Not Your Father’s Data Center - Decarbonizing Digital Infrastructure for Sustainable Data Centers

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

In this episode, host Raymond Hawkins, Chief Customer Officer at Compass Datacenters, sits down with Miranda Gardiner, leader of the iMasons Climate Accord. Miranda Gardiner brings a rich international background—having lived and worked across Iowa, Germany, San Francisco, Abu Dhabi, and more—with deep expertise in sustainability, architecture, and green building initiatives. Her journey includes significant work at the U.S. Green Building Council and hands-on involvement with sustainable projects worldwide.The conversation explores the rapidly evolving role of data centers in a world increasingly focused on power demand, decarbonization, and environmental responsibility. Topics span the exponential growth in data center energy needs, nuclear and renewable energy’s place in the power mix, and the critical importance of sustainable materials and supply chains. Raymond and Miranda discuss the collaborative structure of the Climate Accord—including governing bodies and working groups—addressing how the industry is innovating toward measurable climate goals, equipment standards, and new ways to balance digital growth with planetary stewardship.Timestamped Overview00:00 Sustainable Design and Global Impact06:20 Solo hike in Austria09:48 Capturing Energy from Lightning10:49 Fortuitous Career Transition Story13:52 Collaborative Leadership in Decarbonization17:55 Strategic Alliances for Clean Energy21:50 Powering Digital Interactions at Scale23:55 Energy challenges and perceptions29:10 Industry Leaders Drive Climate Action32:07 Building a Greener Future Together33:48 Equipment and Environmental Collaboration38:03 Responsible Digital Infrastructure Insights

How do we impact the communities around us? I mean, we've seen that this year. Brownout, rolling blackouts, temperatures rising. That all kind of correlates to the power demand from the facilities, but also the power demands that we have for our homes, for our schools, for our medical facilities. We've got to be able to balance a lot of that and a lot of the onus is coming on to the data centers right now. All right. Welcome to another edition of Not Your Father's Data Center.

I'm Raymond Hawkins, your host. Chief Customer Officer at Compass. Today, we are joined by our friends and our friend in particular, Miranda Gardner, from the I-Mason's Climate Accord. Miranda, welcome. Thank you for coming and talking to us. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here today.

Before we get into how data centers are saving the planet, which I know everyone wants to hear about, visceral reaction. We talked about that. We want to try to produce some of those. Before we get into that, let's hear about you. So Miranda, you go back as far as you're willing. I'd love to hear about pre-Georgetown days,

but you take us back as far as you'd like to take us. We want to understand what makes you, you, and how long have you cared about our planet and its sustainability and how'd you get into that as a career? Great question. Always love to dig into the past in some ways, obviously. But, you know, we were talking about this a little bit before we got going. I grew up all over the world.

And so to see that and have that context, you know, from living in Iowa when I was a kid to Germany to, you know, really my roots in San Francisco, I think caring about the planet has just kind of inherently been part of my approach to life. I remember going to recycling facilities as a kid and sorting, you know, the brown and the green glass, which we don't do anymore. You know, I have a yearbook photo from when I'm a kid that indicates like, what are your plans for the future? And under my photo, it says there would be no pollution and ever. I don't have a home. You know, even in high school and I went to a tech arts high school, some of the projects that I developed or designed, even as a teenager, or things like low-income modular housing, looking at site selection when it came to larger projects and what the ecosystem around the building

and have had an impact on the design and the functionality of it. So I sort of steer and clear of it or went a different way when I went to Georgetown. They don't have an architecture school. I explored writing and creative arts and my German background, kind of exploring languages and literature, and then really started to get back into it in graduate school and pursued a master's of architecture, did one year designing,

and then about 16, 17 years ago was like, no, I want to get involved with the planet. And so works for US Green Building Council, helped develop the lead technical side of some of the rating systems that you now see out there in their version 5. the 2009 version, the version four, lead for healthcare, lead for retail, development of that expanded. I've then got to go again back across the world. So Abu Dhabi, Vancouver, Germany, Greece, supporting rating systems, supporting development of criteria and really having a hand in sustainable conversations across every industry. I know we're talking data centers today,

but I've seen, you know, an airport in Akalewit, which is like the northernmost point in Canada, and how we work sustainability into that, and then ones across the globe in terms of Australia, everywhere in between. So it's really been, for me, a very exciting marriage of that kind of international approach to things and different people in different places and then really getting into how data centers function

and using the functionality of it to drive the sustainability initiatives. So tell me two things. Where do you consider home with all that travel? Right now. Yeah, so home for me. It's time to eat, Thanksgiving dinner, and you're ready to sit down with the family. Where's home?

