Don’t miss the latest Aii expert panel discussion entitled “Challenges and Opportunities in the Data-Energy Triangle.” Read the transcript below or watch and listen.

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Benjamin Dierker
Welcome, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to this important dialogue hosted by the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure Aii. Aii is the only nationwide
public policy think tank dedicated to infrastructure, and we work to advance innovation across both industry and public policy to see safer, more efficient, and more resilient infrastructure.

Today we’re hosting a dialogue at a critical intersection between energy infrastructure, fiber optic infrastructure, and the data economy. We call this the Data-Energy Triangle. As we go forward in today’s conversation, we hope to bring out new opportunities, new challenges, and allow our panelists to discuss ways that they could collaborate or ways that policy makers could streamline solutions across the entire infrastructure landscape.

Without further ado, I’m going to turn it over to our esteemed moderator, Dr. Paul Dickinson.


Paul Dickinson

Thanks, Benjamin. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us to close out Aii’s Energy Month. I’m Paul Dickinson, founder and principal of Smart Infrastructure Solutions and a member of Aii’s Advisory Council, as well as several other boards, committees, and nonprofits.

Today’s discussion is about how energy, fiber, and digital connectivity are no longer separate; they’re converging. That brings shared challenges, but it also brings powerful opportunities at both the technical and policy levels. It’s important to take a few minutes up front here before we start with the panelists.

Allow me to paint the picture that motivated us to put this discussion together today. So, the modern economy now runs on information, with electrons and photons. Energy infrastructure, optical connectivity and digital connectivity are no longer separate domains. They’re deeply interwoven, shaping how we power our lives, communicate and grow. That means they share pain points, but it also means there are synergies to unlock. That’s why we’re here today to talk about both the biggest issues and also the opportunities at both a technical level and also at a public policy level.

I want to further set the stage for this panel discussion by commenting on three specific areas.

Firstly, broadband and optical fiber. Groups like the Fiber Broadband Association are doing an amazing job helping close the digital divide and enable community growth by driving fiber deployment. Through both government and private funding, we’re now in the process of continuing to deploy much needed optical fiber cable in the US to meet current and future bandwidth demands. The focus has been until now primarily satisfying our data communication needs.

Secondly, there is AI in data centers. Headlines also include the imminent hockey stick growth of artificial intelligence. That’s all you see in the news these days or AI and that tremendous number of data centers exchange points. And data center interconnects that are being and will continue to be built for the next decade or more to support this exciting technology. With that comes the tremendous need for both bandwidth and enhanced energy infrastructure. So. organizations like Aii, Edison Electric Institute, which you’ll hear from today, and even transportation focused groups like ITS America are all focused on the impacts.

Finally, there’s the issue of building this infrastructure both safely and also to ensure long term reliability and resilience of what we build. Current underground infrastructure is often a snarled and improperly-mapped network of both legacy and newer build utilities. Organizations like the Common Ground Alliance and the Fiber Optic Sensing Association focus on this with methodologies to reduce damage through, for example, better call center protocols or innovative monitoring technologies. No matter how well we engineer and build, nothing is bulletproof, and infrastructure will fail over time, particularly aging infrastructure. There is tremendous value in preventative maintenance and damage prevention.

Aii published a recent report entitled Broadening Our View on Broadband, within which they’ve described how optical fiber can expand its use within our infrastructure to enable smart grids, advance artificial intelligence, support quantum computing, and even monitor utility and transportation corridors in real time for enhanced damage protection, improved situational awareness, and enhanced resilience. These overlapping capabilities highlight a profound truth –and maybe that’s the mantra for today’s panel:

The future of infrastructure will not be defined by single systems, but by the convergence of many systems. That’s why today’s discussion is so important and so timely. By bringing together experts and perspectives across the energy, fiber and data sectors, we can begin to chart a path where coordination is not just possible, but it’s essential, unlocking opportunities for innovation, efficiency and resilience that no single sector could achieve alone. ,So let’s begin. I’d like to start by asking each of our panelists.

To give an introduction and an opening statement regarding their background, their organization or highlights, and what their priorities are and what they hope this panel may cover.

Okay, let’s start with Joe. Go ahead, Joe.


Joseph Quinn

Hi, thanks for having us. My name is Joe Quinn. I’m the Senior Director of Security and Resilience Policy at the Edison Electric Institute, EEI for short. EEI is the trade organization that represents the country’s investor owned utilities that’s that provide electricity for more than 250 million Americans.

And supports more than 7 million jobs in the United States. We were founded in 1933 and I joined in January of this year. I’ve been working in and around electricity for the last 15 years and more recently have been almost exclusively focused on a topic that we’re referring to is energy security and in the electricity sub-sector, which is one of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors identified by PPD21 and NSM 22. We understand the relationship that we have to support every other critical infrastructure sector, but energy security more specifically.

Has morphed and it’s now I guess the intersection of resource adequacy, infrastructure build out, this unprecedented level of demand growth that we’re seeing in the sector due to data centers, electrification, onshoring of new manufacturing facilities, all of that kind of converging into this.

Conversation we’re calling energy security. What’s probably also important to note is that energy, electricity, all of this is aligned to EEI members and support of both the US economy, but also to National Defense. So both of these interests, like we have to win at AI, we have to make this a priority to continue this expedited growth that we’re seeing across the sector. So I’m really excited to talk about the convergence with some of the other what we’re seeing vectors, pillars, verticals with that are represented here today and I’m looking forward to the conversation. Thank you..


