California Data Center News

Oct 2, 2025

BZI® to Celebrate the Grand Opening of Nautilus 1, The First Building Within Affiliate BZI Innovation Park, LLC’s 820-Acre Development, and Its First Permanent Tenant, Iron Depot™, on October 3, from 11am-1pm

BZI Innovation Park, LLC announced Nautilus 1 building is ready for global occupancy and will hold a grand opening on October 3, 2025.

Main announcement and event details: Nautilus 1 has received certification of occupancy and will host a grand opening on October 3, 2025, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM at 1811 N. Innovation Way, Cedar City, Utah; the building was constructed by VISCO and the 820-acre, rail-served BZI Innovation Park names Iron Depot™ as its first permanent resident. RailSync™, an on-site affiliate rail transload company, has delivered more than 700 railcars since 2023 and removed more than 3,500 inbound semi-truck loads from highways between Salt Lake City and Phoenix over the past two years (shift freight from road to rail).
Background, recruitment and upcoming participation: The park is actively recruiting tenants in construction material manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, e-commerce and distribution, and data centers, and plans to integrate affordable residential housing in the development; BZI will present at the One Utah Summit on October 7, 2025 (Drake Howell presenting on the main stage; CEO James Barlow speaking at the Summit VIP breakfast with Utah Governor Spencer Cox). Contact and tenancy inquiries: contact@bziinnovationpark.com, phone 888.926.8190; corporate inquiries: office@bzi.com, phone 888.509.2280.

Sep 30, 2025 · RMI

The Surprising Value of the Energy You Don’t Use

RMI cofounder Amory Lovins presented integrative (whole-system) design at Stanford’s Energy Seminar, arguing that rethinking design and component interactions in buildings, industry, vehicles, and data centers can raise delivered-energy-to-service efficiency up to fivefold and produce large cost savings.

Main announcement / action: Lovins advocated for integrative design as a practical pathway to dramatically reduce energy use across sectors, citing up to 5x increases in end-use energy productivity, examples where building retrofits cut 38–51% energy use (Empire State Building retrofit), and industry cases showing 40–90% potential savings for pumps, fans, motors and pipes. He said these measures often have lower capital cost and short paybacks (e.g., his home: ~99% water-heating energy saved, 90% electricity saved, combined savings “paid back in 10 months”).
Background and supporting details:
- Event: Stanford Energy Seminar (lecture date: June 2, 2025); location: Stanford University; subject: integrative design to accelerate clean-energy transition and improve energy productivity.
- Concrete examples cited: Amory’s Snowmass, Colorado residence (passive solar, superinsulation), RMI Innovation Center (Basalt, CO), Empire State Building retrofit (38% then 51% savings), BMW i3 lightweight/carbon-fiber example (reduced battery needs and improved efficiency), and potential AI data center and industrial system architecture improvements.
- Quantified context: Lovins highlighted global energy losses of $4.5 trillion per year and noted integrative design can reduce delivered-energy waste across buildings, industry, transport, and data centers.

Sep 30, 2025

Microsoft Invests in Low-Carbon Cement Startup Fortera to Tackle Data Center Emissions

Microsoft has invested in Fortera and secured rights to procure Fortera’s low-carbon cement via its Climate Innovation Fund.

Main announcement: Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund is investing in Fortera and has secured procurement rights for its low-carbon cement; the investment will support construction of Fortera’s full-scale 400,000 ton-per-year commercial facility (Fortera currently operates a 15,000-ton-per-year facility).
Background and details:Fortera (founded 2019) uses its “ReCarb” technology which the company says delivers 70% lower CO2 emissions vs ordinary portland cement (OPC) and can integrate with existing cement plants while maintaining cost parity with OPC; Microsoft frames this as part of wider actions (agreements with Sublime Systems, Stegra, and CIF investments in Boston Metal, CarbonCure, Prometheus Materials) and tied to its 2030 carbon negative goals.

Sep 29, 2025

PG&E Will Upgrade Infrastructure as Part of 5-Year, $73-Billion Investment Plan

The California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced a $73-billion capital expenditure plan over the next five years to upgrade transmission, distribution and wildfire mitigation infrastructure and to support growing electricity demand from data centers.

Main action: PG&E will invest $73 billion over five years (announced on a Sept. 29 investor call) to fund grid modernization including advanced distribution management systems, distributed energy resource management systems, about 700 miles of undergrounding and 500 miles of additional wildfire safety system upgrades (as filed for 2026–2028), participation in the state’s expanded wildfire fund, and continued investment in cleaner resources including the Calistoga Resiliency Center (a hybrid microgrid project with Switzerland-based Energy Vault). PG&E said it will contribute $144 million annually beginning in 2029 to the wildfire fund (a 25% reduction from its current $193 million contribution). The company also noted at least $5 billion of incremental CapEx it would like to add to the plan if feasible.
Background & implementation details: The announcement follows passage and signing of Senate Bill 254 (signed by Governor Newsom on September 19), which reforms the wildfire liability program and creates a wildfire fund continuation account; Governor Newsom has proposed an $18-billion plan to shore up the fund (structured as $9 billion from ratepayers via an extended wildfire charge and $9 billion from PG&E and other energy groups including Edison International and Sempra Energy). PG&E reported a data center pipeline that grew from 8.7 GW to 10 GW, filed to serve Microsoft’s planned 90-MW San Jose data center, and described FERC-regulated transmission projects moving into execution. The fund administrator report is described as due next April (per the call).

