00:01
Speaker 1
Welcome to let's Get Digital. I'm Carrie Charles, your host. So glad you're here with me today. I have a great episode for you so definitely hang around. We are going to talk about a unique solution that addresses the data center energy crisis and sustains our most valuable resources which are energy, food and water. And to talk about this I have with me Shawn Cutter who is the founder and CEO of Energy Acres. Welcome. Shawn.
00:36
Speaker 2
Hi. Great to be here, Carrie.
00:39
Speaker 1
Yes, I'm excited, definitely excited to talk about this today. So Shawn, I met you at was it Data Cloud recently.
00:49
Speaker 2
Yeah. You met our co, my co founder Augustine.
00:52
Speaker 1
Augustine. That's what it was. So I found out about your company and I was just fascinated, absolutely fascinated. And I've been featuring and will feature on the show, you know, various energy solutions for data centers. And your company is just so different and so I want to talk about that. But first let's talk about your story. How did you, how did you get here today? Like talk a little bit about your experience and your history.
01:27
Speaker 2
Yeah, would love to. So I'm a sixth generation farmer from Ohio. I'm a, I'm a farm kid that also grew up in oil and gas. So I grew up in the farm and oil fields of Ohio. My parents started an oil and gas company but I got into tech in a big way largely stemming from a kind of life changing accident I had at 10 that put me on a path of using technology on a daily basis. That's when I got my first computer and passed the time in a hospital bed with a computer. So I went into technology and ended up coming back and helped the family business grow and ultimately turn built my first company out of solving problems for the family business. And this was really right at the time that US Shale was taking off.
02:32
Speaker 2
So another kind of revolution in terms of an industrial kind of change in how an industry operates, that's how I built my first company. I did that for, until I got acquired in 2015. So kind of from a timeline perspective and help that company grow and later get acquired and having that success had an opportunity to take a pause and really look at where can all of my skills kind of come together to have a bigger impact. So that's really the, the long and short of how I got.
03:14
Speaker 1
Here and then Energy Acres was born.
03:18
Speaker 2
Yes.
03:18
Speaker 1
So tell me about your company and the technology.
03:22
Speaker 2
Yeah. Energy Acres is a circular, is an energy infrastructure developer that has a circular energy model. What I, what I like to call Energy First. So we start with an energy first approach to any kind of large project that powers data centers and also grows more food next to people. So what we've done is taken what technologies and capabilities from oil and gas that operate at scale, and we apply that to powering data centers. And if we do this on each project and we couple that using a circular model to food production, we relocalize our food system which over decades have. We just keep moving food further from people and that costs society and people nutrition. So we're aiming to solve that. With every project. We solve multiple problems.
04:25
Speaker 1
Tell me how that would work as an example.
04:30
Speaker 2
So really simple. Yeah, I'll take it back to, you know, to our family farm. We have oil and gas wells on our farm. Those that energy that's produced from under the ground is used to heat our greenhouse and put more CO2 in the greenhouse because when you burn methane, most of what you get from it is CO2. And plants eat CO2. That's what plants need to grow. And so if you want to grow a lot more of it, you actually have to concentrate CO2 in that greenhouse. So super simple. Leverage the same type of energy for multiple uses on site. So you take one waste stream and you feed it into something else that needs that stream. So rather than throwing it away, you find another use for it.
05:26
Speaker 1
So talk a little bit about the, the company's customers and more about the differentiators as well.
05:35
Speaker 2
Yeah, so we take a lot of. A big differentiator for us is the technology that we go about assembling projects. So we don't guess when we're trying to design. When we design a location, our customers are hyperscalers one side and communities, municipalities on the other. So we kind of bridge that in between gas and pipeline, the gas to power side, the data center and the community and lay out these large complex projects to fit them all in the same spot. That creates a win for all parties involved. Because everyone wants these if the incentives are aligned with everyone.
06:30
Speaker 1
So tell me, how does it come back to the community? So we're talking about the circular, what did you say?
06:40
Speaker 2
We have a circular energy model, inner.
06:42
Speaker 1
Energy model, circular energy model. So, so if we have, let's say there's a circle in front of us, we're drawing it. Then just with the data center, it starts in one place and then goes back to the community. Like describe that full circle to me.
06:59
Speaker 2
Yeah, So I would start first with the energy and resources. That is Used to generate power. Power goes to data center. Power goes to anything else that needs to be run on that. But say it goes to data center. We leverage all of the heat. When you burn gas, it generates tremendous heat and normally that is just wasted. That goes into the air. Just like data centers today, if they cool with air, that heat goes out into the air. It's not used. What we're doing here is we use that heat to generate more power, to generate heating capacity, to even use it to generate cooling capacity. So by leveraging that waste heat, instead of just letting that go, when you drive your car, an automobile, that engine gets really hot.
