Echelon Data Centres combats industry myths in new podcast series

Author: Beatrice

Echelon Data Centres has produced a podcast series to combat misinformation about data centres, explore the issues facing the industry, and provide insight into the data centre landscape.

Data centre sustainability, energy supply, green and alternative energies, and the thorny question of cooling technology are just a few of the topics addressed Power and Responsibility – the Data Centre Podcast.

Although the ongoing series has been commissioned and produced by Echelon, the podcasts feature independent industry and academic experts in their relevant specialist fields and are free of promotional messages.

Damien Gaynor, Chief Marketing Officer at Echelon Data Centres, said that the Power and Responsibility podcast has been created to present the industry, regulators, and the general population with relevant information about the challenges facing the data centre sector in Ireland at a time when it is beset by well-meaning but often ill-informed public and political pressures.

Mr Gaynor comments: “Power and Responsibility talks about the things that matter both to the industry and to wider society. The very name of our podcast series reflects the importance of data centres to a modern lifestyle and the responsibility that operators have to ensure that they are run in a sustainable manner.

“Data centres are essential infrastructure. The global pandemic has demonstrated how much our economy is becoming reliant on the connected digital tools that they facilitate – things like videoconferencing for work, 5G, e-commerce, entertainment streaming, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things.

“We believe that it is incumbent upon data centre operators to operate sustainably – to look after the people and communities in which they operate, to focus on delivering economic benefit, and to mitigate and reduce their environmental impact. One example of this is the value that data centres are adding to the nation’s power ecosystem by helping enable the transition to 100% renewable power.

“In our podcast series, we explore some of the areas that will assist in data centre sustainability – liquid cooling for example, which increases power usage efficiency, the potential for green hydrogen production on sites with ready access to renewable power, and alternative energy sources like biogas to power CCHP generators.

“We also bust a few myths. Contrary to the popular view, data centres do create jobs, do deliver economic benefit and aren’t going to suck the country’s power dry. And we look under the bonnet of sustainability itself and find out what actually makes it work.”

There are currently five episodes of Power and Responsibility – the Data Centre Podcast. They can be found on the Echelon website, and also on Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.