.jpg)
THE FRONTIER LINE
Hosts Wayne Aston and David Murray explore the critical global pillars of infrastructure development and energy production, from traditional methods to future-forward advancements. The Frontier Line covers the latest industry news, energy innovations, and sustainability trends that are shaping the future. Through expert interviews with industry leaders in renewable energy, utility-scale battery storage, and waste-to-energy technologies, the podcast provides insights into the evolving landscape of energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure. By focusing on the intersection of innovation and the politics of energy, The Frontier Line highlights transformative ideas and technologies poised to deliver cost-efficient, resilient, and sustainable solutions for global industries.
THE FRONTIER LINE
Gensler, Data Centers, Nuclear Power & Sustainability in the Headlines October 2024
Prepare to uncover the forces driving the dramatic rise in electricity demands from data centers set to more than double by 2028. As AI workloads grow and electricity prices soar, the tech industry faces the dual challenge of cost efficiency and sustainability. In this episode of Frontier Line, we explore potential solutions, including the transition to greener energy sources and the controversial yet promising potential of nuclear power. We'll unpack the complexities of scaling energy solutions and the looming risks of shortages that could impact data center growth.
The conversation turns to the future of energy production, where the concept of power density takes center stage. Traditional coal-fired power plants are stumbling blocks in this quest, but emerging technologies like micro nuclear reactors might hold the key to more efficient energy production. We also tackle the debate over repurposing office spaces into data centers, and why transforming them into residential units might make more sense. Discover how innovative thinking is essential in overcoming regulatory and financial barriers to meet future energy needs.
Finally, we shift focus to sustainable building practices, specifically carbon embodiment in data center development. Explore how ancient techniques using natural pozzolans in concrete can lead to a significant reduction in carbon emissions, potentially ushering in an era of carbon-negative buildings. By collaborating with leading companies, we highlight the importance of integrating sustainable practices into design processes and investing in quality construction to achieve environmentally friendly infrastructure in the tech industry. Join us as we emphasize quality over cost, showing that sometimes spending a little more can lead to superior results.
Welcome to this episode of the Frontier Line. I'm Dave and hi Wayne, hey, Dave, hey, we're going to cover some. Get out the headlines today and talk about what's going on in our world and every day. I don't know that I can even keep up on the headlines every day and it's actually surprising and I like reading like a lot of news stories and there's just so much in this space happening all around us. So we're excited to jump into it. So I'm going to kick it off by, because I think this is kind of sets the tone for where we are, and that is there's an article out there, Out there.
Speaker 1:Uk 10 is the is the site data center electricity consumption to double by 2028. New report out. That's a big, big, big statement. Oh yeah, and so the, the number they're putting at, and we've talked a lot about watts and mega, megawatt all of these, you know petawatts and everything else and megawatt all of these, you know petawatts and everything else they're saying. Research firm IDC predicts that data center electricity consumption worldwide will more than double between 2023 right now and 20, well, 2023 and 2028, reaching 857 terawatt hours, which is just in five years.
Speaker 1:So double in five years, yes, is astounding, that's historical it is, but it goes to with what we're seeing right now, what on a daily basis, we're like well, wait a minute, there are, you know, 50 megawatt, uh, or yeah, 50, 100, your tier, 400, oh no, no, that's not enough yeah, one gigawatt yeah, well, two gigawatt just to remind everybody who's been listening if you didn't hear the the episode we covered data centers and all the tiers, the tier four data centers which are currently the largest, most capable, most secure average in that 35 megawatt to 50 megawatt range.
Speaker 2:Some of them now are pushing into 200 megawatts but no one's doing a gigawatt yet.
Speaker 1:But we're getting word of two, four, six, eight Talk of they need these massive data centers and obviously I think you're going to talk about this coming up nuclear, and that word is getting bandied about a lot, a lot, a lot. So I'll finish up this article, just kind of hit some of the points. So they're increasingly power-hungry AI workloads, which is exactly what we're talking about. Rising electricity prices and growing carbon emissions. Add an urgency for data center efficiencies to be increased and greener energy source. Well, that's what we've been talking about.