Paul Dickinson

Thank you, Joe. Appreciate it. Let’s go to Adil.


Adil Attlassy

Hi Adil Attlassy, I’m the Chief Technology Officer with Compass Data Centers. I’ve been very lucky because I I had the opportunity to serve the Internet broadband, you know, explosion in the early 90s. Then I pivoted to the data center well back in the day, which is called.

In racks and got to see wholesale data centers. So I’ve been in the sector about 30 years. I had the opportunity to develop, build and operate data centers not only in North America, in Europe and … as well. So, I get to see it a little bit from a different perspective as it relates to engagement.
With utilities and with the authorities, very excited to be part of this panel. I cannot stress how important energy is. It’s a matter of national security in my view. I was just curious earlier like and I went online and looked at it and looked at.
From the AI broadband, China is has 58 reactors of 60 gig. They are going to Commission that are 36 reactor to make 113 GW of nuclear capacity, which is in power the US give or take. The only difference is we’re going to decommission 20 by 2030 and they’re planning to be at 400 GW of nuclear capacity by 2060. So very important that we discuss this stuff like the converter of power, connectivity and water and energy are very important to the digital economy. So I’m looking forward to having this conversation.


Paul Dickinson

Thank you very much. And last but not least, Mark, if you could let us know who you are and what you’re focused on, that’d be awesome.


Mark Boxer

I am Mark Boxer, I am with Lightera. The way normally I’d describe Lightera is we are the fiber optic arm of what was Bell Labs and so we have a very deep background in in fiber optics.

So I worked for Lightera in an engineering role and then, you know, my entire career has been in the Fiber industry. So in addition to my role with Lightera, I also have A. couple of different roles with the Fiber Broadband Association. So Paul mentioned the Fiber Broadband Association in his opening remarks, I’m on the Board of Directors. I’m also the Education Committee chair involved with the Technology Committee and just a number of committees on the Fiber Broadband Association. So you know we’ve been doing fiber for about 40 years, you know with single mode fiber 40 ish years, the first 40 years.

With fiber, we’re primarily about broadband and just, you know, bringing advanced connectivity and in the introductory comments, Paul also mentioned the concept of A. I, you know, without fiber, you know, we really don’t have A. I. So you know, fiber now is really critical infrastructure from A. broadband standpoint.

It’s critical infrastructure for A I. It’s critical infrastructure for our mobile, you know, you know, the, you know, the mobile canopy that we have. And you know, FBA kind of sums that up in A. A. really kind of neat statement. They say when fiber leads, the future follows. And so from here, I think we’ll probably get into this into the discussion.

So the first four years were primarily about communications, but fiber also has an interesting additional property and that is it is an amazingly sensitive sensor. So it can sense a lot of really interesting things. And my guess is that we’re going to get into to that in a lot more depth as we continue on with the panel, so I think I’ll stop there from an introductory standpoint and turn it back over to Paul.


Paul Dickinson

What a great start. So, I’m guessing this panel could go about 3 hours, but unfortunately, we only have another 50 minutes or so or less. So, we’re going to start broad and then we’ll dive in and feel free. I’d like to ask the panelists to feel free to add on to other people’s comments. There’s just not one way here, so.


Paul Dickinson

And then we’ll dive in and feel free. I’d like to ask the panelists to feel free to add on to other people’s comments. This is not a one way St. here. So, let’s start by asking each of you a general question. So, we talked about integration. You all touched upon it in your opening comments. What do you see as the single most important opportunity?

This integration can create and what’s the single biggest challenge we must solve to capture that integration? So, how’s that for a broader question? So let’s start with Adil and put the pressure on him. What are your thoughts? And again, each of us could probably talk 20 minutes about that topic alone, but anything that comes off the top of your head?


Adil Attlassy

Yeah, I think all three of them that you mentioned, the three legs for the digital economy school was still in my view. Having the energy with that connectivity doesn’t help and having energy with that connectivity without the proper synergy from a regulatory perspective doesn’t help either.

For us as a developer and operator of data centers, when we look at opportunities, we look at trying to solve for all three dimensions. The challenge we foresee is each one as a vertical has been managed and independently, and there has been no synergies between all three of them and be looked upon as unity in my view.


Paul Dickinson

Thank you. That’s spot on. I completely agree. Joe, any comments?


Joseph Quinn

Yeah, sure. So thanks. I would say that the biggest opportunity is a chance to maybe realize that we’re all steering the same direction in most cases and that I think that there is this general awareness both at a federal level, at a state level and within the private sector to build.

And to build quickly to meet this demand, wherever and however the source of generation comes from, wherever the technology comes from, you know there’s there’s a lot of opportunity to start working together to identify not just win wins, but even like win, win wins. And I think the biggest challenge to that so far is there’s so many people that have been working in and around this different space with many years of history, navigating their own regulatory constructs, navigating their own citing and permitting challenges, for example, navigating their own connectivity stuff with sources.
Generation and really sitting down and maybe putting our heads together on a lot of this will help lead towards not just a national framework, which really doesn’t seem to be the solution, but I think a recognition that like some goals to build more generation, to connect more generation, to build more transmission, etc.