Where do you want that to happen in a perfect way? Well, I mean, home is where the hurt is. So, and my heart lives in California. My family is still in San Francisco. I live in Southern California now with my boyfriend and his son. I got you. So you head up, you guys head up the coast and go to NoCal for Thanksgiving or those kinds of things. That's home.

Gotcha. We do. We also have a little bit of home and heart in a whole. Ohio, which is where he's from. So we won't go down to college football this game. Oh, come on. We can talk about Ohio State. There's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with that. My formative years were in Dayton, Ohio. Okay. There we go. He is from outside of Cleveland, but he is gone to and is very much an Ohio State Buckeye, sorry, the Ohio State. That's right. That's right.

That's right. Yes. Very good. All right. Well, so he enjoyed his weekend as we are recording here in the middle of week one of college football season headed into week two. So he enjoyed beating Texas, I'm sure. He enjoyed his weekend. He's enjoyed the last year. We were at the Rose Bowl. We saw that domination of Oregon in that second game. So yeah. Yeah, yeah, fun stuff.

And with all of that travel, where do you say, you know, that was the neatest place. It doesn't have to be, you know, hey, this is where I want to live. But, man, it was fascinating to see Australia. It was incredible to be in Germany. You know, I love Greece. But where's the place that you really go, you know, that stood out. I want to go back there as often as I can. Oh, man. A great question. And you know, you can't see it right now. I do have a tattoo on my arm. It's 16 map coordinates of all the places I've lived. So that just gives you a sense of how far I've taken my travels and go to. Oh, man. One's got to say. If you can't pick one, pick three. Give us two. Something stood out everywhere. Sure. I can pick a few for you. My

Dad is originally from New York State, grew up in Long Island and upstate New York. The Adirondex and the Catskills always hold a place in my heart because it's just so beautiful to go up there, go hiking, be there. I've been to Lake Georgia a couple of times. So love going back and visiting family and having that time there. So I would say a lot of it has to do. Maybe you're surrounded by nature and stuff. So there was a trip that I took to Austria by myself, like showed up on a train, took a bus out to this. random hike climbed up and then it was all alone and it was just like you could see the snow and you

could see this glacier lake and then you come hiking back down and you get to go swim in the lake and then you hop the bus back to town and it was like one of those spiritual moments of like this is I think for me this is why I do what I do it's like to save and preserve places like this that exist in the world was really really stunning really amazing I would say maybe the last one um was I got to go surf in Sri Lanka. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. It was really fun, really cool.

You get to just meet. We stayed, my friend and I stayed in a random hostel. Like, you just get to meet so many different people. You get to get out there and surf. You know, you eat all the local food. Like, just a really special place. Got to go see some of the wildlife there. And again, you're all the way across the world.

So it gives you a lot of perspective on your own life. Literally the other side of the world. Yeah, yeah. One of my previous teammates is from Sri Lanka. And it was, you know, every time he'd gone, he's like, okay, it's 24 hours of flying, right? It is a long trip away, quite literally halfway around the world. Well, the Adirondacks, that's a great answer. Certainly love that.