07:56
Speaker 2
So imagine if we had a little generator that connected and took all that heat and it generated more power for your car. That's what we do. But this is at the industrial scale. So imagine that we're laying out a footprint that shares a thermal district. So it has. It ends up being a lot of pipes and power lines that share a grid of energy across that footprint.
08:22
Speaker 1
Okay. And then it goes back to the people.
08:25
Speaker 2
Well, yeah, and it goes to the people in actually a number of ways. And maybe I'll take a step back. In Ohio, where we're doing our first projects, it could be a seven to ten year wait for power. So that's like one. And then in other areas, there may not be enough water, there may not be enough power left on the grid. And so communities can't create jobs if there's no more power on the grid and there's no more water resources. If a data center comes in and takes everything up, then a mayor, a community developer is stuck. They cannot attract a manufacturer in to build a building and create more jobs. And that's what they need. The community needs workforce and opportunity and innovation.
09:15
Speaker 2
So we have a public private partnership model where we would rather go in and partner with a municipality like the city of Mansfield. Say, how about we leverage some of this land you're not even using, and we can use it and put together a project that will attract a data center. It's going to attract investment for a power plant. And we're also laying the foundation to reload. To bring local food production here. Yes, yes, all of that's good. You know, like, no one tells us this is a bad idea once. Once we're able to share it. That. Yeah, yeah.
09:52
Speaker 1
So communities are pushing back on new data centers. Right. So does this change that story?
09:59
Speaker 2
This completely changes it. If you were to go to Fairfield County, Ohio, where they have one data center, a Google data center, and you Told them you wanted to build a data center, they would tell you to leave. They would tell you that one data center is enough. We're still talking to them because we're working on assembling the right project that doesn't, that provides power for a data center, but it also opens up more opportunity by delivering more power generation capacity to the area. Well, that opens up all kinds of opportunity. If we can build this next wave of infrastructure for AI and couple it with things that better the community infrastructure that's going to last another century. Everyone wins in that community.
10:50
Speaker 2
And we're not going to turn off innovation, we're not going to turn off data centers, and we don't turn off food. So these are like things that we have to have in order to survive and thrive.
11:01
Speaker 1
So what about water? How big of a problem is AI's water footprint?
11:08
Speaker 2
It's pretty bad, and it's bad unnecessarily. Projects have been assembled on ease of construction and this is the way we've always done it, instead of what way should we do it that protects us and mitigates the environment and impact. AI should be completely liquid cooled at this point. We shouldn't be using so much water on every site. We should be using water to grow more food or use it for the community. Use water where you have to use it. And I don't see that data centers have to use so much water.
11:55
Speaker 1
So you talk about waste heat and CO2 feeding greenhouses. I mean, it seems like, has this been done for a really long time? I mean, is it science? It feels like science fiction in a way to do that at scale, right?
12:16
Speaker 2
Well, yes. Fortunately this is being done not with data centers on a very small scale. But the Netherlands, the Dutch, they have become the number two food exporter by using natural gas in greenhouses. And by doing that, their Greenhouse industry generates 13% of all of their power. So you can imagine all these greenhouses all over the place. They're actually contributing 13% of the baseload to Denmark's grid. That's incredible. And furthermore, the farmers get paid to turn their lights on. So when the windmills are going really fast and they have too much power on the grid, they pay the farmers to turn their lights on during the day. So when we start working in a more distributed, collaborative way, we get benefit upon benefit.
13:18
Speaker 1
What's standing in the way of this becoming a reality? I mean, everywhere, obviously it's a reality, but I'm talking about like this is a real solution to the problem.
13:30
Speaker 2
We're only limited by the imagination of the data center developers to invest a little more time up front in the design or partner with organization like Energy Acres that can help lay out a circular design that isn't just about getting a data center bill. We'll help do that faster and better than others, but we can also do it in a way that has a much more sustainable impact on every community. And by doing that, those incentives that are aligned make the project move faster. That's what I learned actually in the oil and gas business. In working with municipalities, it's just a lot easier to find out what they need and where everyone can work together to align incentives and have a project have the biggest unlock for every community possible.
14:38
Speaker 1
So what about hydrogen from data centers? Is, I mean, is that the next big thing? Is it height?
14:47
Speaker 2
It's, I'll say it's partial height and I say that because the technology is proven, but it's still costly. So one, it's costly, but sometimes your data center might be willing to pay for speed. And so it's actually faster to move with hydrogen in a lot of cases than wait for certain types of equipment. So I see it as more of a hybrid solution where you're stacking hydrogen fuel cells in with baseload power, in with batteries, in with renewables that help balance the whole project because it's hard to make all a single use kind of energy source work on these projects because the power demands on the new data centers fluctuate so much. That gets really expensive to build.
