Quinbrook Joint Venture to Power Renewable Data Centers in U.S.
HOUSTON, Texas (Dec. 17, 2020) — Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (“Quinbrook”), a specialist investor in lower carbon and renewable energy infrastructure, today announced the establishment of a joint venture with Birch Infrastructure PBLLC (“Birch”) to develop and construct renewables-powered hyperscale data center campuses in the US.
The joint venture has identified and is actively developing multiple, strategically-located sites to host next-generation, mission critical, hyperscale data centers which will be designed and configured with the objective to:
- deliver sustained and long-term competitive cost advantages to the data center operators in land, power, utilities and related infrastructure costs;
- provide low-cost ‘around the clock’ renewable power supply and back-up resiliency solutions;
- assist hyperscale data center operators in meeting their accelerating carbon reduction and ‘net zero’ targets with low-cost renewable power; and
- permit certification of each data center campus under the Department of Defense Protection Level 4+.
“Demand for high-performance computing and data storage is expanding at an extraordinary pace, as is the need for those resources to be powered by renewable energy, which makes now the opportune time to partner with a like-minded specialist data center developer. Birch is that partner for Quinbrook,” said David Scaysbrook, co-founder and managing partner of Quinbrook. “We are looking forward to combining our experience in renewable energy project development, construction and investment with Birch’s specialist expertise in data center siting and structuring of low cost power and utilities solutions, to address the acute demand for next generation, hyperscale data centers delivering a net zero carbon footprint.”
Quinbrook considers that demand for data computing and storage capacity is likely to grow at unprecedented rates over coming years as internet adoption rates increase and the products and services used by these internet users also increase in size.
Added Scaysbrook, “As the scale of the energy and water consumption and resultant environmental impact of data centers expands, the provenance of their energy supplies and the carbon intensity of those supplies is becoming an increasingly critical requirement in site selection. Recent public announcements made by many of the hyperscale operators indicate that several of them have already committed to using 100% renewable energy and to reducing their carbon footprint significantly by 2030 and beyond. The Quinbrook/Birch joint venture is dedicated to the conviction that renewable power supply and site selection are now integrally related and completely symbiotic.”
“We are excited about the opportunities that come through partnering with an experienced energy investment firm such as Quinbrook,” said Kenneth Davies, co-founder and Chief Risk Officer for Birch. “Hyperscale, renewable-powered data centers are the future, and we’re thrilled to pair our experience with Quinbrook’s to help shape that future.”