Were the hills alive with the sound of music in Austria? I've always wondered that. It's what the movie says. It certainly felt like it. Something else shared a photo because there's like some crosses you can see, too. And again, then you can see the mountains. And then it's like all of the above, you can see. Yeah, yeah. Pretty incredible stuff. And very cool. And yeah, surfing, anytime I get to serve, I'm terrible at it. I've got terrible surfing stories. I go to Hawaii and I get my surfing lessons. And, you know, they put me on a surfboard about the size of a pickup truck. And, you know, I get up the very first time. And I'm like, I was born to surf. I'm so good at this. I'm just, I'm an amazing surfer. And, you know, I'm probably surfing on four or five inches. So after, you know, doing it twice, I come back to the instructor and I'm like, why are you riding a pencil?

why am I riding a pickup truck? Give me that pencil. And he slew the pencil over to me, and I literally couldn't sit on it. Forget, get up and surf on it. I just couldn't get it to sit. I'm like, oh, okay. Give me the pickup truck sized surfboard back. Very humbling to try to surf.

And you watch the people that are good at, and you're like, wow, that's a lot of balance and a lot of practice. And now, I think about the guys that surfed walls of water. Just unbelievable. I mean, really amazing to see that. I've served. So I've served in Sri Lanka. I've served in Morocco.

I've served obviously in California. I've searched, I would say actually arguably the hardest place I tried to was the Jersey short because that break is really short. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, like, trines that you cannot ride anything in. But, you know, I was reading an article one time about a woman who talks about like going on vacations and how much she likes to surf.

And she's like, same thing. I'm terrible at it. She's like, but I love doing it. And she's like, so what, go do it. If you love doing this, probably 95% of the people more than are terrible surfers. Like, so get on out. And I'm terrible. So I'm comfortable with both of us. I love it and I am terrible. And I'm too. Okay.

It is something I do every time I go to Hawaii. I'm like, I'm getting in the ocean and surfing. But I'm still no good. All right. So awesome to hear a little bit about your background. I do have one just kindred spirit background. So let's go all the way back to when I was in the sixth grade, so about 10 years ago, maybe 15. And we had Science Fair. And my Science Fair project in the 6th grade was how do we capture the energy from lightning strikes as we have to power this planet and let's worry about how we're going to power it. Can't we capture the energy from lightning strikes? So I did this Vandigraph generator to synthesize lightning strikes and how do you position, where would you position the equipment to capture it? How do you capture it? How long can you hold it? Do you put it in

giant capacitors or you put it in batteries? Yeah, it's so funny. I was having similar thoughts, but as a young kid of wondering, hey, how are we going to do this? How are we going to get all this power? But boy, do our power needs look a lot different than they did when I was in the sixth grade? They do. The world is going nuts. Just a lot. Yeah.

So tell me how you got to I-Masons and tell me how you got in this specific role. And let's talk about what this means for our industry and for our planet both. Yeah. Maybe a little fortuitous how I got into this role. I had a great consultant who I've worked with for quite a number of years. They still work with me for the IMAisons and the Braverg Sustainability Team. You know, there was some shifts in what was going on at my company. And they sort of called me and said, hey, we think we have your new role for you.

We think you're the right fit for this. And about six weeks later, I started this role at the Amazons Pimate Agord just over two and a half years ago now. So they knew something that I didn't know, which was really great and really great to see that evolution of not only my career, but the relationship with them. And again, their expertise in terms of how it's influenced me and can what they saw me bring to the table. I can't say enough in terms of appreciation for that phone call from them and how they got me here. You know, the climate accord at that point had been around, give or take a year or so.

It launched in April of 22, the I Mason's founder and chairman of chairman of the board, I think still Dean Nelson and Christian Bellotti from really of Microsoft announced it at Data Cloud Global Congress that year in Monaco. 73 companies had signed up. So when I sort of took the helm, there were, I think, over 100 companies at that point. So the first part was just kind of getting to know them and giving phone calls to every single one of them, hi, who are you, who am I? Maybe similar to the conversation we're having today of, you know, what's driving you?

why are you here? How can the climate accord? Do they understand your passion for surfing? That's why that's important. I don't know if they know that, but they will now after this gets released. Yeah, they will. No, but they did know my passion for trail running. I know we didn't talk about that, but like two weeks or three weeks into my stint,

I've done a trail race called the Trans Rockies Trail Race. It's a six-day stage race 120 miles. And so I kind of started and then took off for a week off the grid and was like, bye. So they all knew that very quickly to know what kind of a crazy person I am. The Colorado mountains. The Colorado mountains are incredible. I do a race called Ride the Rockies. So it's a week-long tour on a bike. But it's a man, especially if you're from Texas where it's pancake flat, you go to Colorado and ride a bike. You're like, oh, we have hills. These are mountains. There's a big difference. Those are mountains out there. Yeah, they're mountains.

