Trends in Data Center Site Selection

A lack of space and developable land as well as power constraints will continue to drive data center site selection, with sustainability considerations and emerging technologies becoming increasingly important factors.

By Pat Lynch, Senior Managing Director; and Josh Ruttner, Senior Research Analyst; Data Center Solutions, CBRE

What makes a good location for a data center? There are quite a few factors, and some of the most important are the availability of space, land, and power. However, emerging technologies that will require edge computing — such as 5G, virtual reality and metaverse applications, AI, and self-driving cars — and sustainability and access to green energy are increasingly important considerations for data center site selection.

Low Vacancy Rates

Market demand for data is constantly rising and must be matched by a dramatic rise in data center construction. Available data center space in major cities is severely limited. For example, popular markets like Northern Virginia and Silicon Valley have low vacancy rates of 5.1 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.

Finding suitable and available data center space in such low vacancy markets can be challenging, especially if a user only has six months to work with. The primary headwind for new construction in popular data center markets is limited developable land. We anticipate more vertical construction of data center space in these low vacancy markets to create opportunities to meet demand.1

Power Constraints

Power constraints are also a major concern right now in high-demand primary markets and will remain the biggest threat to new developments. This lack of land and power availability has caused some data center migration from major cities to select suburban locations throughout the U.S.

A prime example is Hillsboro, Oregon, which is in the middle of two of the biggest tech hubs in the U.S. — Silicon Valley and Seattle. According to Data Center Frontier,2 companies can save approximately 25 percent in operating expenses by relocating their data center use to Hillsboro from Silicon Valley, due to Oregon’s lack of sales tax and potential property tax exemptions in suburban locations like Hillsboro.3 CBRE ranks Portland second in the nation for tax incentives, with taxes representing only 2.7 percent of the data center project cost, significantly below the average of 8.7 percent.

Edge Infrastructure

Consumers today require faster prcessing speeds to access content related to 5G, virtual reality, and AI. In the not-so-distant future, technologies like self-driving cars and the metaverse will require edge infrastructure. All these emerging technologies are significantly changing the way we think about data center site selection, as they require lower latency and more info to be exchanged rapidly to avoid lag or delay. This will result in a need for digital infrastructure that is closer to end-users, which will bolster demand for edge data centers, which deliver faster services, with minimal latency, in suburban locations.

Investments in edge computing are increasing and expected to climb substantially in 2022, with

spending forecasted to reach $76.5 billion in the U.S. alone.4 Additionally, companies are now realizing that there are cost savings associated with edge data centers over the long run. In the past, companies would have their core data centers in primary markets. The cost to haul content back and forth via fiberoptic lines is extremely pricey. It is much more cost-effective to deploy a few racks into a nearby colocation data center. However, edge data centers can increase upfront costs. The circuits required to connect to all the edge sites can drive up the overall cost of the network, and the connections between major data centers used in a centralized compute architecture have become incredibly expensive.

Sustainability

Climate change is another increasingly important site selection factor. Sustainability is now a major focus for most corporations, and data centers are striving to develop sophisticated ways to measure their ESG impact and activities. Some of the most important data center markets will need to address concerns about water scarcity and their supply of renewable energy. On the flip side, this will likely benefit markets with bountiful clean power.

Over the years, data centers have redesigned their facilities to greatly reduce water consumption by using new technologies for water cooling, such as liquid cooling. New battery technologies are enabling data centers to use fewer and longer-lasting batteries. Data center providers are working closely with local utility companies to find more efficient ways to provide green energy options.

Skyrocketing Demand

In November 2021, President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) into law. This legislation allocates $65 billion toward improving broadband Internet capabilities, primarily by expanding optical fiber and 5G networks. This massive investment in digital infrastructure has resulted in skyrocketing demand for data centers.5

The bill also includes funding for green energy infrastructure and innovation. Access to renewable power to reduce carbon emissions is always a primary concern when considering a potential site for a data center. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill presents an opportunity for utilities to upgrade power sources without passing the costs to the end-users.

