So it's clear what you're saying is that world data centers are big consumers of energy. Arguably because they are big consumers of energy, they are making a significant contribution towards the acceleration of greener sources of energy and are innovating in particular at a local level to ensure the use of those greener sources of energy in advance of local and national governments being able to deploy grid scale infrastructure. And that's wonderful to hear. Bearing in mind that I think most of our listeners will be concerned that data centers are a big gray buildings with lots of standby generators and could remain such for the next 10 to 15 years. But in that 10 to 15 years, whilst we are waiting for fusion, it's absolutely clear that innovation is going to occur, and data centers are going to continue to get greener.

Tom Kingham (42:26):

So yeah, when you reference the data centers being big gray boxes, I think that's representative of where we've come from as an industry that really we were quite secretive and predominantly ran data centers on behalf of big banks or insurance companies or manufacturing facilities. As the public, we didn't really know what happened in those buildings and had no real tie to what happened in those buildings. But we are now in the public cloud world where everybody stores everything remotely in these previously fictitious buildings, but now people are really starting to understand what they are and where they are and what sort of impact they're having on their own lives. So sending a photograph off to be stored in the cloud somewhere does have an energy element associated with it because we are using power to be able to store that image.

(43:27):

As it becomes closer to each of us as an individual and to you and I see it now as a real responsibility for us as an industry to be better custodians of the land that we build on and the energy that we consume to run these facilities. It's really important that we get that right, that they aren't gray boxes anymore, that they are in fact focused far more on sustainability and making sure that we are being responsible with emissions on these sites when we have to run generators or we have an on-site generation scheme. How can we make it as clean as possible?

Matt Pullen (44:10):

Tom, that's an amazing message to end on for our listeners. I think they will be really grateful for the insights that you've given, but most of all, grateful for the fact that you've taken what is really a pretty complicated landscape and made it very easy to digest. Tom Kingham, thank you so much for being part of this episode. I'm sure our listeners will have garnered a great deal from it. Thank you very much.

Tom Kingham (44:38):

Thanks, Matt.

Matt Pullen (44:44):

A massive thank you to both Tom and David for joining me today and sharing insights on such an important issue for both our industry and the world at large. And a big thank you to you at home for listening to episode two of CyrusOne Connects. We'd love to hear your thoughts, remember to share and comment and tag us at CyrusOne with a hashtag CyrusOneConnects. I've been your host, Matt Pullen. Thanks again and take care.