Can lead to flexibility inherent that you need in the region where you want to build this thing or where there’s an opportunity to bolster the local economy. So I think looking at a national at a national perspective is really helpful because we identify the broad contours of what we want to achieve, but we really need to get in with experts who have experience.
Doing this for the past 10/20/30 years to talk about what the region specific needs are. And that’s a challenge because it’s hard and sometimes we’re building new relationships, sometimes we’re leveraging old ones, talking them in new ways. But just at the start, that’s kind of the way I see it.


Paul Dickinson

Thanks, Joe. So Mark, biggest opportunities and biggest challenges. What are your thoughts to build on what Adil and Joe said?


Mark Boxer

Yeah. You know, from an opportunity standpoint, you know, underlying kind of all of this is the promise of AI. And so if AI fulfills its promise, so first of all, if AI doesn’t fulfill this promise, you know, then the promise that it has, then you know, I think we’ll probably figure that out relatively quickly, but if it does fulfill the promise that you know that people highlight, you know we are going to continue, you will be on a continual need for just more. So you know, so more power, more connectivity, more of of everything.

And so, you know, the good news about that is from an economic standpoint, from a quality of life standpoint, I mean there, you know, it has the potential to bring some pretty amazing benefits. You know, I am just starting to use it in my professional life. So for the first couple of years, I said it was.
I was very confidently wrong and it seems like it’s getting a little bit better and so and it’s becoming a little bit more useful. And so if that, if that is the experience of, you know, seven and a half, 8 billion people on the face of the earth, then you know we’re going to, we are going to need a lot of everything that helps to drive it, but part of that is hopefully it will bring additional, you know, quality of life benefits, you know, to everyone to basically, you know, pay for what it is going to demand from us.

So in short, if it, you know, if it meets its requirements or if it meets, you know, its promise, then yeah, that brings in the challenge. And the challenge is basically we’re going to need a bigger boat. And so that’s, you know, kind of a glib way of saying we are going to need, you know, a lot more power, you know, we’re going to need a lot more, you know, just compute capacity. We’re going to need a lot more photons. We’re going to potentially need more real estate. We’re and we’re going to potentially just need ways of making sure that you know we are connecting and monitoring all that stuff as it goes.
So Paul, I think back over to you.


Paul Dickinson

Yeah, thanks. I’m smiling because I know several of you guys are in Washington, but there’s an expression you can’t swing a dead cat in Washington without hitting free lawyers, right? I don’t know if you’ve heard that. I was just at a conference called Mountain Connect a couple weeks ago, and I did not expect that every single talk was going to be focused on AI, I mean it was almost a joke. AI and data centers and interconnectors kept coming up time and time again. So there’s gonna be a lot of people who watch this presentation and this panel.

So let’s maybe start by normalizing which one of you, or maybe a couple of you want to take a crack at kind of defining for the novice, not the experts that you guys are regarding what AI offers at a high level for the community in the world and also maybe Adil what a data center is. Why don’t we just start by just giving a little bit of a normalization and then and then dive into some? You know, private sector versus public sector stuff.


Adil Attlassy

Sure. Well, let’s talk about a data center. So I joke with my kids that when you send an e-mail to from when I send an e-mail to Paul, it doesn’t go through the air through and the ferries don’t carry it over. There’s actually a physical connectivity that needs to go from a point to the Z point to deliver that data through to.
Activity and to compute and get retransmitted on data. So it’s not any different from any connectivity. AI is just the next generation computing connectivity in a sense. The only difference is this is the first time in my view in. I mean we went through the first segment, 3rd, 4th.
You know, digital revolution, I mean, I say technological revolution. This is the fifth. You know, we are just coming in a much faster, much quicker pace than humanity, humanity has ever, ever experienced.
So hence why we struggle with so much trying to define it and why not. What AI will bring in my view is just like automation and the steam engine brought during, you know, the Industrial Revolution is to take a lot of mundane, you know, non revenue generating in the sense task and will from that out to automation that does it better, faster and quicker and less errors. What it means to a lot of communities, it will basically not only communities but globally it will raise the standard of living amount.

View cause just like the broadband accessibility to broadband in a lot of the countries developing country has brought the level of education to utmost level. I think AI will help as well to further enhance humanity in the lifestyles a lot of people out there.


Paul Dickinson

That’s excellent. Any further additions to that, Mark or Joe?


Joseph Quinn

Now I’ll add to just from the perspective of energy and the electricity subsector, we talk about it in two ways and I kind of got into some of my intro points, but some of it is like the building the infrastructure necessary to support AI growth, which is how do we provide electricity or power to the data center which will then provide this service, but then also within the energy and excuse it for EEI members like we’re talking about how to use the tools to leverage everything that we do including like resource planning and advocacy and how some of our actual operational technology systems that open and close the valves that make sure things get delivered so that way you turn your lights on electricity.

We’re talking about how to use that and like primarily I had to learn one of these terms. We’ve popped into three groups, machine learning, generative AI and agentic AI. And I think understanding that those three things are three different things and it’s not just ChatGPT or use of copilot, but there’s actual other uses.
Cases that are new tools are being developed, but then also we’re seeing AI used to support like existing work and contracting within our membership that we’re sharing and benchmarking exciting in new ways that people are really it’s really engaging to talk to people about how they’re using AI. My new favorite dinner party or happy hour question is like, what’s your favorite use of AI? And the correct answer is having to cite to give you the citation for your footnotes for formal comments. But there’s plenty of other ones that are like really valuable and useful. So I think one differentiating that there’s building infrastructure to support AI and two.