Speaker 1:Saying you, we've got to make that pivot and we've got to make that in, and that's been our focus from day one is how do we do these things? How do we start now? How do we get those baseload powers taken care of? And how do you? How do you green it up? How do you get into, or how do you start way into green, and then at scale, because that's the other issue is how do you do this at scale to hit these demands right? There aren't giant giant, giant giant solar arrays out there and giant wind farms that can. Even that can touch at least what we've seen, some of the numbers we're seeing Right, and so that goes out, so not surprising AWS, aquanix, google, microsoft among those keeping the nuclear option alive. So I'll hit some of that. So data center electricity consumption is going to skyrocket, according to a new report. As I said, it'll more than double um, notching up a compound annual growth rate, the cagr, of 19.5 over the five year period.
Speaker 2:whoa, nearly 20 year over year growth that is just insane.
Speaker 1:Uh, in 2028, calculates idc, global data center electricity consumption will reach 857 terawatt hours. By way of comparison, and to help illustrate the enormity of that figure, the UK's entire electricity consumption was 266 terawatts in 2023. So this is a very. This is a. This report is a worldwide report, a little bit UK centric, but it's, it's hitting all the points. And then, and they go on to say, you know, a little bit UK centric, but it's, it's hitting all the points. And then and they go on to say you know, power hungry AI workloads will account for a growing portion of total data center electricity use. Idc forecast they will gobble up 146 terawatt hours by 2027, a CAGR of 44.7% is astounding.
Speaker 1:As it stands, Electricity is the largest ongoing expense in keeping data centers humming. It accounts for 46% of total spending for enterprise data centers and 60% for service provider data centers. And the quote rising consumption and increased energy costs will make data centers considerably more expensive to operate, warned the research firm. But how much is uncertain. Burgeoning carbon emissions is, of course, another major concern which I think everybody everybody, as we're seeing everybody in the space is trying to solve all of it all at once and saying we've got to and you've said it multiple times. You had this take of.
Speaker 2:It's got to be an and and yeah, yeah, all all modalities on deck to stay ahead of this or even pace with this. I still don't think it's possible for us to keep pace with the ai 20 demand growth year over year. There's no chance I think you throw all the modalities at this that we can pace with that. Yeah, I think you're going to see shortages. I think we'll probably see AI potentially and data center expansion not hitting those targets of demand because of the issues we've been talking about on the show Right Power production grid issues all those problems, all those problems.
Speaker 1:Well then, this feeds right into, I think, what you wanted to talk about next, which is, well, this is also jobs yeah, yeah, well, I'm pivoting.
Speaker 2:I have another headline I'm going to pull up because of because, oh, you're gonna, it's it follows this. Okay, better, um, I'll just grab the headline. Okay, uh it, this one, this one's really interesting here because it's kind of a it's a little bit of, it's a little satirical. Okay, and and I'm not gonna even cite the source because I don't love the source they're more like sci-fi novelists, right, they're, they're some of my favorite media, media whores.
Speaker 2:I'm, I'm looking at the source okay okay, all right, okay, but it was a really comical, a comical article and it it kind of. It's a good, uh segue from what you just shared. The headline is silicon valley has a plan to save humanity. Just flip on the nuclear reactors. Okay, seems easy. That seems so easy. Now we covered recently on the show the federal government putting I want to say it was $2.5 billion into reigniting or restarting the nuclear reactors in New York at the Three Mile Island project. That's right. This article is addressing now also the Palisades nuclear reactor and they're citing also Amazon putting a data center campus right on the site of a Talon Energy nuclear power plant in northeast pennsylvania and that's on top of bill gates new nuclear project in wyoming, right, you know, in proximity to where we're, we're working.
Speaker 2:Um, so when we talk about these nuclear reactors and you look at the videos and the photos, these are massive, like these big stacks and things that are commonly associated with these traditional means of nuclear power generation. They're massive. So you don't just put that on a five-acre plot. No, it's also interesting to understand that, as large as those are, they're only producing like a gigawatt, like like one gigawatt. It's not like these huge nuclear reactors are producing five gigawatts. Like, like you know, sam altman, uh ceo chat gpt. He's approaching the federal government saying we need to figure out who can provide enough power. How can we do this to have five gigawatt capable data centers? Right now, that's music to our ears. It is because there's a problem and there's solutions that'll be coming. I feel like we're on the forefront of that.