15:42
Speaker 2
It gets easier to build when you start distributing that across a micro grid that you have multiple sources that can provide kind of different demand profile responses.
15:54
Speaker 1
Let's talk about jobs, because this is definitely a concern now for everyone in the digital infrastructure space. But it's going to become a massive crisis over the next few years. I mean, really, over the next few months even. And I talk about this all the time, but how can we, you know, find the people and train the people to, you know, to do these jobs? I mean, is there something in your solution and your technology that's going to support this?
16:32
Speaker 2
We're going to make the workforce training and community development is integrated into our model so that there is not just space, but integration into the local community, whether that's a regional campus like OSU has in Mansfield, or just a community college or vocational school. Every single community and every data center project should look how to integrate and tap into those resources because everyone there is hungry for it. I mean, we're working in the Rust Belt and Appalachian coal affected communities and that they've only seen jobs leave my entire life. This is an opportunity to unlock it. People are very interested in reskilling but again the data center has to put in a little time upfront to do that integration work and design so that it's going to have a bigger impact.
17:42
Speaker 2
But it's with as fast as the industry is growing it seems and it feels a lot like the US shale industry when it was first taking off. And it's just a completely new way of doing it and it was growing really fast and they had to train new, new people up. They had to bring in people from different parts of the country in order to skill those people up in this region. And I, I think that's what we're going to have to do.
18:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, I agree with you. So then how do you facilitate that with you know, do you go yourself to these schools and you know, put in and connect the community with the school with the data center? I mean how does that get done?
18:31
Speaker 2
Well, I wish I could say that there's a template and a one size fits all to this. Unfortunately it's not. There is some uniqueness that I think everyone can appreciate with every community. What makes this one different and catering to that. What we have been successful at doing is creating a public private partnership that also spans universities, high school systems and the municipalities. It's the county and cities are very engaged when it comes to creating opportunity for their people. Like that's and they go to great lengths to help and facilitate that. So that's why I encourage data centers to keep that open dialogue.
19:26
Speaker 1
So paint us a picture. What does the data center of 2030 look like?
19:32
Speaker 2
The data center of 2030 is not just a data center. It's a campus that first ensures that everything on the campus is resilient. There's sustainability baked in. But it also is something that responds to the regional power implications. And just maybe describe when a data center OpenAI is going to train the GPT6 and everything is running at 100%. It needs a lot of power. It needs more power. So that initiates a demand to the data or the power plant that's going to then create more heat because that additional heat is then creating cooling capacity for the data center. So it's very symbiotic when the data center is not just about the data center. Data center is going to be about everything around the data center as well. And those are going to be designed and Integrated as a complete solution.
20:49
Speaker 2
You know, rather than these individual parts. We're going to look at it as an overall integrated solution to the community in 2030.
20:57
Speaker 1
Okay. I love that. It's a beautiful vision. What drives you, Shawn? What makes you just so excited every morning to jump out of bed and get to your desk?
21:11
Speaker 2
Energy Acres is my purpose. My. It's what I'm passionate about. When you, when you know why you're here, why, why? What is uniquely unique about me that, that I can work the rest of my days on and have the biggest possible impact. I'm doing it like this. This, this is it. Helping society, civilization through this transition. Not just energy, but also to AI, to the, you know, an age of knowledge. We went from industrial and chemical computing, Internet information, and now we're at the age of knowledge. So how do we get through this at a time when we need all of this innovation and technology to, to make it through the transition? We need all of the tools. That, that's what I'm here for. That's, that's why I get up every day.
22:12
Speaker 1
And you know what? There's, there's a full circle with you as well, and your life because you said there was a medical issue where technology really was able to help you. And now look how this is coming full circle for you. And now you are going to be impacting the world with this technology. So, Shawn, this is. I got chills. I got chills. So I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing about the company, the technology, the dream, you know, the solution which we need. And how do we find more. How do we find out more about Energy Acres?
22:51
Speaker 2
You can go to our website or LinkedIn. We're pretty active on those channels. Energyacres.com and that's energy with an eye for intelligence.
23:03
Speaker 1
Oh, I like it. Thank you, Shawn. I hope to see you soon. You're right in my hometown in Tampa.
23:10
Speaker 2
Yeah, can't wait.
23:11
Speaker 1
We'll have to get together. Thanks for coming on the show. Take care.
23:14
Speaker 2
Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks.
23:18
Speaker 1
Okay, hold on. Don't leave just yet.