That there’s three types of AI that people use, generally machine learning, generative AI, and genetic AI kind of helps frame the conversation in terms of use.


Paul Dickinson

Mark, do you want to comment? Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Do you want to comment, Mark, or I got another one to tee up with you. Let me know.


Mark Boxer

Yeah, no. So I’ll just make a comment and then just a quick comment and then you know you can, you can tea, you know, tea with me. So you know, I I am not an AI expert. I’m I am AI would consider myself to be a novice user, but you know, I’m finding that I’m using it a lot more and I’m trusting it. I’m trusting it more, which can argue whether or not that’s actually a good thing. You know, I think one of the benefits that we will see long term is, you know, hopefully some, you know, just continue continued removal of friction, you know, through you know every aspect of our economy. And so if you know if that happens, then you know, hopefully. That will, you know, drive to, you know, a ton of future innovations that again ultimately will improve everyone’s quality of life. But you know, I think it’s we’re early and we will, we’ll see. But it’s certainly, you know, as the future continues to unfold, it just seems like there is there’s a lot of promise there.


Paul Dickinson

Thanks Mark. So I’m going to parlay now and move in a little bit in a different direction. So one of the things I’m passionate about and Mark knows this very well is we’ve we’re so focused on building an optical fiber in in the world and for all the right reasons. But I think in terms of policymakers and many folks, there’s not an awareness of what Mark alluded to and what I alluded to in my opening statement about what fiber can do besides better Internet, you know, symmetrical broadband, communities flourishing, all those great things.

So when it comes to making policymakers aware of the advantages of this integration we’re talking about in this panel today, where we’re about to spend a ton of money in in undergrounding electrical infrastructure, let’s say from 20 to 40% for a lot of reasons. We’re going to still do some aerial. We’re about to build out the energy infrastructure and the data center interconnects in a huge way for the next 10 or 15 years. How do we make, or how do we encourage policymakers to understand and appreciate the synergies that could occur between? The digital capabilities of fiber and the support with the energy infrastructure and data Centers for that matter. So Mark, I don’t know, I’ll give you first dibs on that one if you’d like to.


Mark Boxer

Yeah. So that’s a great question and I’ll take it in a direction and others may want to take it in in different directions. But you know, when we talk about fiber, you know, it’s primarily about bringing the concept of broadband to people. So one thing I want to be very clear about is we are 40 plus years since the development of single mode fiber and as humanity we have yet to fill it up. So you know there was, I want to be very clear about that. There was a paper that came out, I guess about a year ago from a research group over in the UK.

You know, they, you know, and they had put together in one single fiber, so you know, 125 Micron glass core, 250 Micron coating. They had pumped I think around 400 terabits per second down that fiber, so.
Put that in perspective, this is a Fiber Broadband Association paper that we had published a couple years ago on the longevity and capability of fiber and that we had cited a Bell Labs paper where you kind of do the math on that and we think the upper end for a single fiber is somewhere in the 60 to 100 terabits per second per core, so at per core and I mean and I make that distinction because there are now multiple core fibers that are out there. That’ll be a completely separate discussion. So you know, so as humanity we have yet to fill up a single fiber and I just kind of want to be.

Be clear about that. So that’s from an optical standpoint. From a mechanical standpoint, you know, people ask me about the reliability, the long-term reliability at fiber and I normally tell them basically, you know, they ask how long can fiber last and I tell them, you know, the answer to that is OK, well, how long can my desk last?

Last. And so, you know, as long as it’s deployed in in the way that the industry recommends, you know, fiber really doesn’t have an expiration date that we’re aware. So you know, once you put it in, we know that backhoes can hurt it. We know that various rodents can hurt it. We know that people who have had a little bit too much to drink and knocked down a power pole can hurt it, but you know on its own it you know is very reliable. So from a from a broadband standpoint, you know we are with the XGS PON networks that are being deployed today that’s those are 10 gigabits.

You know upstream and downstream. So we’re using roughly 160 thousandth of the capacity of one fiber. So you know with you know fiber, it has you know a lot of runway and so I just want to be very clear about that then. So that’s from a broadband perspective, but the one thing that is not new. Nearly as as well known is fiber is an amazing sensor and so fiber has the capability of sensing literally on a nanometer type scale. And So what that does is you know that so there and there are also different kinds of fibers that can sense at different levels. So I want to be kind of clear that a standard fiber has some capability. There are also other fibers that have higher level capabilities from a sensing standpoint. But I like to give a couple of examples of the sensing capability of a fiber just to really.

Really, you know, to frankly shock a little bit because a lot of people aren’t aware of this. So we did a an installation at our factory in Carrollton, GA. So we’ve got an outside area that is a, you know, we’ve got some poles and some underground and we ran some cable with some sensing fiber in it and and we were sensing and what was amazing is that a helicopter flew above. We sensed the blades of the helicopter as it was flying above, you know, so people don’t really understand that fiber, you know, really has a tremendous amount of capability from a sensing standpoint.