Yeah. And that race does the thing of like goes up and over. hopes pass. So you're going straight up and over and continental value. You're climbing up the backside of veil and then coming down the bulls like trail ridge road and all that stuff. It's, it's, it's, it's brutal. It's a lot of time going uphill. It's tough. It is. All right, I will, wander us off into into trails like that. All right, so you're, you're, you're, I'm Mason, climbing accord. You're calling all the companies, you know, Christian and Dean have stood this thing up and and tell me what the early days for you. It's been up for a year, but you're just getting there. Tell me what the charter was and what you're doing now.

First point of initiation for anyone joining the Common Accord, was like, you are committed to a collaborative journey on decarbonization. We're looking at how this industry can kind of take sustainability almost to a new level, where is a really kind of pinpoint moment slash area of focus that we can take a lead on, that we haven't seen coming out of other organizations or just kind of, again, a collective action towards it. And so, you know, that has been still the driving focus. We've refined a little bit of it over the years to highlight more specific objectives

when companies join us. Those members are companies on the climate accord side. And so looking at one, what is the strategy for your climate reduction goals to looking at what you're purchasing is? So how can you be a responsible purchaser? Are you looking at things like a life cycle assessment? Are you looking at things like an environmental product declaration and EPD, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like just being more kind of hands-on in that criteria selection process.

And then similarly, what are you putting back out into the world? What are you selling? What are your goods? Whether it's online services or actual physical goods because we have a number of vendors in the space too. So kind of that three-fold approach to the areas that then are. are in the climate core, also three of them magically, right? We're looking at power, source power for our facilities, where they come in, where it goes out, how we're kind of operating.

The second piece is looking at the materials, both building materials with the brick and mortar of the facilities, but also the materials that go into our equipment. And then third is the equipment. So both IT and MEP. Again, what's operating now these facilities and keeping them up and running? So those were kind of the big picture goals that were given to me from the jump. We had some working groups stood up. We have a governing body that includes

four hyperscalers. So AWS, meta, Google, Microsoft, obviously, all there all have very ambitious targets when it comes to climate change. And then a hyper, or excuse me, a co-location facility, so digital real estate, and then on the vendor's side, Schneider Electric. And so kind of a nice cross section of those involved. And those six make up what? What, what are those Those sticks make up the governing body of the governing body. Okay. So effectively like my board, but yeah. Gotcha.

Well, let's go through all three. Let's start with, and we might start, and we might come back and end with it. Let's start with how we get all the power because, you know, so I've been in the data center business, digital infrastructure business for about 11 years. And I remember when we talked about big deals that were 250 kilowatts and I didn't stumble, 250 kilowatts were big deals 11 years ago. right? And now we talk about gigawatts kind of like it's no big deal, right? Oh, yeah, I need a gig in Oklahoma. Hey, can you give me a gig in Southern Montana? So in just a decade, the business has grown exponentially, which means the demand on power has grown exponentially. So I'd love to hear from the climate of course perspective, you know, A, about the growth, but B, hey, where are we going to get all this power?

I don't know if we can even get into how much growth is going on. And mostly because, you know, those pillars that I just outlined move at very different paces when it comes to different industries. You talk construction. Construction is decades, if not centuries old in terms of practice. Moving that needle on how we actually deliver from a G.C side, very different than how the data centers are, to your point, moving at an exponential pace. So bringing it back to power, though, some of the dialogues and conversations between those experts.

So we have working groups in all of these areas. They're made up and comprised of that cross-section of membership. So we have, you know, power players in the room. We have owner-operators in the room. We have those that are kind of delivering on, like, tabling and networks. We have somebody like a representative from SEPA, so the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance, involved in that space. So we have a lot of strategic alliances.