Speaker 1:but well, it's something that we we you know, I think, is informed, how we've approached what we've been doing on the development side of how do we, with our know-how and knowledge and expertise, solve some of the challenges that are that that everyone else is running into in that space, so that we can provide, uh, the infrastructure right and and and set that up to where we can, we can tap, we can in, in, in right and set that up to where we can right in parallel tackle this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to key back in on the term that we've used regularly, which is power density. It's the amount of power that can be produced per meter or per acre, and we talk about the IPP in Delta, utah. That's a massive power plant. Coal-fired power plant historically produces 1.8 gigawatts, yes, still. So take those traditional modality and produce 5 gigawatts out of it, you'd have to more than double the size and capacity of the IPP. To many that just seems impossible. How do you even do that? I mean the dollars behind that bar in the billions and billions and billions of dollars, not to mention the land. And so, as this all, it's becoming axiomatic to me that the technology behind power production is going to have to improve power density. We're going to have to be able to produce more power on smaller acreage with much more efficient means than we ever have efficient means, yes, than we ever have. Right, we're going to see power production modalities come online. That that don't exist is what that means.
Speaker 1:That's what it means and I think we're saying, like the, the micro nuclear reactors is one of those hopes. I think right, and again, it's well, but how? How quickly can you get get those things online? Because they can, on a very small scale actually to your point, like super dense, yeah, and arguably, you know, I think it pencils, they're going to be affordable if you look at the long term it comes down to.
Speaker 1:There probably has to be a broad-based discussion and I would love if we can get some. You know we'll get some nuclear scientists maybe on the show. Oh yeah, talk to them. We know a couple, we know a couple. There are, you know there are founded fears out in the public around that type of power, because in our lifetimes if you've lived, you know, 40, 50 years we've seen some major, major, major accidents. But it's also pushed the industry and I don't think most people know that, most people aren't probably paying attention like we're paying attention, that the technology has changed considerably, the safety's changed considerably and instead of these massive, massive plants, they're able to do a lot of this stuff using a much more small framework. And so I think it's one of those answers and to the headline, nuclear certainly has to be part of the conversation going forward, but what we know right now is, in order to do a nuclear project anywhere is really, really difficult.
Speaker 2:I mean, you're talking five to 10 years 300 million in permitting process before you even break ground.
Speaker 1:Before you break ground or before you're even guaranteed that you're actually going to get there, and just to get there to do all the studies and everything else, this is just money being thrown into basically a pit, not knowing necessarily if you're going to come out on the other end.
Speaker 1:And so if you're looking at like you know, at you know, if you're saying, okay, where, you know, where am I going to put my money, there's a reason that it's been a lot of groups have been very reticent to like jump into this, because there's a lot of people lost a lot of money. Yeah, like a lot of money, oh yeah, hundreds of millions of dollars pursuing this, all you know, to get to the final line and only to be saying, no, sorry, that's not going to work. And so I think you know that's got to get figured out, and I think some communities you know some communities are fine with it. There are certain parts of the country that already have the nuclear plants in their area and obviously those are already permitted places. And so that's why I think you see, like the three-mile going to places that already exist, let's go to the ones that already exist, already have the footprint or already have all the permitting, and starting there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. Just as you're talking, you remind me and I'll underscore what you started this episode with was I'm combing through so much news, so many headlines To find the nuggets I think that are valuable to share with the audience. Here are our listeners. But one article I came across. I'm not going to go into the details of the article, but the concept of it was. The author was talking about how, because of the current downturn in office space demand, then maybe office space conversions into data centers make sense. That's interesting. Well, I looked at that and I laughed, because there's no comprehension of fiber power utilities. They're on another planet. An office space, what it consumes versus what a data center is going to consume, don't exist on the same planet, and so it's going to be a very challenging business model. I think the publisher probably was a little bit crazy, a little bit in fantasy land over that idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm trying to think of, like, okay, do they have a particular business park in mind where that would actually make sense? Yeah, I can't think of one no business park in mind where that would actually make sense? Yeah, I can't think of one, no, that has the. I mean, it's interesting if it actually made sense, but I can't think of one business park off the top of my head that has the necessary infrastructure. No, not even remotely close.
Speaker 2:No, I think a much more plausible, viable conversion would be convert office space into condos and apartments. That's about. You know tit for tat the amount of consumption it is. And plus it matches it matches what it's already been permitted to do. It matches what the utility programming already was intended to do.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's probably it's also an unawareness of actually how these things work Right there's well, wouldn't it be a good idea? Yeah, and then there's reality. Work right there's, there's well, wouldn't it be a good idea? Yeah, and then there's reality. Yeah, like well, that would, I think, theoretically be a good idea, but you can't do it like that well, I I bring it up because I'm so cynical about the media and the press.