Since the blade of a helicopter on the aerial portion of the network, you know, we sensed the first bird that landed on the cable. We sensed the second bird that landed on the cable. So it, you know, it tells us that we’ve got just a tremendous amount of sensitivity there. And so how, how do we use that? So you know, one of the ways that we can use that. We talked about backhoes, we talked about rodents. So immediately the concept of network protection comes into play because it’s almost always never the first backhoe strike that actually causes the break. And so if you have enough, you have enough time between the time that the backhoe hits the ground, you could potentially.

Actually mitigate and there’s actually been a case where it’s, I don’t know if it’s been published or not, but we’ve heard where a relatively sized, decent sized deployment was able to mitigate about half of the outages based on just using sensing to help. So we’ve got a tremendous opportunity #1 for network protection, but then #2, what else can we potentially do with that data? So you know, you’ve got, you know, literally, I think it’s billions of kilometers that have been deployed or miles that have been deployed, you know, across the world and all of a sudden now you have an amazing sensor to really detect what is going on there. You know, so 25 years ago, nobody really predicted that you could, you know, call a car from your phone because we have networks.

Who knows what’s ultimately going to happen once we are able to use, you know, the fiber. But you know the the kind of the the tagline I use with that is if data is the new, you know, data is the the new oil we have just found or in the process of finding a massive new well. So with that I’m going to go ahead and turn it back over.


Paul Dickinson

So Mark, I’m going to make a quick, I’m going to make a quick comment. I’m going to be a quick comment because I could talk about sensing all day and we don’t have the time today. But I’m going to say this and Joe, I’m sure we’re going to meet you at the Gaylord when EEI has its transmission meeting because I just joined EEI and and I said in my opening.


Mark Boxer

Over to you guys, because I probably talked a little bit too long there.

 


Paul Dickinson

I said in my opening statement that fiber can be used for many more purposes besides, you know, data communication and broadband as we as we know it. We talked earlier about all the data center growth and interconnects that have to be built. And all the utilities that have to support that. So maybe we don’t have any more time to talk about sensing today, but I’m just going to make this comment that as we want to build out and spend billions and billions of dollars in the US and globally to build an infrastructure that’s going to support our A I growth and make it as resilient and robust as possible. That’s what the integration’s about. That’s only one part of the integration. But the integration is about integrating what Mark described, nearly infinite capacity in an entirely different way to make our electrical and data center infrastructure robust. But let’s put that in the parking lot. Now because we have about 1/2 hour or less left and I’d like to go somewhere else so.


Joseph Quinn

Can I make one comment in response to that too? To Mark’s point about data and the things we can learn from it and the things that we’re sharing across critical infrastructure sectors from telecom to energy are absolutely something we should focus on as A. reason that this kind of investment would help everybody from a technology standpoint.


Paul Dickinson

Yeah, please do. Please do.


Joseph Quinn

One of the key mechanisms to do that is actually expiring in September the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 that provides some liability protections when critical infrastructures share with one another or when critical infrastructure shares with the government. And as we get further down this path, sometimes it’s a great idea to have the kind of information. Sharing agreements in place at the beginning so that we have, we can develop the cadence and there’s a format to be able to share that kind of data with each other so we can learn from one another. So that’s just why one little pitch and if anybody knows me, it’s something I’ve been saying for the last six months. So sorry, thanks. So let me get that in.


Paul Dickinson

Thanks, Joe. A quick win Adil before I mention a new topic.


Adil Attlassy

I’ll just say Mark, you know what I mean my imagination and I’m a nerd just went wild with a whole the capability of fiber sensing and using that for telemetry. I mean the permutation would be infinite. I mean from soul movement to what I mean this this is and thank you for sharing.
I I never thought about it that way.


Paul Dickinson

Yeah, I encourage each of you and I encourage everyone watching this to get a copy of the Broadening our View on Broadband paper that Aii did. It’s a really well-done approximately 15 page paper that describes us in detail. So, I don’t know, maybe Benjamin, you can make it possible when you post this that that link exists. So let me just ask you questions.

We identified so far a tremendous advantage for the synergy. And then there’s always regulatory which takes forever in certain industries and then there’s private sector incentives to move forward in this.
So now that we, we, I think we’re in violent agreement on the need to integrate these technologies together for the betterment of not just the US, but globally. What do we do? How do we, how do we address this? How do we show the business cases that drive the private? And how do we, in a productive, albeit slow manner, drive forward the federal legislation so that we’re not building things that we regret later on. We haven’t put the monitoring capabilities in or the OR the dialed in the robustness. Who wants to tackle that one?


Joseph Quinn

I certainly can start and I’m not going to cover the whole swath of it, but I would say that the thing that is, I guess my answer will be framed like this. I can talk about how electricity, electric companies are talking about this to kind of contextualize some of it from our perspective. But the thing I’ll say at the beginning is.
That we haven’t said this word yet, but affordably needs to be part of this conversation and there needs to be a real potentially challenging conversation around who’s paying for what because each of us have obligations to customers, to shareholders and in different levels of the government through the current existence regulatory constructs. What’s nice about all of this right now is that there’s both uh federal policy to build and there’s is a business case and there’s support from the private sector to build. It’s just finding where to do this and and way to do it quickly in energy and electricity specifically, we have regulators at the federal level, at the state level, and that’s not even considering some of the community impacts that we have to talk through when we build these things that are really important to make sure that this doesn’t upend life, you know, in your backyard. And then there’s also this construct in energy of.