If they're doing this, how can we lean in and be the data center voice in their conversations and really kind of facilitate that kind of expertise in areas that maybe right now just haven't seen it or have enough of it? Because, you know, yes, we're a big industry. We still have a much shorter timeline on who's out there and who can talk to other experts about the work that we do. So some of what they're working on is kind of the financial benefits of cleaner power when we're cleaning the grid, greening the grid.

They have a case study out about, you know, heat reuse. So how do we impact the communities around us? I mean, we've seen that this year. Brown out, rolling blackouts, temperatures rising. That all kind of correlates to the power demand from the facilities, but also the power demands that we have, you know, for our homes, for our schools, for our medical facilities. We've got to be able to balance a lot of that and a lot of the onus is coming

on to the data centers right now. partially through media, partially because we have a huge demand need for the amount of power that that we need for the facilities. They also released a case study last year the challenges and the benefits of nuclear power. I know that's a conversation hot on most people's minds, including our administration, our federal administration, as well as governments across, you know, across the world, how nuclear is now that conversation is shifting and how we're looking at things like small modular reactors, how we're looking at things like Three Mile Island, potentially coming back online, other facilities,

because when it comes to a carbon conversation, nuclear power really is the cleanest in carbon emissions themselves. Talking about the bridging solutions that are going on, we've seen over the last week, China's firing up more coal plants, the conversations around natural gas, those things are all coming back into an energy mix

that still needs transition. What does that transition timeline look like? how do we again marry the demand need with the actual fuel type and what it can actually do? Solar cannot be enough for a data center facility, right? It's just doing rooftop solar. And this is a conversation I have a lot with sustainability professionals. Like, I don't get it. Just throw solar up.

And you're like, yeah, do you know the percentage of offset there? Maybe a percentage. Like that doesn't make sense. It could make sense, though, again, for a neighborhood nearby or, again, other facilities to support the balance that we need to see. So that's really where the power group is kind of headed, but also has focused. They're looking at policy changes that are happening across the world.

They're looking, again, at different ways users and providers can balance loads, so load shifting opportunities. They get into, I would say, the most kind of diverse conversation that I've seen when it comes to that. All of the hyperscalers have announced nuclear projects, And I think that helps. You mentioned it being from a scale and carbon-free answer. I personally, I know I'm just one data center developer in the wilderness.

I don't know how we're going to get enough power and we're going to get enough power that's clean if we don't embrace nuclear. And by embrace meaning, we got to entitle these things in less than 15 years, right? We need to entitle these things in two or three years because the demand's not going away. And one thing I'd love to get yours and the climate accords take on, as a data center company and as a data center industry, we're just providing the service for the digital infrastructure that the world is clamoring for, right? I didn't stand up a data center so I could do something with it. We stood up a data center so that all of the services that people want, right? They want to be able to order pizza that shows up at their house off of their Domino's app. They want to be able to call an Uber so they can get home from the pub. They want to be able to order their plane tickets with their thumb. They don't want to have to talk to anybody. All of those things happen in a data center somewhere. And as we get more and more and more comfortable with digital interaction, I mean, we've got to power.

We've got to power it somehow. And we're not going to do it, you know, with biofuels or solar panels, as you described. Right. I mean, I can't put my roof ain't big enough. I can't put enough of them up there. Unfortunately, the sun goes down a night. and you want to be able to buy pizza at 11 o'clock at night. And unless we're in the facility you talk about in Northern Canada, in July,

there won't be sunshining at 11 o'clock at night. So, yeah, I am excited about the nuclear future. I recognize that there has a little bit of a stigma attached to it. But when I think about how our industry serves the planet, I think us leading the way as an industry and nuclear is a big step in the right direction. Yeah. In some ways, I think it's a dated perception of nuclear. Nuclear has really evolved over the last couple of decades,

over the last, you know, kind of major incidents that have been, you know, front page news, that technology, the safety issues, all of that has changed dramatically. And so the perception of nuclear and what nuclear actually is still needs to be conveyed it into the market because, you know, I see it and I hear that. And yes, there's some of it, I agree with. Yes, it is very scary to see a facility melt down and the damage it does. Same time, you've also seen oil spills in engulfs and the wildlife that that, you know, destroys. You've seen electrical fires just take off and run rampant. And now, you know,

