Pick your spots. Building power-intensive assets in areas with ample renewable energy, where water and land aren’t as constrained, makes a lot more sense than forcing new power demand into overly constrained areas. Our Ireland and East TX projects were intentionally sited in areas with ample local renewable energy and plenty of appropriate land.
Aswe face an unprecedented environmental crisis, the need for sustainable solutions has never been more urgent. This series seeks to spotlight the innovative minds and passionate advocates who are leading the charge in environmental conservation and sustainable practices. We aim to explore the most effective strategies, breakthrough technologies, and transformative policies that are shaping a more sustainable future for our planet. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing John Malone.
John Malone is an accomplished energy and infrastructure finance professional with nearly 20 years of experience spanning investment, advisory, and consulting roles. At AVAIO, he focuses on digital infrastructure and energy investments, leveraging his extensive background in international project development and finance. With prior leadership positions at Prostar Capital, Mizuho Securities, and Global Hunter Securities, John brings a wealth of expertise to his role, where he leads sourcing initiatives across North America and Europe. He holds advanced degrees in Geological Sciences and Marine Sciences, complementing his technical and commercial acumen.
Thank you so much for joining us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
Istarted out as a field scientist — I was finishing up a PhD in Earth Sciences in Europe and interviewing for jobs in pretty remote parts of Africa and Asi when I married a New York City actress, and realized it was a lot easier for me to get a job in her hometown than it was for her to find work in Windhoek or Jakarta. I started out in Manhattan as an energy consultant and found I really enjoyed the world of project development and finance. From there, I went into banking, then to energy & infrastructure private equity. Ten years ago, I knew very little about digital infrastructure and data centers, but it seemed pretty clear that demand for these kinds of assets was only going up, and since in many ways they really are large power projects it was a very natural evolution for someone with an energy background into data centers. It became clear that the buildout of any new energy-intensive project was, by necessity, going to require a strong focus on sustainability. This gave me a chance to reach back into my science background for potential solutions.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
A huge part of my day-to-day activity is spent on site selection — finding places to develop sustainable new data centers. Some of the most interesting experiences I’ve had are working with the AVAIO team in new locations like the west of Ireland or East Texas or southern Quebec, where we work with local governments and landowners to create innovative new projects from scratch and minimize their carbon intensity. We realized early on that simply building new data centers in areas that are land- and power-constrained, just so they can be next door to other data centers, isn’t a sustainable model. In the west of Ireland, for example, there are wind farms that have to curtail their energy production — essentially spill wind out of their windmills — when they are producing more power than the transmission lines can carry to Dublin. So it seemed obvious to us that if you put the data center demand on underused industrial sites close to the wind farms, you make much more efficient use of the power and save the country the need to spend a lot of capital on building new power lines. Working on those kinds of solutions is both a lot of fun and very satisfying.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I think the first would be curiosity. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that we’re seeing a generational shift in how we operate as a civilization. Digitalization and decarbonization are accelerating and we’re going to have to be very creative in making sure that those two trends move forward as harmoniously as possible. We need to stay genuinely curious about new ways to generate, store, and use power more efficiently. We need to explore how to integrate a variety of power generation types into a grid or microgrid. We need to explore ways to reduce carbon across the life cycle of a project. It’s going to take curious, inventive people to make that happen.
Another important trait is pragmatism. We have to be practical in how we develop and apply sustainable solutions. Data centers are the backbone of the modern digital economy. Intermittent renewable generation needs to be augmented by storage and baseload generation solutions. New initiatives like geothermal and nuclear solutions will have a place, but we have to work creatively and realistically with the systems we have until those new technologies and applications mature.
Finally, we need empathy. Building new infrastructure affects a lot of stakeholders. Understanding how your actions affect others and making sure you’re working with those stakeholders toward common goals makes for better projects.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that might help people?
One mantra we always follow is that “the greenest power is the power you never use.” We’re working with a local Quebecois company, Sunbird Energy, on energy efficiency solutions that will lower our power use and make our data center an asset on the power transmission grid as opposed to just a power consumer. We’re also looking at ways to share the building’s waste heat to lower our neighbors’ energy consumption. It’s an opportunity to be really creative in how we use energy and work with the grid operators; the fact that we are doing it with a local partner makes it even more fulfilling.
Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of our interview. What pivotal moment led you to dedicate your career to sustainability, and how has that shaped your approach to environmental challenges?