RTO’s and ISO’s would help determine how generation is built and connected to the grid. So like those different levels, it makes it A. really complex space on energy alone. That’s not even talking about engaging with telecom or with the data centers directly, but the thing that we’ve been saying with.
And to anybody that will listen is that we have over 100 years of experience. The EI members have over 100 years of experience of connecting large electric loads. The scale is the thing that’s different now. The speed is the thing that’s different now. But if you want to know and have a conversation around the logistics and the way to navigate federal, state and local frameworks to get something built. Electric companies are an excellent partner, in fact, a critical partner to do that. And because everything changes in different spaces, like, again, it’s really challenging to say that there’s A. national framework or construct around all this, but like electric companies have experience doing this. They can connect larger electric loads. The scale and the speed are the things that are different now.


Paul Dickinson 

So Joe, you and I are going to have many sidebar conversations on how to make that happen with all the folks you know at EEI. I’m looking forward to it. Adil or Mark?


Joseph Quinn

I can’t wait.


Adil Attlassy

Yeah. So Paul, very interesting that you say that. So one of the one of the construct that we’ll be discussing is we’ve been working very proactive with the utility company to let the private sector assist. Let’s be creative, give us the ability. We have a lot more flexibility agility to get things done. I’ll give you a perfect example, proffers.

We work with the utility company. We won’t secure the entire right away for the for their transmission line in less than six months. You were taking them years because we have the ability to be creative in the private sector, having the ability to work proactively. One of the challenge we have, for example, every utility gets this barrage of low demand today. Yeah, and they have the duty to serve if we could at least find a mechanism by which the utility have the ability to cipher through what’s a real project versus what’s not a real project. This is really bugging down the industry and it’s creating a lot of churns cause all of a sudden you have 10 GW of demand. You know you also have a commitment to your shareholder for sustainability goals. I wish you good need to the Commission.
Certain production technologies. So there is a very interesting economy happening today in the sector and it’d be really interesting to see how the utility company think through that and the PUC’s for example and the utility Commission is because they ultimately have the ability to start.
Cipher to those projects to say, yeah, this is salient, this is brings value to the community, this doesn’t bring value and so on and so forth. So all the private sector wants to do is let us work with you to be creative, to be agile because they said this has moving as an M percentage speed.
We never have seen anything like this.


Joseph Quinn

Yeah.


Paul Dickinson

Mark, any comments?


Mark Boxer

No, I’m not necessarily a policy expert, so this is a little bit more in the policy realm. But you know, the one thing I continually hear about, and this is more as an observer, not as someone who is, you know, deeply embedded in the process. You know, I can, you know, constantly hear about the concept of permitting and you know, just whatever we can do to responsibly, you know, expedite permitting processes across all of the, you know, the understandably or you know, it’s understandable why the process takes a long time.
Because you know, there are so many different stakeholders, but you know, you know, whatever we can do to address that I think is kind of a perennial, perennial, fresh topic.


Paul Dickinson

You know, it’s interesting, Mark, you said that I don’t want to mention the company, but hyperscale data interconnect builders and there’s many of those in the US and they’re gearing up, right. They mentioned to me that as they either build out data centers in the municipalities or they do the data center interconnects.


Adil Attlassy 

Yes.


Paul Dickinson

Folks, you know, because data centers typically, and Adil, you may throw something at me, I think they typically don’t employ that many people. They suck up a lot of energy. So everyone out there building data centers is looking for locations around the country where, at least I’ve read this, where energy is abundant and where they can make them make it happen.

Now that being said, you still have to do either within state or state to state if there’s no Internet exchange type group, these long data center interconnects. So if you want to do what Mark said, and that’s expedite permitting, then there has to be a motivation and incentive for communication for a community, a city, a state to say I want these data centers and so I’m going to throw this out there for comment. So because I heard this from one of the hyperscalers that if you can tell a state that while you’re building your data center interconnects, you can drop off broadband.


Adil Attlassy

Yep.


Paul Dickinson

To its citizens as a cost effective way to improve the digital divide, that’s a great thing. What if you also could tell them that you could protect their utilities and the right of ways? What if you also could tell them that you can monitor the rural roads for traffic?


Adil Attlassy

That’s interesting you said. So let me let me take it from the top. So it’s very interesting how people say that data centers do not employ a lot of people. Yeah, when you’re operating a building, yes, but people forget that inside the buildings there are billions of dollars of service, of servers, storage. There’s a whole.
Ecosystem of services that start being built around that community that did not exist in the past. All those services are high paying jobs, so people only think. So you have a first phase is the construction phase where we will deploy billions of dollars and probably employ, you know.

Several hundred people over 3-4 or five years. Then from that point on you have all that ecosystems of services that exist and I can tell you that is a very that’s an incredible job creation and value creation. One thing we’ve done at Compass Datacenter is we also try to create some value to the community. For example, in Red Oak we worked with a local institution to develop a trade school where the high school’s kids go to trade school and they already have a job pretty much guaranteed to come to work with us. There are actually several hyper.

One of them has a program called Data Center for Goods by which they will bring broadband to the to the community where they actually are building data centers. If you look at the other side of the coin, the opposite is no economical growth. You know you’re not part of the digital economy fabric.