Finally, the global supply chain has been greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and this has impaired data center development. CBRE said in its 2022 Data Center Forecast, “As uncertainty looms amid pandemic-related restrictions for markets outside of the U.S., particularly in Asia-Pacific, material shortages and increased shipping delays into U.S. ports have the potential to delay new facility developments and impact refresh cycles of data centers. These delays could drive up costs, potentially raising rents in affected markets 4 percent–6 percent.”6

In sum, space, land, and power availability will continue to drive data center site selection but expect sustainability considerations and emerging technologies to be increasingly important factors over the next few years. n

1 https://www.cbre.com/en/insights/reports/north-america-data-center-trends-h2-2021 2 https://datacenterfrontier.com/portland-electricity-low-data-centers/ 3 https://www.oregonbusiness.com/article/tech/item/19159-what-s-driving-the-hillsborodata-center-influx 4 https://www.cbre.com/en/insights/reports/north-america-data-center-trends-h2-2021 5 https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/data-center/infrastructure-bill-a-boost-fordata-centers-110837 6 https://www.cbre.com/en/insights/books/us-real-estate-market-outlook-2022/data-centers

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By Steve Kaelble

LOUISIANA: Global Challenges Create Opportunities

Courtesy of LED

Louisiana’s location on the Mississippi River, which provides companies direct access to domestic and international markets, continues to be a major factor in driving statewide economic growth and diversification.

Just after the dawn of the 20th century, Louisiana’s first successful oil well launched a petroleum-based industry for which the state is well-known to this day. But more than a century later, the world increasingly is moving toward turning the page on fossil fuels for transportation — will that spell the end of Louisiana’s oil and gas story?

No, but it definitely signals an intriguing plot twist. Many outside Louisiana may be unaware of the new chapters the state is writing in this story, answering the challenges of the day with forward-thinking ideas. The state is working to stay ahead of climate change challenges and, as a result, is building expertise that’s valuable globally. And it’s pushing technology advances literally to the moon, and making great strides in medical fields, too.

Altogether, the challenges of the present and future are sparking impressive developments, along the corridor from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, and across the state. Climate change, in particular, promises an extraordinary impact in Louisiana, given the state’s miles and miles of coastline and waterways, its inevitable place in the path of dangerous weather events, and yes, its longtime reliance on a petroleum industry in the crosshairs of change.

“We’re really focused on this new fron-

“WE’RE REALLY FOCUSED ON THIS NEW FRONTIER RELATIVE TO THE REDUCTION OF GREENHOUSE GASES…AND HOW

THERE IS AN ENERGY TRANSITION OVER THE NEXT FEW DECADES…LEADING TO A BETTER ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP,

says Secretary Don Pierson.

Courtesy Origin Materials tier — really beyond America, for all nations — relative to the reduction of greenhouse gases, and how there is an energy transition over the next few decades toward those reductions, all leading to a better environmental stewardship,” says Don Pierson, secretary of Louisiana Economic Development. “We will continue to use fossil fuels, they won’t go away, but we’ll be reducing utilization for refined fuels as we power our cars.”

Environmentally Friendly Technologies

Pierson says the state is positioned for development of various environmentally friendly technologies. “We anticipate there’ll be a lean toward a hydrogen-powered economy, and we do carbon capture and sequestration. We’re well suited in that we have a geology that supports it and pipelines here that currently carry CO2.”

Here are a few relatively recent examples of how that trend is playing out today in Louisiana:

• • The Greater New Orleans Development Foundation has led development of a proposal called H2theFuture, which is a green hydrogen energy cluster designed to decarbonize the south Louisiana industrial corridor. The project was among five dozen finalists nationally in the federal Build Back Better Regional Challenge.1 It’s all about moving toward a hydrogen-powered economy and includes creation of the New Energy Institute of America, a clean energy research center and startup incubator. When it was named a finalist, Michael Hecht, GNO’s president and CEO, noted Louisiana’s longstanding leadership in energy: “The H2theFuture plan is the strategy for Louisiana to continue to lead into a lower-carbon future.”

