The Data Center Frontier Executive Roundtable features insights from industry executives with lengthy experience in the data center industry. Here’s a look at the insights from Danielle Rossi, Global Director – Mission Critical Cooling for Trane.
Danielle Rossi is Global Director – Mission Critical Cooling for Trane. Danielle has 17+ years in data center solution design and engineering for hyperscale, colocation, enterprise, edge, and government environments. In her current role, Danielle manages global mission-critical cooling products and processes to provide a standardized deliverable for customers executing projects worldwide.
Data Center Frontier: As we close out the Fourth Quarter of 2024, how do you see regulatory and public pressures shaping the data center industry's ambitions vs. its realities?
Danielle Rossi, Trane: In the last year, we have seen changes in European regulations around data centers. The requirements in several countries will result in penalties if sustainable practices, such as heat recovery, are not included in greenfield designs. In the US, regulatory changes such as the IRA included tax credits and/or deductions for using sustainable practices.
To be considered for those benefits, the project completion was to be by the end of this year. An extension of the IRA or any new plan remains to be seen, but traditionally US regulations tend to be structured as a benefit plan instead of penalization. Both forms of regulation are going to incentivize the use of sustainable practice and will help shape designs moving forward.
Data Center Frontier: To what degree is data center site selection the North Star for construction and development stakeholders in terms of guiding decisions on power and cooling infrastructure?
Danielle Rossi, Trane: Site selection has changed greatly in the last few years. Limited power in primary markets has required new selections be based on available power and fiber causing site selections to be opportunistic.
We are now, particularly in the US, seeing extremely diversified locations in non-traditional areas. In Europe and APAC, the tertiary markets from several years ago are quickly becoming primary and secondary markets. We are also seeing a rise in LATAM and Africa site selections to accommodate these power requirements.
The expansion of fiber lines globally will give greater flexibility to choose locations for reasons outside of power infrastructure, such as renewable energy, heat recovery, and community planning. Those additional preplanning considerations will bring the focus back to optimizing designs to reach sustainability goals.
Data Center Frontier: What are the most pivotal sustainability considerations and actions for colocation and hyperscale data centers headed into 2025?
Danielle Rossi, Trane: As we move closer to many companies’ 2030 goals, we are going to see a focus on retrofits and on more holistic planning for greenfield design.
The significant droughts worldwide have forced a reassessment of many brownfield designs. We are seeing an increase in requests for retrofits of water-cooled chillers, in particular. Connecting the chillers to dry coolers, in place of cooling towers, closes the loop and limits the water use to the amount to fill the piping with no continual water usage.
This change significantly helps overall WUE footprint. For greenfield designs, we are noticing this closed-loop design and the request for heat recovery much more frequently. Heat recovery, particularly with high density AI or liquid cooling, can be extremely beneficial to sustainability goals.
Unfortunately, many people limit their planning to district heating which is hard to achieve without extremely high temperatures but there are many options for heat recovery depending on location and water temperature. Holistic planning and site selection are key to optimizing a heat recovery design.
Data Center Frontier: From your perspective, how is the massive build-out of AI infrastructure and its associated power demand impacting prospects for future data center investment and planning?
Danielle Rossi, Trane: Right now, discussions about data centers and power availability go hand-in-hand. The increased usage of AI has grown the density of an already expanding power footprint. We are beginning to see the diversification of site selection, but also the increase of alternative power sources, such as several nuclear announcements this year.
Cooling design for AI has been a very popular topic this year with liquid cooling fully entering active designs. The next few years will be a learning time to assess new chip densities and their compute power versus cooling methodologies and their associated heat rejection. Additionally, the creation of design and testing standards for these new builds will assist with future planning.
Matt Vincent
A B2B technology journalist and editor with more than two decades of experience, Matt Vincent is Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier.