OK. And you’re not getting access to broadband and energy. All I want to say is I I know that there’s a lot of conversations about data centers not being so good for the communities. But if you go take a step back, look at the studies over the past 20 years, every regional data center has been, has brought prosperity to that, to that community.


Paul Dickinson

Thanks for that Adil. Thanks for correcting me. Yeah, when you think about it in a broader perspective, you’re exactly right. So that was a great point to make. Joe or Mark.


Joseph Quinn

Sure. I think Adil is right to immediately jump to some good use case stories on this or anecdotes because I think getting back to some of my comments originally, like each situation, each data center build out is different than the next data center build out and there’s unique circumstances to each of them.
Them that make them successful or make them valuable and they’ve connected in different ways. And some of the things that we’ve been trying to do on behalf of the membership and kind of been advancing this whole conversation is try to identify the attributes that should be addressed or usually get addressed in a proceeding to connect.

Data center and associate generation and I’m going to go to the glasses for this one just to make sure that I capture all of them. But like the length of the contract in within the state is fairly challenging or needs to be included. Some kind of certainty for both the customer and the provider to make sure that this is covered some kind of existing rate mechanism. And this is a little bit in the weeds in the energy regulatory side cost sharing component. There’s always some consideration of whether a data center has a bring your own resource option. Does that lead to more successful projects? Does that lead to an expedited project? And then like I mentioned this before, but community support and commitment.

That’s really key and including them early on in the process avoids some of the challenges that could, you know, be brought up later if they’re not included right away. Some environmental constructions and then this concept of like a brownfield construction where maybe it’s not a new site, but it’s repurposing a site for a data center or also some other things that pop up. And then making the argument generally about generation data center use and how that impacts reliability for the electric company service territory when doing all these things is important to consider all that. And again, understanding that each of them are unique and each of them are different. So working with the people who know the area.

Who know the regulatory environment, who understand the investment in the community, like that’s the quickest way to understand how to get these things done expeditiously.


Adil Attlassy

So Joe, if I may just very quickly on the last point, it’s really interesting. So we’ve been working with some forward thinking utilities that say, well, hold on A. second, you guys have several GW of production capacity sitting there idle.


Paul Dickinson

Thank you, Joe.
Yeah.


Joseph Quinn

Yeah, yeah.


Adil Attlassy

You know when we when we when we are actually in a jam, we would love to leverage that and we’ve done that and this is something that become more, more, more, more popular and I think that’s going to help us also close the gap on the demand for production of energy because I don’t think we can build fast enough to meet the demand but coming up.

Few point with A. hybrid model where you can participate and help support. The also point I want to point out that we do actually invest A. tremendous amount of capital in expansion of the utility infrastructure. We enhance it, not only we enhance it from reliability, we’ll also end up because of the.

Capacity we’re talking about, we end up in expansion of the networks A. lot of the time, which increase the reliability, resilience in the general area where we actually will end up going versus if you were not going there, you probably will never see that level of capacity or resilience.

Last but not least, if you look at statistically, any region or data center have been implemented has been a flourishing of the expense of the ecosystem, not just supporting the data centers, but logistics centers. A lot of the community have learned how to become better developers, you know, to attract more business.
Businesses and it’s the data center being a very, very important anchor. And once you’re there, you see this proliferation of businesses all around it that a lot of time not even related to the data center just because capacity skills are available and that attracts a lot of their investments.


Paul Dickinson

That’s excellent. Thanks, Adil. Hey, Mark, one more comment on this one, if you could. Then I’m going to ask all the panelists to just do an open range, final thoughts, wrap up so we can hopefully finish in time. So Mark, did you want to add anything to this particular one?


Mark Boxer

Hey, it’s a real quick one circling back to one of Adil’s comments. You’re building networks builds jobs and so you know I also wanted to highlight that and this is different hat, but the Fiber Broadband Association has put together a training program for you for fiber optic technicians. It’s called the optic path. So if you’re interested in and that is to bring, you know, the goal for that is to bring fiber optic training to places in the world where you know it hasn’t been in the past. And so if you’re interested in that, you can look up the Fiber Broadband Association and find that available. Back to you.


Paul Dickinson

OK, so we’re about 10 minutes till the end. I want to close by mentioning some of the organizations we mentioned today and where people can get more information, but I’ll wait to hear from each of the panelists on just open range thoughts. We broad brushed a ton of really important, exciting topics today in a very short amount of time.

So I see this is kind of like just a launchpad for many conversations down the road, be they electrical utility, be they data center, be they fiber. To me, it’s obvious that the synergies are there and it’s a matter of working through both regulatory and through private sector to first of all start with awareness and then secondly, try to figure out how to break through hurdles and such. With that said, I don’t know who we didn’t start with first yet. Joe, why don’t I go to you and why don’t you just make whatever you’d like. General comments, insights you’ve learned from this is something else you’d like your audience to hear.


Joseph Quinn

Yeah. Thank you. And I guess we’ll kind of try to hit on some of the things that we talked about. There is both a security, a resilience, and economic value to joining this conversation across the different critical infrastructure sectors.

That being said, it is a complex process to navigate and it’s going to take a lot of work facilitating, identifying aligned policy goals and then to start talking about costs and how that impacts everything that we all do in our day jobs. There is so much, no pun intended, energy around this conversation that I think that there’s going to be areal convergence on these topics together to push this forward. So I have a lot of optimism in this space because like Paul, as you started saying, like everywhere you go right now, everybody has become an AI expert. We are talking about AI, like we’re learning about it, we’re benefiting from it.