Speaker 2:I feel like they don't know anything I feel like there are so few journalists who actually study this and understand any of this. But everyone has opinions. They're all loud. Most of them are really bad opinions, but you know, it's the buzz right now. You just google, you know, and so I think we have a lot of keyboard warriors that are throwing their opinions out there just kind of haphazardly, and they don't really. It doesn't matter if they're not well-researched.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I'll dovetail into that. On the media, I might have an opinion. Yeah, speaking of opinions, I thought you might. Speaking of opinions, well, you know what you've seen. You know most are going after either viewership clicks, ratings, or some. You know, subscriptions're. Most are going after either viewership clicks, um, ratings, uh, or some, or, or you know, uh, subscriptions, and there's a methodology to that and you're trying to do it. It's like any other business. You're trying to do it the least expensive way, the biggest bang for the buck, and you don't.
Speaker 1:And everything's going so fast and you're on these news cycles that used to be, yeah, um, you know you'd have a 24-hour news cycle, um, or you'd have a couple. You have time, you don't have it anymore and you also had specialists. So anybody who's seen like local, like local news, will understand that. You know most. You know whether it's a newspaper or a tv, tv station or even a radio, have specialists to a certain degree. They might have a political specialist, they might have this, they might have that, and the reason you need those is because, to your point, they understand the nuances of what they're covering. So if I you know, historically speaking, if I put out, if I take a say, a reporter who's a general assignment reporter, who you know hopefully can go and ask the right questions and maybe get a sense of what's going on, the story I would have gotten, versus sending a seasoned reporter who understands how to cover that is entirely different. They might cover the same things and might come out with the same things, but you're just going to get nuance. You don't.
Speaker 1:And and this is a factor of they just they. They have cut, you know not all, but a lot of stations and a lot of newspapers, as we all have watched them kind of dwindle. They have cut staffing and so they rely on source information and you're right. As a result, you get you Source information and you're right. As a result, it enters into the realm of not taking the time to really vet a story.
Speaker 1:Some of these stories really, truly, I mean to do a story. Well, it might take a while to do that and they're under pressure to put it out like this yeah, right, yeah. It all adds to this problem we're seeing, and what you're seeing and the stuff we're seeing online is not anything different. Are you dealing with maybe now are you dealing with some AI? They've gone in and they've scraped it, they've consumed it, they've put an article in it. I've run across some really, really, really good journalists who spend time really diving deep into a particular issue because that's interesting to them and or it might be in their space, and those are the people you hope for. And I also tell you you're never gonna make everybody happy or mad, but you can at least say look, I respect their reporting because I know they're trying to get to the bottom of whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1:We just don't see that, yeah, yeah, I don't um, and that's unfortunate, and you know, you know anyway. So there you go.
Speaker 2:Well, that's my, there's my two cents. Well, thank you, and that's really valid. I mean, you run a news station for over a decade. You've got deep perspective and I appreciate you bringing that to the table. I, you know, I most of us don't have that opportunity, and so it's valuable.
Speaker 1:Well, and I'll tell you even in the intro, we used to take crap all the time from the newspapers. They thought we were just like you know, we're we're dedicating a thousand words and you guys are, you know, doing a minute on the same story. How possibly can you cover what's going on? And I would. I would say you're right, there's an argument to be made for that. If you want in depth, yes, you know reading, that is still possible. But I always say say can you get to the essence of a story in a minute, a minute and a half? And the one thing we could do better than anybody else is we could actually show the emotion of the story. We could actually interview somebody. You could actually take people there yeah visually, which we all know.
Speaker 1:We're all. We're living in a very uh, image, uh, video driven world. We know the difference between reading and then and then listening to a video or seeing somebody convey it, and so there is a power there, and so there you go. Yeah, but we used to take crap too, I mean we, you know, we, even within our own industry for like going, ah, you guys are barely scratching the surface, yeah, um, and, and you do your best, and so it's you. You do your best to cover what you think are the topics that are relevant to the community. Yeah, and you do it in a way that you are not, you know, you're not jumping into speculation, you're just trying to cover. This is what's going on, this is what this group says, is what this group says. Here you go. This is why we, you know, obviously we're covering, we think it's important that you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah again, I don't see that across the board. I see see a lot of opinion, like it's most of its opinion, what's out there. You know we're very focused on this attitude that we've got to embrace nuclear, we've got to embrace clean coal technologies, cleaner gas, taking all the fossil fuels have to be cleaned up, but they have to persist. You can't just decommission it and we've got to make a great, great effort to establishing and developing out new renewables. Like that. All has to happen simultaneously.