I live here in Los Angeles. I'm going to say, California, you guys are super sensitive to it. Yeah. Right. Front and center. My backyard, that was, that was my view out of my window, the fires this last January. anywhere. So, I mean, these things are happening at scales and magnitudes that, you know, sometimes as a human, that's hard to just embrace because it's very scary. It's very, you know, all-consuming. And so, you know, you always kind of need a baddie on the block to point a finger at. I think nuclear still gets the brunt of that. But it's not to say that other sources of power don't have their pros and cons too. I mean, even solar panels. Where are we sourcing all the materials for solar panels? Those are coming from

areas where labor issues are really a problem. The human capital that it costs to get cobalt is really severe. The damage that that does, the processing of those facilities, again, damaging to the planet. So a lot of this is looking at the tradeoffs, looking how we can be more efficient. And yes, solar and wind aren't doing it right now. I always like to challenge, especially this industry, to you guys are innovators. You're the forefront of tech. Let's evolve these, you know, opportunities here. Like, I've heard that sentiment on solar. for so long, why hasn't someone made it more efficient? Where is the hangout that we're not seeing that move faster because we do need that power

and we do need that source of power? But, you know, there has been a lot of development. I know Texas, you know, I think was the number one solar provider over the last couple of years. So, I mean, things are going in the direction we need them to go. We just, we need them to scale, I guess, maybe at the speed, the data centers are scaling at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of where I was going. is, man, our industry is incredibly power hungry,

and we got to get generation that can keep up because, I mean, we're moving projects now to where the generation is because that's the long pole in the tent today. And, I mean, to that point, if we go in now to kind of materials and equipment, right? Yeah, that's where I was going next. Yeah, there's also stalls, though, in our supply chain. I mean, resources are not infinite. And so, yes, power is front and center in the conversation,

but getting some of this stuff, the materials, again, the equipment, where it's coming from. Maybe we don't go down this rabbit hole today, but, you know, tariffs, the kind of global tariff conversation that's happening right now or actually implementation of tariffs, that is going to create a bunch of stalls. So you may be able, hypothetically, you get power online. You may not have the resource to actually build that facility. You may not get the equipment because it's stalled at customs.

I mean, so there are a lot of things that are really weighing on how this industry is going to continue the growth it's got. Yeah, yeah. And I look at the scale of the projects, right, right now Miranda, right? I mean, let's look at the Open AI project out in Abilene, Texas. When you talk about materials and you talk about transportation, the scale of that project, the amount of stuff that's got to get out to Abilene, I mean, it's staggering, thinking about your second pillar materials and your third pillar equipment, right? I mean, it is unbelievable the scale of what's getting built out there and the amount of material required transporting that material and your comment about the efficiency of the equipment

coming and where the equipment comes from. It is no small task balancing all three of those parts, for sure. And then the shift in technology, right? I mean, we've seen that happen too. So how you're cooling or how your, you know, racks are being sized or the facilities are being sized and kind of calculated for live loads or stagnant loads, that is all changed. I mean, I've had that conversation with concrete suppliers or again, back into my general contractors who were like, we were accounting for this, now it's totally shifted. So that becomes part of this, too, in terms of that delivery process, because, again, data centers and digital infrastructure moves at a very different pace.

So how often are you guys on the board getting together? Is this a quarterly conversation you guys are having? Talk to me a little bit about the I-Mason function in the climate accord. How often and how are you moving the industry? Yeah. The governing body actually meets biweekly. So every two weeks they meet, as do our working groups. So our working groups meet every two weeks too.

They also, I mean, I have a group chat with a handful of them. So, you know, we often chat and have conversations very often. The working group chairs and I meet right now, almost on a weekly cadence too. So that translation from what is the governing body talking about in leadership? How do we engage the volunteer leadership in the working groups? So those chairs and I get together on a very frequent basis in that. And then obviously with all the events and things coming up, we find time to have meetings, get together next week, and you know, YADA conferences coming up.