Paul Dickinson

Yeah.


Joseph Quinn

This is now a great time to not just like talk about what we’ve been doing for the last 100 years, but use that to leverage into conversations to do these things together. So the optimism me says this is A. great time. Thanks for having a convening like this and it’s really nice to hear both your thoughts, Adil and Mark, on this topic.


Paul Dickinson

OK, who wants to go next?


Adil Attlassy

I can’t go next, Mark. I couldn’t agree more, Joe. This is a call to action for people that are going to watch this broadcast. Time is of the essence. We can no longer afford to wait for years to adjust the policies to give us the boost our digital economy needs. The AI race is real, it’s here, and he who has energy, connectivity and regulatory facilitations will win the race and in my view, this is a matter of national security and also the integrity of the US economy and its position as a global hegemon.


Paul Dickinson

Couldn’t agree more. Thanks, Mark to you.


Mark Boxer

Yes. So having been in this industry now for close to 40 years, I’ve been able to see A. lot of ups and downs. And I’m not the first person to say this, but you know, this time it really brings a lot of it feels a lot like the 90s and the, you know, the impact of what happened. So you think about before the Internet to you know, after the Internet and how things had changed and it feels like you know the time that we’re going through the rate of change, the rate of innovation feels a lot like the 90s.

So, you know, there were a lot of good things that happened in the 90s. There were a lot of not so good things that happened towards, you know, the beginning of the 2000s. So we always have to keep, you know, that in mind and approach the time where we are with, you know, a little bit of with optimism, with caution and some humility.

So it’s but you know what it’s we are entering what is you know just going to be A. really interesting era and just to see what happens and I’m frankly I’m looking forward to it.


Paul Dickinson

Thanks. Those were all go ahead.


Adil Attlassy

And I just very quickly, Mark, just I lived through the few upon the 90s, the.com era. The only big difference I must say, which is really increasing, is this is driven by the top ten global companies.


Mark Boxer

No, you’re right. Absolutely. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah.


Paul Dickinson

Yes.


Adil Attlassy

No.


Paul Dickinson

Excellent. So I want to also mention some of the organizations to the viewers where they can go get more information as a follow up to this. So this was hosted by and driven by the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure at Aii.org. There’s a lot of great information in there on a wide variety of vertical.
Markets, including all the ones we talked about today, so please check that out. We also mentioned the Fiber Optic Sensing Association at fiberopticsensing.org.

If you’re interested in monitoring and all the capabilities that fiber can do with respect to temperature and acoustics and strain on every single aspect of the infrastructure globally, please look at the information on that. And also you know with Joe, we have the Edison Electric Institute, EEI, which has a lot of information. They are the preeminent collection of investor owned utilities, I would assume not just US, but globally. So they’re the ones who are really going to care and have the giant big footprints that support everything we’re talking about today. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Fiber Broadband Association.

Which Mark is a part of and I’m also a part of, which is doing a tremendous job at trying to find not just the current needs for fiber, but all the future ones we’re talking about today. And then Adil, you may want to mention I I looked at your background a little bit. You’re associated also with a coalition.


Adil Attlassy

Yeah, the Data Center Coalition.


Paul Dickinson 

And so in addition to Compass data centers, I didn’t have the chance to peruse all the all the information on your site there, but you may want to mention that and pitch that a little bit because I think there’s great stuff in there.


Adil Attlassy 

Sure. So Compass is the founding member of the Data Center Coalition, which is a basic coalition of the top operator, developer and user of data centers on the provider side and on the user side. And the goal of the coalition is to basically help the industry speak out as one voice and be able to have an open dialogue with the regulator as related to all data center related matters. It’s about, I want to say about five years old, fairly young, very dynamic and very active.


Paul Dickinson

Fantastic.

So just thank you. Just to date myself, back when Mark and I were in 2001 thinking about symmetrical fiber and whether or not there was a need for the industry, it took 24 years for fiber and Mark said 40 because he’s right. It goes further back than that to get to the point where the US.

In a big, big way is dedicated to filling the gap on fiber needs for every citizen in the USA is going to come a lot faster and the electrical needs for the US are going to come a lot faster. Some may say I said hockey stick earlier, speed of light, right? So, we don’t have much time to figure this out.


Adil Attlassy

Yeah.


Paul Dickinson 

Because the builds are happening, administrations are getting behind this. They’re putting billions of dollars behind it. So, let’s I again, I started this. I was very excited about this panel. You guys were amazing panelists and I think this is the beginning of a conversation that was overdue.


Joseph Quinn

Yes.

Paul Dickinson
And needs to continue in a very aggressive manner going forward. So thank you very much. Appreciate it. I really enjoyed this panel.
Thank you.


Adil Attlassy

Thank you.

 

 

This transcript was generated by Microsoft Teams and lightly edited for clarity. Please excuse any incidental spelling or grammatical errors and refer to the full video.

 

The Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure (Aii) is an independent, national research and educational organization working to advance innovation across industry and public policy. The only nationwide public policy think tank dedicated to infrastructure, Aii explores the intersection of economics, law, and public policy in the areas of climate, damage prevention, eminent domain, energy, infrastructure, innovation, technology, and transportation.