Speaker 2:And so, on one hand, there's value that we're trying to bring by sifting through and bringing you some of the articles that are being published that do have real value, but there's also some contrast value that comes to the table to just help you understand, as you're listening to this you cannot trust the media, you can't trust everything is being published because there's there's so much right, um, and I think, I think over the last decade, the population in general has become much more suspect of the fake news and wary about where they get their news from. You know, and and I've experienced within my own circles, where some of our older constituents are still, you know, still kind of buying into the, the habits of some of the other, these stations, like the cnn's of the world that we just know, you know have total disregard for fact, but but you've got a, a listenership that that buys that as truth.
Speaker 1:They're depending on that for for their, their news they're in air quotes, they're in a news arms race, yeah, uh, cnn, msnbc, fox and you know some of the others, but that's I mean those, those three right there. They're gonna and and each have their own audiences and I've watched them come up and it's progressed from. There was a day when CNN I'm sure everybody, we'd see them in the airports and we'd see that every 30 minutes, yeah, running, and it would be more of a Every station I'll give you an example, every station in utah was a cnn affiliate. Okay, um, so we would, we would send our stories to cnn and they would source out what was interesting and what was going on in a particular region.
Speaker 1:Um, but what I've seen in the last 15 years first of all, it's a lot less expensive to produce a talk show than it is a new show a wholly different thing, sure and so it's easier to spin up um news opinion shows than it is to actually do news, yeah, um, so we've, we've seen a drift. So most of what I mean my opinion again, I think most of the cable news, yeah, across the board, they do talk about the topicality of news, just like we're going to talk about these things here, but they're, you know, they have a certain directive and they have a. They have a. Well, I would say they have a responsibility. But it's all opinion yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean it. Yeah, you're touching on what's going on, but it's also with a, an idea of how you see it. It's not necessarily trying to look at it and saying, okay, what's really let's sort through, maybe the you know like, let's get to it. And I, you know that that's what I see in the space, and so that's why, you know, news agencies like reuters and ap, generally speaking, are still always, you know, they have. There's a scale about like very unbiased, very, you know, very reliable. It's not the cable news shows that are anywhere near that, that thing and it's um, and that it hasn't been and it hasn't been for a while. I'm to your point. But that's where a lot of people get their information, yeah, and then that information then goes out and spiders out through social media, and that's a whole different animal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm with you. Well, back to that article that I was just yeahcing on nuclear. To underscore what we're saying yeah, if you read the article, the full article and the context of it, the publisher is very, very negative on nuclear. I mean it's satirical. Yeah, it's satirical. It's calling them out saying, yeah, just nuclear reactors and we'll just melt the planet and all these environmental issues and blah, blah, blah. That's not our position. No, our position is this nuclear situation is real. We, as responsible constituents, stakeholders in this conversation, must be focused on nuclear development. It's not a joke, it's not a gimmick. There's billions of dollars making it happen and all of the apa regulations, all of the, the cleaning up of things, that that's that becomes part and parcel. That's going to happen, as we put, you know, even the old reactors back online. There's new standards that have to be met, right, so you don't just turn it on. There's a whole kind of reconditioning of a plant like that, and so I see it as a very positive thing, whereas that article was trying to paint this negative idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's fear and then there's what the reality is. It's a complicated situation, yeah, and it has to be part of it, and you've had scientists, the scientific community, espousing this for a long time. We've seen other countries gravitate towards nuclear. Again, nuclear is bad because when it goes bad, it goes really bad and it affects a lot of people and I totally get it. I totally understand the fear.
