The Details
Quinbrook Hires Tech-Industry Renewables Veteran John Lucas to Lead Data Center Strategies
HOUSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (“Quinbrook”), a specialist global investment manager focused exclusively on renewables, storage and grid support infrastructure, is pleased to announce the expansion of its investment team with the appointment of John Lucas as Senior Director-Data Strategies.
Lucas joins Quinbrook from Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) where he was recently Head of Renewables and Energy Procurement and oversaw AWS’s renewable power procurement efforts across the Americas. In 2021 alone, Lucas managed the AWS team that committed to over 6.2GW of new renewables PPAs, more than any other global corporation. Prior to AWS, he held energy procurement roles at Facebook and traded energy and power at Morgan Stanley, Puget Sound Energy and Shell.
In his new role at Quinbrook, Lucas will help lead the firm’s green data center solutions with a primary focus on the previously announced Rowan venture in the US and Quinbrook’s ‘mega scale’ green data center campus now in advanced development in Australia. Rowan has made rapid progress, with construction expected to be completed in July this year on the initial 240MW stage of the Temple data center campus in Texas. Temple is expected to be one of the largest of its kind in the US at a planned 800MW of IT capacity across multiple customers spanning high performance computing and hyperscale data storage.
Lucas will join the board of directors of Rowan and work in close liaison with the Rowan Digital Infrastructure team led by Ken Davies and Dave Crowley and their dedicated team of development professionals.
David Scaysbrook, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Quinbrook, said, “John has extensive experience and is an industry leader in procuring renewable power solutions to serve the critical carbon-free power needs of energy intensive data center operators. His appointment demonstrates the strength of Quinbrook’s conviction to the sector and its importance to delivering highly differentiated investment strategies for our clients that traverse renewables, ESG impact and the rapidly growing digital economy. John’s customer perspective will be key to ensuring that Quinbrook achieves the full potential of its Rowan strategy and diverse asset portfolio which has grown to well over 20 strategic sites across multiple US states. John will also advance similar strategies for us in the UK and Australia.”
Lucas said, “I am excited to be joining Quinbrook at such an important time in the world’s energy transition. The combination of Quinbrook’s diverse and large scale investments in high impact renewables and advanced energy management solutions combined with Rowan’s unique approach to data center siting, is truly differentiated in the market and offers new opportunities for data center operators pursuing Net Zero Carbon. I know first-hand the scale and pacing of the acute needs for renewables to power new data center capacity growth. I am pleased to join Quinbrook’s efforts to deliver low-cost, low-carbon and mission-critical infrastructure in the market with both speed and scale. I look forward to helping the team realize their strategy in the data center space and helping drive the energy transition towards greener and more sustainable infrastructure.”
Quinbrook’s previously announced strategy to power data centers with carbon-free renewables is very timely given the rapid growth in the capacity demands of the world’s data center industry. Demand for data computing and storage capacity is likely to grow at unprecedented rates over the coming years as internet adoption rates increase and the products and services used by these internet users also increase in size. The demand for power will rise commensurately, making Quinbrook’s proposed solutions critical options to help decarbonize the digital economy.
About Quinbrook
Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (https://www.quinbrook.com) is a specialist investment manager focused exclusively on renewables, storage and grid support infrastructure and operational asset management in the US, UK and Australia. Quinbrook is led and managed by a senior team of power industry professionals who have collectively invested c. USD 8.2 billion equity in energy infrastructure assets since the early 1990s, representing a total enterprise value of c. USD 28.7 billion or 19.5 GW of power supply capacity. Quinbrook’s investment and asset management team has offices in Houston, London, Jersey, and the Gold Coast of Australia. Quinbrook has completed and actively manages a diverse range of direct investments in both utility and distributed scale wind and solar power, grid support, biomass, battery storage and “smart grid” projects in the US, UK and Australia.
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