As we dedicated more time to data centers in the mid 2010’s, it became increasingly clear that these assets were going to be the critical infrastructure of the 21st century. The whole AVAIO team became more attracted to the challenge of developing these assets in a way that was sustainable. We have to integrate a new, massive, rapidly growing industry into a global economy that’s increasingly requiring zero-carbon solutions. That’s a huge challenge, but one that ties together science, engineering, finance and geopolitics in really fascinating ways.
Could you describe a groundbreaking project or initiative you’ve been involved in that significantly contributed to sustainability?
In addition to our Quebec project, we are in the early stages of some interesting utility-scale, behind-the-meter renewable energy projects that will support our data center projects and lessen the strain on local power grids. We at AVAIO have also worked with some energy efficiency platforms that have pushed the envelope on how commercial customers can minimize energy usage and maximize efficiency.
How do you navigate the balance between economic growth and environmental preservation in your sustainability strategies?
We are in an industry where the end users — the cloud and AI companies that are the ultimate data center tenants — are requiring us to be forward thinking when it comes to sustainability. Solutions like using renewable energy or maximizing cooling efficiency are increasingly becoming table stakes just to operate in this space. So we are in the challenging, but enviable, position where applying sustainability principles actually makes our projects more attractive and ultimately more profitable. On top of that, any infrastructure project is to some extent subject to the social license to operate. In this context, clean, efficient, and sustainable assets have advantages.
What emerging technologies or innovations do you believe hold the most promise for advancing sustainability and why?
There’s a lot of buzz around AI as a data center use case. But we also see AI as a tool that can provide a whole new range of sustainability improvements inside the data center itself. Properly applied, AI can help improve data center power management, HVAC controls, microgrid integration, system modeling, and carbon accounting. AI models can be used to adjust system operations in real time and to improve predictive maintenance practices. Ultimately, AI could even be used to trade power from a data center’s onsite power generation systems onto the grid, making the data center a true “prosumer” of energy.
Based on your research or experience, can you please share your “5 Top Strategies for a Cleaner Planet”?
1 . Pick your spots. Building power-intensive assets in areas with ample renewable energy, where water and land aren’t as constrained, makes a lot more sense than forcing new power demand into overly constrained areas. Our Ireland and East TX projects were intentionally sited in areas with ample local renewable energy and plenty of appropriate land.
2 . Maximize efficiency. The cleanest electrons are those you never use and a project’s social license is directly related to how well it manages resource consumption. For example, AVAIO has a standardized data center design that is an air-cooled, closed-loop cooling system, minimizing water usage.
3 . Be creative in choosing solutions. In some markets where we operate, the local grid power is sufficiently “green” that we can operate projects with effectively zero Scope 1 & 2 carbon emissions. For example, Quebec is effectively 100% zero-carbon hydropower. In other areas, we are looking at on-site renewable energy, private wire connections to nearby renewable projects, or clean energy power purchase agreements to make sure we’re maximizing our clean energy use. The AVAIO team has extensive experience in developing energy projects, so we can be creative in how we approach these challenges.
4 . Stay on top of new technologies. We are working with industry partners on initiatives like “green cement” that can dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of building materials. It’s worthwhile to pay attention to the development of new technologies outside your core competency. You never know when an advance in another space could be applicable to your business.
5 . Collaborate. I’ve been honored to represent AVAIO with a seat on the Sustainability Committee of Infrastructure Masons, one of the industry’s premier professional societies. I’ve learned more about data centers and sustainability at one iMasons cocktail reception than in a month’s worth of reading. Whatever business you’re in, talking with competitors and colleagues about how you each approach the problem is beneficial across your industry.
In your view, what are the key steps individuals, communities, and governments need to take to achieve a more sustainable future?
Advocate for greater transparency in every industry. You can’t improve what you can’t measure.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Put simply, and really to state the obvious, giving every person in the world access to clean water and abundant cheap power in a way that doesn’t put too much pressure on the borader environment would result in the most dramatic improvement. That’s the challenge of our age.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
Visit www.avaiodigital.com or follow the company on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/avaio-digital-partners/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About the Interviewer: Wanda Malhotra is a wellness entrepreneur, lifestyle journalist, and the CEO of Crunchy Mama Box, a mission-driven platform promoting conscious living. CMB empowers individuals with educational resources and vetted products to help them make informed choices. Passionate about social causes like environmental preservation and animal welfare, Wanda writes about clean beauty, wellness, nutrition, social impact and sustainability, simplifying wellness with curated resources. Join Wanda and the Crunchy Mama Box community in embracing a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle at CrunchyMamaBox.com.
