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Data Center World 2024

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BUILD Sustainability: A Framework of the Top 5 Design / Build Strategies to Leverage Advanced Nuclear Energy

Andrew Fanara  (Sustainability Advisor, Casne Engineering)

Craig Deering  (Director of Construction, CPG)

Michael Crabb  (Senior Vice President, Commercial, Last Energy)

Pass Type: All Access Conference, Data Center BUILD Summit - Get your pass now!

Session Type: Data Center BUILD Summit

Vault Recording: TBD

US greenfield data center builds are trending toward gigawatt-scale energy budgets, blowing past expectations from electric grid planners. Expectations to "electrify everything" from heat to transportation will strain an overtaxed grid that can't support surging demand without billions of long-term investments. Utility-scale renewable energy has a role, but it faces grid connection bottlenecks, intermittency, local community pushback, and land use authorities struggle with its large footprint. This uncertain landscape calls into question the viability of clean energy goals.

Do data center investors, developers, and operators need to rethink their energy and land use planning playbooks if they expect to overcome the emerging energy crisis and continue the industry's growth and prosperity? How can new advanced nuclear reactors shape the industry's clean energy and sustainability future?

This panel will define the challenging energy landscape confronting the data center industry and explore the top 5 opportunities and strategies for leveraging advanced nuclear energy.

Takeaway

  1. Focus on deliverability: Data center developers need to be able to provide their tenants confidence around delivery timelines, and the onus is on the nuclear sector to come with solutions.
  2. Scalability and flexibility: Nuclear provides a solution that can be phased to meet growing power needs in parallel with data center deployment stages, with flexibility sitting at or near the point of demand.
  3. Financing is everything: Facing significant grid constraints, developers and hyperscalers are beginning to finance their own renewable energy assets. What does the future hold for financing nuclear as data centers look beyond the grid?
  4. Bring your own power: Data center developers face significant uphill battles around land and resource concerns. Nuclear is in a unique position to address these concerns as data center developers look to source clean power.
  5. Long term solutions for baseload power: How does nuclear stack up against hydrogen or long duration storage on the roadmap to carbon free baseload power?