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The focus on day one’s morning session was a new mandate as an ‘independent professional association’ and a fireside chat on sustainability in data center design
On day one of DCD>Connect in New York City, Dean Nelson founder and chairman of iMasons and new CEO Cyre Mercedes Quiñones (formerly of Schneider Electric) kicked off the iMasons Member Summit with a celebration of the organization’s 10-year anniversary. With that anniversary, there will be a shift in iMason’s role from a “networking” or “trade” body toward one of an independent professional association(akin to the IEEE or WEF) focused on neutrality. “We are not a pay-to-play scheme,” said Nelson, noting iMasons works on behalf of the industry on such issues as data protection, grid access, and workforce readiness. “Global AI demand is driving more infrastructure build in 3 years than in the past 30,” said Nelson, pointing to some staggering statistics:
- 373 GW of global capacity
- 71 GW of active capacity
- 22 GW under construction
- 280 GW in the development pipeline
- 228 GW in the U.S.
- 30 GW in China with 400 GW of spare grid capacity planned by 2030
With that growth, iMasons’ membership has increased to 6,000 participants and $1.5 trillion in infrastructure projects across 130 countries. “With $3 trillion in projected global investment by 2030, we are touching every part of the ecosystem, and we want to do it responsibly,” Quiñones said, noting that as capacity scales, systems have to be resilient, efficient, and sustainable. Responsibility was a prominent theme during the open session, where discussion focused largely on how to weave sustainability into what Quiñones described as five new pillars: Power, Pushback, People, Planet, and Policy.
Through the iMasons Climate Accord (iCA), a coalition of 250 companies – including Microsoft, AWS, Google, Meta, Blackbox, Bloom Energy, and Eaton – are working to decarbonize digital infrastructure by weaving sustainability into each of those five pillars.
Sustainability as a design principle
During the open session, a morning fireside chat entitled, “Scoping Out Sustainability with Cross-Industry Collaboration” was hosted by LEED Fellow Miranda G. Gardiner, who talked to Bloomberg Head of Sustainability Simone Kramer, and Global Head of Facilities, Assets, and Sustainability Dave Wildman about the iCA’s commitments and implementations, as well as goals for establishing career paths for new and potential talent in the data and AI sectors.
“With data centers, there is intense scrutiny of the environmental footprint, so we have to get into the realities of how they can make environmental sense and economic sense,” said Kramer, who sees Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics turning into operational KPIs in the transition from theory to practice. “These are no longer just ideas, but something our communities are asking for. We need the technical skills and engineering backgrounds to do this.” She spoke of a “systems lens” and holistic view to understand how data center power, materials, and hardware interact with global supply chains and local energy grids.
“Rather than looking are previous performance, we have to go from concepts to credible operational action. The skills to look for include data analysis, data management, and data governance to be ‘audit-ready,’” she said. “Applying your core competencies to sustainability, like carbon accounting in accounting, or ESG in procurement, and then ensuring it’s integrated in your work with your vendors and partners.”
Bloomberg’s Wildman then emphasized a need to “pivot skills into new roles” to meet modern sustainability and AI infrastructure demands. He explained that as data centers become more complex, traditional roles in facilities management and engineering must evolve to include expertise in carbon tracking, energy markets, and resource optimization. “At Bloomberg, for example, we realized we had to split that to focus on the regulatory piece, engineering rigor, and practical implementation to prioritize what was doable and practical.”
Wildman then described the “voluntary nature” of participation in iMasons Climate Accord and the Open Compute Project might become more critical as regulatory requirements for carbon and ESG reporting become more stringent.
Avoiding ‘Greenwashing’
During the fireside chat, Kramer then talked of growing criticism around companies that do “green-washing” or “green-wishing.” Rather than “backward-looking” reporting, Kramer said organizations needed to move beyond theoretical sustainability, “past the era of simply documenting the past toward actively engineering the future.” She noted sustainability teams cannot work in isolation, but must be embedded with engineering, finance, and procurement teams from the start, with an emphasis on collaboration. “You look at the feasibility, time constraints, operating models, governance and cross-functional alignment. With sustainability integrated throughout. There’s an inherent requirement that the sustainability team would work across the organization in a collaborative way, with data and measures that show value.”
As an example of real value, Gardiner pointed to Digital Reality as an example of success, with the organization achieving a 15% reduction in total water use using an AI-powered water management solution in its data centers for leak detection and efficiency gains.
Success can be complicated, she noted. “With thousands of fields of data that have to be distilled into a picture that is useful for decision-making, it’s important to think of which metrics matter and which do not. It’s important to do apples-to-apples comparisons,” said Gardiner, who elaborated on PUE, CUE, and other metrics, and where they are valid and useful to track and measure. “No one metric is a panacea. We have to understand metrics and how they fit and where they work.”
Kramer and Wildman agreed, adding that good data quality is the foundation to “credible operational action,” necessitating a move beyond static, annual averages to real-time, granular data that reflects the actual conditions of a data center at any given moment.
To achieve better quality in data, they advocated for industry-wide collaboration to standardize sustainability metrics, as well as collective action to address carbon issues across the value chain. “In general, for the data that is being pulled, there needs to be more dynamic measurement and better processes underpinning it,” said Kramer.
“When you have four people in 130 offices around the world, across 77 countries, it gets complicated, with different currencies, languages…normalizing it all can be difficult,” acknowledged Walker.
“Speed , scale, availability are the ‘superpowers’ of the data center industry,” said Kramer, “and sometimes, you have to re-prioritize and do things a different way. In addition, sometimes you have to move slow in order to move fast. You have to understand the implications and risks before you take steps. Speed with thought.”
