Data centers evolving for AI growth and sustainability

In Short:
– AI growth drives rapid evolution of data centre infrastructure, with insights from Andrew Bradner at Terowolf Lake Mariner campus.
– The facility expands to 750 megawatts, addressing AI demands while focusing on sustainability and innovative cooling solutions.

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence is reshaping global data centre infrastructure, pushing the sector toward larger, more power-intensive facilities.

According to Andrew Bradner, Senior Vice President at Schneider Electric, AI demand is accelerating a structural shift where data centres are becoming core enablers of global compute and energy systems rather than standalone digital assets.

This transformation is already visible in major expansions such as TeraWulf’s Lake Mariner campus in New York, which is scaling toward nearly 750 megawatts of capacity.

The move reflects a broader industry trend toward gigawatt-scale infrastructure as operators race to meet surging AI workloads and energy requirements.

As this scale increases, data centres are becoming far more integrated with power systems, moving beyond contracts and static agreements toward data sharing and intelligent decision-making with utilities.

In the AI future, power automation between data centres and energy providers is expected to become commonplace, supported by a global smart energy market valued at USD 153.80 billion in 2022 and projected to grow at a CAGR of 9.6 percent through 2030.

To manage rising demand, more operators are also exploring primary on-site power generation.

Natural gas turbines are expected to play an early role, while small modular reactors, or SMRs, are being positioned as a longer-term solution once safety and scalability are proven.

Sector’s evolution

However, despite strong interest from countries including the United States, China and the United Kingdom, most SMR projects are not expected to come online until 2035 to 2040, meaning they are not an immediate fix for growing energy needs.

At the same time, rapid expansion is driving innovation in construction methods.

Prefabrication and modular design are increasingly used to speed up delivery by shifting complex assembly into factory environments, allowing on-site preparation and manufacturing to happen in parallel.

This is helping the industry keep pace with AI-driven demand that is outpacing traditional build timelines.

Sustainability is also becoming central to the sector’s evolution, with older industrial sites such as coal plants being repurposed into modern data centres.

At the same time, green construction materials like low-carbon steel and cement are expected to see major growth, with the global green buildings market forecast to more than double from USD 565.33 billion in 2024 to USD 1,374.2 billion by 2034, as cost and availability improve.

Together, these shifts highlight a new era for data centres defined by gigawatt-scale expansion, closer integration with energy systems, emerging on-site power solutions, modular construction, and a stronger focus on sustainable materials and infrastructure design.