The morning program, very fortunate that the Yada team gave us the responsibility slash the privilege of hosting a number of sessions. So we'll be featuring our governing body members on different panels, talking about the issues that you and I are talking about today, but just in a larger, broader context, getting some of the other members into the room and having discussion. So we talk about this as much as we can. They all have full-time jobs. So, you know, it's as much as I would love to talk to Lex Porers from Digital Realty

every single day. Lex is great. So many insights. Lex is a busy man. Noah from Google is a busy man. Like, you know, Anna from Schneider Electric, busy woman. So the fact that they give me and give the ICA so much time is just speaks to the passion that they have

and really the commitment that they have to this work. You know, I am the sole employee effectively of the climate accord. I have a bench, though, of give or take, 70 some odd, you know, leaders in the industry coming to the table, week in and week out, giving me insights, making edits, telling me, no, this is wrong, no, this is right,

how do we do this? I mean, culmination of that, if I use an example this year's, we released a maturity model for the industry, kind of a bit of a roadmap and guidelines for ICA members and larger digital infrastructure players to look at the various topics that we hone in on and how can they mature? What are the things that their peers, their leaders are indicating to them as really critical areas for us to decarbonize, where the source power is coming from, how we're looking at,

again, the metrics of how we determine the greener, the cleaner version. of our materials, of our equipment, etc. And that's been a three-year labor of love, including three rounds of comment periods, including the governing body going back into it, including 600-some-odd comments in the first round and us addressing every single one of them. And again, I can't stress enough.

These are volunteers. These are people doing this. I don't want to say the goodness of their heart, but really what drives them to get up every morning and come to the table. So it comes from all of this, all of this, comes from their, you know, mojo to be here. Yeah, yeah. Miranda, you mentioned working groups.

Can you give me an example, a name or two, just so I can conceptually understand what is I-Mason Climate Accord Working Group? What are some of their titles or missions or charters? Yeah. So we were talking about power. So let's talk about power. Our power working group chair is Mike Donahue of Oclo, and our vice chair is Tom Quinn from Google.

So, you know, those are the two balancing out that. But, I mean, again, we have C-Binvolved in that. We have Ennio Jenbacher involved, Rambles, so coming from more of the AEC side. We've got somebody like Greenscale involved, Digital Reality, so looking at the Colo facilities, Enchanted Rock, Pete DeSanto from Enchanted Rock sits on there, Dorothy McGuire from Deloitte. You can see it's just this very massive cross section of folks involved, Casey Mayors.

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about Casey at Megawatt Consulting, what he brings to the table, Austin from Strived by SDX. Huey from Grousseau. So you get it. We really built out kind of a multi-dimensional working group so that any question is not a bad question or a question that's off the table. It's really, if I don't get this and I'm trying to go back and sell or talk about the work we're doing, then nobody's going to get it. And what they dive into, as we've already said, is how the industry share best practices, how do we transition to a greener, low-carbon future, how do we really encourage the development of the innovative technologies and energy optimization?

And so, again, that's why we've done a lot of hard work to understand. And we're doing it again this year. Who's missing from that table? Who do we need to get involved? Where, like, you know, we don't have somebody who's on a solar company, for example, right? Is that a space that really needs to be present? How do we get them involved? How do we get them engaged? And again, the working groups did that exercise two years ago. They gave, we did a survey, we went through it. Are we missing stuff geographically? Are we missing stuff technically? Are we missing seniority versus somebody new to the market in the space? So they help craft a lot of what goes into play, not only out of their work product, but really who's in the conversations to ensure it goes far and wide and not just stays.

Okay, it's only hyperscalist, talking about this. You mentioned the technology is one of the pillars. man, I've heard people talk about GPUs a little bit lately, just a little. Occasionally somebody mentions something about AI. How are you guys looking at, again, talk about pace of change. Man, you know, we went from, hey, a rack has got, you know, seven, eight kilowatts to, hey, could you figure out how to get a megawatt in a rack? A megawatt, what? So the equipment is the technology, the processors, the equipment, meaning inside. the rack inside is changing rapidly.