Speaker 1:But if you can mitigate that and that's where at least everything I've read, that's where a lot of the design focus has been the last 20, 30 years, since some of these major things and since Fukushima, how do you do this in a way that you can almost guarantee? And that's that almost guarantee because it's 99.9.9%. And so what if all of these things happen and you get that 0.9%9? And it's the what if all these things happen and you get that point percent and it's okay? Well, what is our contingency if you get to that? And I think they're thinking about those things and making these and, from what I've read, they're very happy with the way it's advanced and they were happy with it before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, science community has been, generally speaking, pretty. If you look at just the numbers going, this is safe. Yeah, I mean, if you look at just it numbers going, this is safe. Yeah, I mean, if you look at just it's, just it's safe. It's this yes, does it use a lot of water? Yes, but there are ways, there are new technologies that are getting away even from that. That's where we are and that's why I would encourage people to go out and read about it yeah, kind of see where the industry is at. Go read from people you know. Go read about people who you know we're talking about, these experts. Go read what they're saying about this. You know they're people too. They have families too. They are trying to address these concerns. They're saying we can do this better and ultimately, it needs to be part of the next.
Speaker 2:Well, we had one full episode dedicated to nuclear and the high-level nuances. Let's not forget that. To say nuclear power, that's not a black and white thing no.
Speaker 2:It has a full spectrum of technology going back to the Cold War era of fission. Now, talking about cold fusion, it's totally different. It's using yes, it uses some of the same kind of uranium, thorium, plutonium, these minerals that we all understand and associate with nuclear. But there's a lot of nuance to this and that's why we urge you to do the research for yourself, understand where it's headed. It's not just trying to regurgitate something that didn't work in the 60s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would say, if there's, if you have fear out there, that's that's the thing. I would that you're right to be fearful, but go figure out why. Go see behind the headlines what's actually you know, and I say, research yourself. That's a that can also be problematic, but I think, if you spend even a little bit of time, going, oh, this is maybe not as not as like black and white, as stark, I like this is absolutely terrible and awful, and saying you know what this actually should be considered, um, that's you know. I would just encourage you to do that, because that's what I've done. Yeah, okay, what? What's really the truth behind what?
Speaker 1:Different parties want you to see what, the, the sound bites and the, the headlines? I mean, you know, there are groups behind us that want to see a certain headline. Obviously, this headline was for a certain reason. They want a certain reaction. They're trying to feed it. Is that the reality, though? Yeah, and I think the experts, the people who we'd actually go to in the industry granted that you could say, well, they're biased I say no, I'm in this, and this is why this works. This is why this doesn't work. This is why this is where the, this is where the it meets the road. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:I'll save my next headline, because you've got one and I've got one. Let's take turns.
Speaker 1:Well, I will take turns Well, this is well-solved, this goes right. So hyperscale data center market size worth $355.87 billion globally by 2031.
Speaker 2:Got to restate that man.
Speaker 1:My mind didn't even comprehend Hyperscale data center market size worth $355 billion. I think that's small. I do too. I do too. I mean it says the hyperscale data center market size is expected to reach $355 billion by 2031. From US would be $80 billion of that in 2023, to record a CAGR of 20.4% from 2023 to 2031. And this is just. This is from Insight Partners. Global hyperscale data center market is observing significant growth, not shocking blah blah blah Report. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's you know. I can go to report, but that's you know. Again, there are all these prognostications and predictions about how big these things are going to be, point being no one knows, but these are huge numbers.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's safer for me to look at what the private equity markets are doing, what the alt investment managers are doing. We already covered BlackRock and Microsoft putting together $100 billion. So that's one. That's only 30%. This is just in the US.
Speaker 1:But we have a bulk of the data centers so it would make sense. But still, yeah, I think it's much higher than that. I think it's going to end up being up north of $500, if not $750. But we'll see. We can predict it now. We'll go back in a few years and say it's up north of 500, if not 750. Yeah, but we'll see. Cool, we can predict it now. We go back in a few years and say, yeah, right, so I mean that was just it. I mean it's just really just talking. There's obviously a lot of talk and a lot of articles around. What does this all look like? So all of the private equity you could go down the list of all the money groups, from family offices and everybody down in corporate Everybody's reading the same stuff, going, wow, this is going to be big. And so they're figuring out how to deploy the money. Where are we deploying, how are we deploying and how are we solving this? And at the root of all of this is people. We're trying to solve a problem.
Speaker 2:We're trying to tackle a problem, try to do it smartly and move some of our initiatives forward and and then, obviously, as we've done that, we're stepping in and seeing this you know, a fun nugget I might just throw into the conversation because it's contextually relevant to data centers and the advancement of data centers, particularly as we consider the tier five category that we're ambitious to pioneer. We're having conversations with high-level folks, international multinational companies, the biggest of the biggest companies. We're talking about Big, the tech stacks, the cooling, the power companies. We're talking about big, the tech stacks, the cooling, the power needs, the security needs, and we're also talking about sustainability measures. Within all of that and within the building, there was an interesting, an interesting term that that I've dug into.