Sep 26, 2025

United States $572 Billion Alternative Investment Manager Ares Management Corporation to Raise $8 Billion for New Data Centre Fund

Ares Management Corporation plans to raise a new data centre fund and has recently closed a Japan-focused vehicle.

Main announcement: Ares is planning to raise $8 billion for a new data centre fund (announced 26 Sept). Separately, on 11 June 2025 Ares announced the final close of Japan DC Partners I LP (JDC I) with ~US$2.4 billion (¥350 billion) in equity commitments; CPP Investments committed ~US$1.3 billion (¥193 billion) and GLP is a named institutional investor. JDC I will develop three data centre campuses in Greater Tokyo expected to deliver nearly 240MW of IT load, incorporating renewable-enabled power sourcing and water-efficient cooling systems.
Background & related details: Ares’ asset figures vary by date in the article (examples: $572B / $546B / $525B AUM in different datelines). The firm’s Ares Private Markets Fund (APMF) reached $3 billion AUM (as of March 31, 2025) and is distributed via Ares Wealth Management Solutions (about 150 professionals). Ares acquired GCP International (closed March 1, 2025) and integrated Ada Infrastructure to operate JDC I campuses.

Sep 23, 2025

At Climate Week NYC, NVIDIA Details AI’s Key Role in the Sustainable Energy Transition

NVIDIA is showcasing how accelerated computing supports the sustainable energy transition at Climate Week NYC, highlighting LLM inference energy-efficiency gains and publishing product carbon footprint summaries.

Main announcement/action: NVIDIA is presenting its climate and sustainability work at Climate Week NYC (through Sept. 26 in New York City), emphasizing that LLM inference energy efficiency improved 100,000x over the past 10 years, releasing product carbon footprint comparisons that show a 24% reduction in embodied carbon intensity between HGX H100 and HGX B200, and stating that all offices and operational data centers run on 100% renewable energy (with carbon-free electricity purchases covering 100% of leased data-center footprint).
- Event: Climate Week NYC
  - Date: through Sept. 26 (year referenced: 2025)
  - Location: New York City (Nest Climate Campus referenced for a fireside chat)
  - Agenda / subject: sessions on AI and energy, AI for climate and weather research, panels including “AI: Powering a More Productive Energy Future” and multiple panels featuring Earth-2 work (Columbia University, AI for Energy, Google, AWS).
Partnerships, products, and implementation details: NVIDIA is collaborating with startups and internal programs—notably Emerald AI (an NVIDIA NVentures portfolio company and NVIDIA Inception member)—on an NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint / reference design for energy-efficient, grid-friendly AI factories aimed at maximizing energy-use efficiency; Emerald AI cites the design as capable of unlocking 100 gigawatts of grid capacity. NVIDIA also promotes the NVIDIA Earth-2 platform for high-resolution AI weather and climate modeling and will continue publishing product carbon footprint summaries for new products.

Sep 19, 2025

Schneider co-develops two reference designs to optimize ‘AI factories’

Sep 19, 2025

Schneider co-develops 2 reference designs to optimize ‘AI factories’

Sep 16, 2025

Policy Becomes Pivotal as AI Surge Tests Data Center Sustainability Goals

The Uptime Institute has released its Annual Outage Analysis Report and Jay Dietrich (research director of sustainability at the Uptime Institute) says government policy is now a central lever for managing power availability and enabling sustainable data center growth.

Main announcement/action: The report and Dietrich emphasize that state governments, public utility commissions, and regional transmission system operators strongly influence power availability; recommended actions include standardizing and streamlining interconnection and permitting processes, addressing water-use permitting, and using policy incentives (e.g., tax breaks in Malaysia and Singapore; US states requiring contributions to grid upgrades and new generation) to secure long-term power and drive energy-efficient builds. The piece cites specific operational responses such as power purchase agreements for renewable energy, dry cooling, low PUE designs, and advanced workload placement tools.
Background and details: The article details technology and timeline targets: adoption of direct liquid cooling and software optimization for AI training clusters, and an ambition over the next decade to reach 80% carbon-free energy consumption at a data center meter and to reduce carbon content of materials like concrete and steel by half. It notes permitting and interconnection delays as concrete bottlenecks and highlights examples and sources from Data Center Knowledge and an image credited to Alamy.

Sep 16, 2025

Data centre future hinges on policy stability, not tax breaks

The Government of India has issued a draft National Data Centre Policy offering fiscal and regulatory incentives to attract large-scale data centre investment and link capacity expansion to energy efficiency and skills outcomes.

Main action: The draft policy proposes a 20-year tax holiday for developers who meet targets on capacity addition, energy efficiency, and job creation; it also proposes extending input tax credit on GST to capital assets (construction materials, cooling systems, electrical equipment) and may grant permanent establishment status to companies leasing or operating at least 100 MW of capacity to provide operational certainty.
Background and details: The article cites the data centre industry’s 24% CAGR since 2019, a projected addition of 795 MW by 2027 taking total capacity to 1,825 MW, and reported occupancy rates of 75–80% (JLL, CBRE). The draft requests coordination with the Ministry of Power for reliability and stresses integration with renewable energy and training-linked incentives; it recommends states earmark land banks for data centre parks.

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