• • Air Products is developing a $4.5 billion clean energy complex that will be the world’s largest permanent carbon dioxide sequestration project.2 It’s designed to produce more than 750 million standard cubic feet per day of “blue hydrogen,” and carbon dioxide from the manufacturing process will be captured and permanently sequestered.

• • Renewable diesel projects have been announced by Louisiana Green Fuels3 and Chalmette Refining,4 each worth hundreds of millions of dollars and each planning to create diesel fuel from sustainable, renewable sources. The Louisiana Green Fuels plant even promises a production process that would remove more carbon from the environment than it will produce.

• • Origin Materials, which calls itself a carbon-negative materials company, has plans to invest at least $750 million developing a biomass manufacturing facility.5 The plant will utilize sustainable wood residue that comes in part from Louisiana’s timber mills and managed forests in order to make plant-based materials for packaging, textiles, apparel, and other products.

Origin Materials has announced plans to build a sustainable plastics facility employing carbon capture emissionsreduction technology in Geismar, La. Pictured is a similar project nearing completion in Ontario, Canada.

Courtesy NASA • • The Syrah Technologies graphite processing facility is expanding to the tune of more than $175 million.6 It’s part of the supply chain for electric vehicles, and the expansion will help it supply a component in lithium-ion batteries.

Even as the world gradually moves away from fossil-fuel-powered automobiles, that doesn’t mean there’ll be no market for the state’s petroleum producers, Pierson notes. “Oil and gas are feed stocks for composites, plastics, paints, adhesives. And we do a lot of advanced chemical manufacturing and have seen a lot of expansion in those processes and the kinds of materials they are producing.”

Focus on Water Management and Coastal Protection

Climate challenges have already had a significant impact on life in Louisiana. In particular, the 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused devastation across the southern part of the state and underscored the threats facing those along and near the Gulf Coast. State leaders stepped up their focus on coastal restoration, protection, and resilience.

What emerged a few years later was the Water Institute of the Gulf, a collaborative effort involving the state, former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. The idea was to dive into the climate challenges facing Louisiana’s coastal landscapes, bring together researchers at all levels, and ultimately build a knowledge base that would not only help the state prepare for future resiliency, but also create insights that could be exported globally.

Pierson calls water management an emerging element in the state’s economy. “It’s certainly important here in Louisiana due to global warming, with lost acres of land to subsidence,” he says, adding that the state has identified financial resources to help build expertise and knowledge in water management, coastal protection, and restoration. “We’ve directed resources coming to us from offshore oil royalties. It’s not only a scientific exercise but one that is powered by an ongoing revenue stream that allows us to take action,” he says. Among many other activities, the Water Institute was involved in the creation of the state’s first Climate Action Plan, announced by Gov. John Bel Edward back in January, the first of its kinds in the Gulf South.7 The plan aims to limit the severity of climate change while maintaining economic competitiveness as the future becomes more and more low-carbon. “Our team was able to provide the task force with both qualitative and quantitative information across a wide swath of metrics and objectives to help inform their deliberations within a fast-moving planning process,” according to Alyssa Dausman, the institute’s senior vice president and chief scientist.

At NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, workers trained by a partnership between LED FastStart, the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, and Nunez Community College are helping to fabricate and assemble Artemis moon mission components.

Satisfying Workforce Needs

Beyond that strong focus on planet earth, Louisiana also has set its sights solidly on returning humans to the moon. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is preparing to launch a test flight in the Artemis program this year, and the core stage of that Space Launch System rocket was produced at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.8

Needless to say, this is not your everyday manufacturing — it’s rocket science, in fact. The state’s LED FastStart program is helping with workforce development needs, according to FastStart’s executive director, Paul Helton. “NASA’s Artemis mission is a great example of the level of sophistication, customization, and long-term support that LED FastStart provides to our partner companies,” he says.