Speaker 2:This past week, gensler Architecture, one of the largest architecture firms in the world, maybe even the largest, published a really interesting white paper on their website about carbon embodiment and carbon embodiment referring to the life cycle of a building. And the carbon embodiment of a building is measured by all of the factors, from extraction to procurement, to transport, to construction, to disposal of a building. So it's, it's like a carbon footprint, but for a building, yeah, like the total, it's tracing the carb, the total carbon emission required to produce materials. We're talking concrete, steel, glass, pvc, pipe, aluminum, because there's, there's, it starts at the commodities level of mining, refining, uh manufacturing. So the life cycle of materials. And then transport is actually a big one. You know, to deliver all the concrete and steel to the site, you've got a lot of diesel trucks, so putting off emissions. So, as we get more conscious about the carbon embodiment of a building and we're designing in ways that we can have net zero or carbon negative buildings okay, because that's a high focus for us on the sustainability side of this, I was digging deeper into concrete, okay, and the traditional methodologies of concrete.
Speaker 2:There's a product called clinker and in the construction space, everyone knows that clinker is the primary ingredient of portland cement. Portland cement happens to be, you know, probably the the biggest carbon emission um element of concrete, and so there's a lot of to do and and and uh advancement within the concrete sector of using other materials to replace clinker, like natural policy, a posilons. Natural posilons are volcanic rock, uh, sedimentary clay, shale. These, these special types of of products, can be ground up and exhibit the same or greater uh cement cementuous properties as clinker, but they have a low or negative carbon impact. So so by using natural pozzolans in concrete ingredient or the mix, means that we could reduce the carbon footprint of the concrete within a building by up to 70. That's exciting, wow.
Speaker 2:When we talk about a data center, the size, we're talking about. That's a concrete tilt-up building building in most instances, meaning that we're pouring concrete on site uh in in, uh for the walls, and then we're pouring all of these very thick floors to to be able to support the weight of what we're installing in the building. So it's a lot of concrete. A million square foot building is mostly concrete, and if you can reduce your carbon footprint by 70, it's huge. It's so significant, it's it's, it's awesome. Um, it may cost more, it may be geographically, geographically restrictive, because the concrete manufacturers, the batch plants, would have to have access to these specialized materials. Lucky for us in the rocky mountains these are all abundant materials, um, but it was also interesting to kind of dig into the history of natural pozzolans being used in Rome and other kind of you know, older civilizations, and this is a testament to some of these old buildings that still exist hundreds and hundreds of years later, I think.
Speaker 1:I saw something I want to say. It's probably one of these history journals where it was like a they called it some ancient cement, like they. Actually it's set in water. Uh-huh, there's something with the properties. Yep, the, and they had figured it out. Yeah, and it, and it's still quite a, a, a discovery about how it works. Like it's still there, like these things are still solid, you know, thousand plus years later, right, is that? Is that what?
Speaker 2:that's yeah, okay, okay, yes, okay.
Speaker 2:So this is, this is knowledge.
Speaker 2:That is not new knowledge, it's just we've moved away from that old knowledge to replace, like clinker in, in my understanding, is a just a cheaper, faster way to produce the portland cement and so in as we've industrialized, you know, and we've gone through some dark days in our country and globally where we've thrown out, against better judgment, the cleaner modalities in in exchange for higher carbon emission, dirtier technology, dirty, dirtier modality to produce, but because it could be faster and cheaper, faster, cheaper, okay.
Speaker 2:So it's nice, it's a breath of fresh air to be moving back to some of these more natural ingredients, having measurable metrics on the construction of a building. But it's it's important for for the audience to know that, as we are constructing this, these are things that we're thinking about, these are things that we are integrating into the design, and this is why working with some of these big companies, like we've mentioned, makes so much sense, because they you know they're, they have pioneered many of these advancements, and so we've sought out companies who are committed to doing it smarter, cleaner, with superior performance, even and sometimes it's a wash on the cost.
