Aligned Energy

Overview

Today, data demand is growing exponentially with the digitisation of the economy. As energy to power the internet is one of the fastest growing emissions sources, and data centres expand to meet tomorrow’s data usage, data centre infrastructure providers need to scale sustainable practices and identify sources of capital to do so.

In 2018, a MAM-managed fund invested in Aligned Energy, an American developer and operator of hyperscale data centre facilities. Aligned Energy sought to expand the number and capacity of data centres in response to the increasing utilisation of data.

This required employing renewable energy sources, finding ways to reduce the amount of energy needed to power the company’s existing data centres, and a continued focus on development of sustainable facilities in the future.

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Sector	Infrastructure
Sub-sector	Technology
Asset type	Data centre
Invested	2018 - Present

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Location	Dallas, Phoenix, Ashburn and Salt Lake City

An innovative solution

Sustainability is becoming a decisive factor in the selection of data centre providers. For Aligned Energy, ESG and sustainability is front of mind given the large amount of power the data centres consume. As the company brings new data centres online, sustainability at scale remains of paramount importance, as does the goal of delivering a “zero carbon” data hosting offering. In order to realise those sustainability goals on an expedited timeline, Aligned Energy needed to re-evaluate its existing financing in order to free up capital for investments into sustainable technologies.

Aligned Energy created Delta Cube (Delta³), an award-winning data centre cooling technology removing heat at its source. The technology uses up to 80% less energy, 85% less water and lowers client’s lifetime operating costs. This has resulted in an industry-leading Power Use Efficiency ratio of 1.15. Customers have cited sustainability-linked practices such as these as influential factors in their purchase decisions.

In early 2020, Aligned Energy committed to matching 100% of customer IT load with renewable energy sources across all data centres. With this expanded sustainability program, Aligned Energy continues its commitment to the Future of Internet Power’s (FOIP) Corporate Colocation and Cloud Buyers’ Principles. Aligned will provide written attestation to its customers in accordance with FOIP’s documentation requirements for supplier-procured renewable energy.

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100%	of customer IT load matched with renewable energy sources
85%	less water utilisation
Market-leading	energy efficiency through proprietary technology

Aligned Energy is a developer and operator of hyperscale data centre facilities

Aligned data centres have an industry-leading power use efficiency ratio

Leveraging the strengths and relationships of the Macquarie network

Through Macquarie’s long-standing financing relationships, Aligned Energy was able to strengthen the capital position of the company, allowing for more rapid investments into data centres, and a quicker response to customer demands to scale up sustainability measures.

In addition, Aligned Energy is actively working with its customer base, some of the largest IT companies and Cloud companies globally, to provide a greener energy solution. This investment unlocks partnership opportunities for Aligned Energy with other areas in Macquarie Group to collocate solar and other renewable energy deployments.

In May 2020, Aligned Energy announced an increase of its secured credit facility to $US575 million as the company experienced continuous and consistently strong customer demand for its adaptive infrastructure solutions. This was followed by the completion of a $US1 billion senior secured credit facility in September 2020, the first U.S. data centre sustainability-linked financing.

To date, sustainability linked practices have been influential factors in selling capacity to customers at attractive pricing. Value contributions include more capacity, lower operating costs, and a better GHG footprint.