FastStart was engaged to meet short-term training and recruitment needs along with building a long-term workforce pipeline for Boeing’s Space Launch System project. “We led a team that in-

Courtesy TWIG cluded the Louisiana Community and Technical College System and Nunez Community College to benchmark other educational programs supporting NASA operations across the country,” Helton says.

Nunez Community College is equipped to provide a trained workforce for Boeing and all of the other partners at Michoud. Pierson says it’s a source of pride to have such a key component of the space program taking flight from Louisiana. “We’d like to think on the side of that rocket would be a logo that says ‘Cajun-certified.’”

Healthcare and Life Sciences R&D

Back on earth, Louisiana is tapping into its strong resources in healthcare and life sciences R&D. As with activities related to climate change, it’s part a focus on future opportunities and part a response to current challenges — COVID-19, for example.

Louisiana State University’s Health and Sciences Center in New Orleans was early to the work of studying COVID deaths as the pandemic first began. In early April 2020, researchers there discovered that blood vessels in patients’ lungs were filled with clots. The discovery was so alarming and foundational that the Louisiana researchers pushed out a preprint version of their study, which had an immediate and positive impact on the treatments used by doctors across the country.

In Baton Rouge, the community has seen half a billion dollars in health infrastructure investment in the past five years, according to Steven Ceulemans, executive director of the Baton Rouge Health District. The district is pushing innovation forward on a number of fronts.

“We received U.S. Economic Development Administration funding for a regional innovation cluster program called the Louisiana HealthTech Catalyst,” Ceulemans says. It will help create synergies between major health-related anchors.

He adds that the foundation is part of the Gulf Coast Health Sciences Corridor, which was another of the 60 national finalists in the Build Back Better Regional Challenge. “The two key Baton Rouge projects for our cluster include a new Innovation Center at Pennington Biomedical Research Center and a district gateway enhancement initiative to promote continuity and cohesion between our major health campuses.” The Gulf Coast Health Sciences Corridor proposal was pulled together by the New Orleans BioInnovation Center. It aims to make strategic investments in health science industries along with workforce development targeted at women, rural residents, and people of color.

Meanwhile, LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center is emerging as a leader in treatment of obesity. It is home to the nation’s first integrated, interdisciplinary metabolic treatment center. The Bariatric & Metabolic Institute, recently renamed the Metamor Institute, aims to transform the understanding and treatment of obesity.9 According to Pennington’s executive director, John Kirwan, “Metamor is our obesity ‘moonshot.’”

Amid all of this activity, Pierson says the state maintains its focus on its traditional sectors, even as they evolve. Agriculture is an ongoing source of pride, along with advanced manufacturing. And then there’s forestry, an age-old sector that is gaining efficiencies from computerized sawmills and processes that retain byproducts for such things as renewable-energy wood pellets — some of which are shipped overseas to produce electricity. Says Pierson, “We haven’t taken our eyes off the ball.” n

The Water Institute of the Gulf is the research anchor of the Water Campus, an expansive public-private economic development partnership on the Baton Rouge riverfront.

1 https://www.opportunitylouisiana.com/led-news/ news-releases/news/2021/12/13/two-louisiana-projectsamong-finalists-in-eda-build-back-better-challenge 2 https://www.airproducts.com/campaigns/la-bluehydrogen-project 3 https://www.opportunitylouisiana.com/led-news/ news-releases/news/2021/04/23/louisiana-green-fuelsplans-$700-million-renewable-diesel-refinery-in-caldwellparish 4 https://www.opportunitylouisiana.com/led-news/ news-releases/news/2021/06/24/chalmette-refiningannounces-potential-$550-million-renewable-dieselproject 5 https://www.timberprocessing.com/origin-materialsplans-biomass-based-facility/ 6 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/australiassyrah-resources-expand-louisiana-graphite-processingfacility-2022-02-15/ 7 https://thewaterinstitute.org/media/in-the-news/louisiana-approves-first-climate-action-plan-in-the-gulf-south 8 https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/tag/michoud-assemblyfacility/ 9 https://www.pbrc.edu/news/media/2022/metamorinstitute-release.aspx