Speaker 1:So just a nugget and going over that, did you? You know we've talked about cradle to cradle. Is that? You know? This whole approach like how, like a building, also designing a building to where, if you had to say, tear down a building Instead of how it gets like we're going to, maybe there's a, their whole thing was it's a design problem. It's always a design problem, like, if you can design this better and then that could be be reused, then you minimize that footprint, you minimize that ultimate footprint, but this is that and then, even better than that, in a weird sort of way, like it's like they're just going down the very fundamental levels of saying, well, I guess it is a design thing. It's like, if we can, if we can come up with a better initial product, yeah, then that fixes a lot of things downstream.
Speaker 2:It's supply chain. It's a more aware focus on the supply chain of how we build something. It's not just buying what exists here in the lumber store. It's taking a conscious approach to sourcing materials that are proven to be better materials but are also proven to achieve some of these, these carbon emissions standards. You know that we're we're setting forth LEED certifications in architecture have been around for a while and all I spent nine years, as you know, in architecture four paper drafting high school and five at the U of U in the CAD program, and you know it was always fascinating to me to design lead certified buildings, and so I've always, I've always wanted to, you know, as a developer, utilize some of the technologies that make it more cleaner and more efficient, more innovative and futuristic.
Speaker 2:Right Now, we're going beyond lead platinum or lead gold or silver certifications into net zero certifications and carbon negative certifications that are really pushing the envelope of the construction industry. It's a good thing. It is a good thing it's not mandated okay, it's not codified by most municipalities. It's not codified or codified by most municipalities, but the impetus is on us as developers to embrace these things and bring it to the table. So that's part of the exciting marketability of what we're doing inside of a community, to be able to look a municipality in the face and say look, not only are we not putting level four carcinogens in the air, you know, many are concerned about, you know, emissions, not only are we not doing that, but we're doing this, this and this and this, and we can enumerate a whole list of things that we're implementing.
Speaker 1:We're better here because we're now actually helping everything else out. That's right.
Speaker 1:Well, man that brings up a question I have for you. What goes through your mind as a business owner, as a developer, to make the decision to say you know what, I'm going to spend a little bit more money? You have to make a decision as a business leader. Typically, business is like no, absolutely the lowest cost, quickest, obviously, if you can have both. But where do you say you know what, I got to do this because this is valuable. And how do you, wayne, balance that?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. That's a great question.
Speaker 1:I asked with what A few minutes left if we're trying to hit 45 minutes, yeah, no it's great.
Speaker 2:I mean we could probably wrap the episode on this thought. I'm curious. It's a great question Not to put you on the spot. Well, we've talked about Sage Creek. We've talked about hospitality and some of the amenities of a project and where it made sense to innovate or go overboard or kind of over-engineer to meet a certain revenue target. It's another thing. And we also talked about the solar. That never happened on Sage Creek.
Speaker 2:But when I look at these data centers that we're designing and the factories we're designing and the power plants that we're designing, it's a totally bigger opportunity. There's so many more moving parts to this and I believe using something like the concrete, the advanced concrete ingredients may be marginally more expensive, but if they're superior performance and I have the ability to maybe take advantage of some tax abatement, carbon credits, it might actually end up being more cost effective. Yet to and we do a full analysis on cost, cost versus and you know, cost versus innovation impact, and to me it's pretty exciting. I mean this is one thing that the government over the last 15 or 20 years has been moving in the right direction in my mind is making more of these carbon tax credits available so that you can actually factor it into the bottom line when you budget a building Right, so that you can actually factor it into the bottom line when you budget a building right. And so getting high-efficiency glazing, that's been something that's been long embraced. High-efficiency HVAC systems, high-efficiency. Now we're really focusing on high-efficiency power management systems and we'll get more into that maybe in the next episode.
Speaker 2:But I just see opportunity. I think we have to analyze all of the moving parts, but there's a full analysis on a building that has to happen to help. But we can quantify that and I think that the good news for us is even it costs a little bit more now to build it 10 years from now. We'd be glad we did 20 years. We're really glad we did because we're engineering for the future and I think it's important that we have business models, revenue models behind these, that there's margin enough to support engineering this 20 years into the future, and that's where we're committed. So we're not gonna we're not gonna build the cheapest buildings ever. No, we're not in that game. We're not hiring the the cheapest contractors. We're paying a premium to have the best contractors, premium to have the best engineers and designers, architects, so, um. So I'm a big, big proponent of paying a little bit extra where it's prudent to get, get a better, a better product.
Speaker 1:That's my thought, that's a great thought, and I guess that and that's where we'll end today. So awesome. Thank you for joining us on the frontier line until next time.