How do you guys, who's involved with you there and how are you guys thinking about that? Oh, man. How can you, I mean, how can you not think about it and get at the same time? Maybe my argument would be equipment in that space is even more challenging than the power conversation because you have equipment that might be a thousand component parts. Talk about a place that like, how do you figure out the environmental footprint of that? Yeah, that's going to be somebody's full-time job. some of the work that the equipment working group does

and very similarly they have a vast cross-section of players that are involved there it's chaired by Alex Rayca from Shender Electric co-chaired by Lewis Liu from Relco but Origina is involved Grunfuss is involved ABB again global electronics council so again another one of those strategic alliances that we have

when we're talking about this NALCO water what's going on in water use process water cooling etc and then companies like an HD So what's coming from the engineering side of the table or architecture side, excuse me, from there. One of the biggest successes out of that group is a partnership or, sorry, an alliance that we have with the Open Compute Foundation. So OCP. And the first work stream out of that is to really look at, I guess, maybe another one of the first elements of the Climate Accord, which is a carbon disclosure label or carbon disclosure project.

So we have a work string there. We have four liters, two from the ICA side. to from the Open Compute side, who have been working over the last year and a half, two years, to understand what a Carbon Disclosure label would look like. And I can't say more about it today, but if those who listen to this and are at Open Computs Global Summit in October,

there's some pretty exciting announcements in terms of that work stream as to where we believe this is going to go and actually some opportunities for various companies on both sides of those organizations, our organization in open computers to now start delivering kind of on that promise of a carbon disclosure label.

What's the first step of it? Am I going to be reading compute labels like I read labels on my food? Is that where we're going? I don't know if you're going to be reading the labels, but you might see indicators. You might see a little icon. There will be signs.

Something like that. Heart friendly. Environment friendly. Well, exactly. And that makes it easier. Like you've got to have, you know, let's use the food example. It's got to be digestible because if you have to sit there and read every single ingredient,

come on, that's, nobody's doing that. But if you see that little thing that says, you know, if you're a vegan and it's a V or kosher and it's a K, like, you know, all right, it's been certified. There's something there. So, yes, we are very excited about where this project has gone. And again, the announcements that will be made in October Global Summit around that work. And again, that is coming from the equipment working. group, understanding where the bottlenecks are and how do we break through those bottlenecks,

something along those lines where, again, I've hinted at, we'll be coming front and center for our equipment. Now, I think some people might be amazed that we have covered both of mine in your time in elementary school, your global travels, surfing, the architecture, we've covered power generation, green energy, the technology that goes inside data centers, and we've covered a lot. We mentioned YADA, which is next week when we're recording us. I can't talk about Yada without shout out to my friend. Multiple guests. George Rocket, love George. George, love you, brother. Yeah, he's such a good one. And all right, so tell me, tell me something that we didn't think to chat

about that you want to cover before we jet off to Vegas for Yada next week. That we didn't chat about. Wow. That's always. That's always a good question. Wide open. Did we cover, we covered football on camera or off camera? I can't remember. I'm always good to talk football too.

We covered a little bit of it when we talked about Ohio. Yes. Yeah, a little bit. And I do, I do love football beyond Ohio too. I'm a born and raised here in the Ohio State. The Ohio State. That one's for you.

That one's for you. Yeah, he'll be happy when you get home. Yeah. Well, I mean, you can see. Look, like my earpods are red. I mean, like, I'm rocking. Yeah, the red iPods was a giveaway.

Yeah. I'm rocking the color here. Miranda Garden. Thank you so much for hanging out with us and talking a little bit about digital infrastructure. Thank you for what you do from an industry perspective to make us aware of how we're impacting the planet. I mean, we want to provide digital infrastructure, everybody. We want to do it in the most responsible way possible. I mean, I got grandkids.

I know it's hard to believe. I have grandkids and I care about what they're going to live in when I'm not here anymore. So thank you for chatting with us. I have a great time at Yada, and we hope we get to talk to you again in the future. Thank you very much for having me. Thanks for really a wonderful dialogue and appreciate your final comments there. It is something that's that's for everyone this planet. And so how do we do it responsibly? Well, a lot of opportunity to move forward. So thanks. Here, here. Thank you.