Webinar Recording: Should the public sector welcome data centres?

Key takeaways from the webinar

• Strategic planning: Public bodies should engage openly with the data centre industry and know the questions to ask. Public-private engagement is needed to help balance the local costs of power and environmental impact with the national benefits delivered from data centres.
• Security and resilience: The majority of existing UK data centre facilities are in the South East, as data centres have recently been declared to be critical national infrastructure, diversification of their location has never been more important.
• Economic impact: We should evaluate the benefits of data centres more holistically, not just by looking at the direct impact on local jobs or communities. ‘No data - no industry, no industry - no economy. ‘
• Site locations are changing: Location decisions are increasingly about power and connectivity rather than proximity to consumers. AI training models can be located anywhere, opening up new opportunities across the UK.
• Sustainability focus: Any new data centres should be developed with sustainability in mind, from access to green power, choosing brownfield locations to utilising excess heat.
• Heat reuse is not straightforward, however: Many data centres generate insufficient heat for effective capture, and the business case can be challenging, but there is more we can do in terms of planning and integration with new town developments for example.

In summary, the answer to the question posed “Should the public sector welcome data centres” is a yes, with an open mind and the knowledge required to maximise the local benefits.

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At FarrPoint, we work with both public and private sector to better understand the strategic drivers behind investment in data centres. We help locate data centre sites, map them or even create a business case for investment. We can also provide input into local government digital and data centre strategies.

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Watch the webinar recording below

The Panel

(this will open in a new window)Luisa Cardani, Head of the Data Centres Programme at (this will open in a new window)techUK, (this will open in a new window)John Steward, Digital Infrastructure Investment and Policy Advisor at (this will open in a new window)Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Ethan Thornton, Deputy Director, Data Security and Resilience, (this will open in a new window)DSIT, (this will open in a new window)Bjørn Rønning, CEO, (this will open in a new window)Norwegian Data Center Industry, (this will open in a new window)Andrew Muir, CEO at FarrPoint - Moderator,

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