Data Center Insights: Miranda Gardiner, iMasons Climate Accord
The Data Center Frontier Executive Roundtable features insights from industry executives with lengthy experience in the data center industry.
Here’s a look at the Q1 2026 insights from Miranda Gardiner, Executive Director of iMasons Climate Accord
Miranda Gardiner is the Executive Director of the iMasons Climate Accord. As a driven, professional manager with extensive industry and sustainability experience, she is passionate about the environment and improving emission reduction practices through local and global engagement. With a proven record of working for internationally recognized organizations like the US Green Building Council, she is now focused on global carbon accounting in digital infrastructure, influencing market-based decisions, and driving the data center industry to achieve carbon neutrality. Miranda is an enthusiastic author and public speaker who clearly communicates with peers, clients, and corporations to achieve individual and departmental goals. She thrives in implementing sustainable practices that result in significant cost savings, improved efficiency, and reduced environmental impact. Additionally, she is distance running coach and cycling instructor, who believes that caring for oneself resonates in caring for the planet; she has completed 8 marathons and 3 ultramarathons.
Data Center Frontier: The industry has entered what many describe as the execution phase of the AI infrastructure cycle. What capabilities — organizational, technical, or operational — will most clearly separate the projects that deliver on time from those that struggle over the next 24 months?
Miranda Gardiner, iMasons Climate Accord: Since 2023, the digital infrastructure industry has moved definitively from planning to execution in the AI infrastructure cycle. Industry analysts forecast continued exponential growth, with active capacity at least doubling between now and 2030 and total capacity potentially tripling, quintupling, or more. In practical terms, we’ll see more digital infrastructure capacity come online in the next five year than has been built in the past 30 years, representing a historic industrial transformation requiring trillions of dollars in capital expenditure and a workforce measured in the millions.
Design and organizational flexibility, integrated execution of sustainable solutions, and community-centered workforce development will separate those that thrive from those that struggle. Effective organizations will pivot quickly under these constantly shifting conditions and the leaders will be those that build fast but build right, as strategic flexibility balances long-term performance, efficiency, and regulatory compliance.
We already know the resource intensity required to bring AI resources online and are working diligently to ensure this short-term, delivering streamlined and optimized solutions for everything from site selection to cooling and power management while lower lifecycle emissions. Additionally, in some regions, grid interconnection timelines and power availability are already the pacing item for data center development. Organizations that align their sustainability targets and energy procurement strategies will have a clearer path to execution.
An operational model capable of delivering multiple large-scale facilities simultaneously across regions is another key piece to successful outcomes. Standardized, repeatable frameworks that reduce engineering time and accelerate permitting. We hear often about collaboration and strong partnerships, and these will be critical with utilities, regulators, and equipment manufacturers to anticipate bottlenecks before they impact schedules. Execution discipline will increasingly determine competitive advantage as the industry scales.
The world and, especially, our host communities, are watching closely. Projects that move forward smoothly will be those that deliver tangible local benefits, including workforce training, local hiring, and transparent engagement around energy use and environmental impact. Our differentiators will not simply be access to capital or demand from AI workloads but our ability to deliver while remaining flexible, sustainable, and community centered.
Data Center Frontier: As AI campuses scale into multi-hundred-megawatt and gigawatt territory, successful delivery increasingly depends on tight coordination across utilities, suppliers, builders, and operators. Where is the industry still too fragmented, and what models of collaboration are proving most effective?
Miranda Gardiner, iMasons Climate Accord: Tight coordination across utilities, suppliers, builders, and operators is paramount. I believe the issue is less that we are fragmented and more that we must move from commitments to execution. Many companies have set ambitious climate targets, issued sustainability reports, and signed emissions-reduction pledges.
The challenge now is aligning those commitments with the realities of rapid buildout, coordination of grid interconnections, renewable energy procurement, construction supply chains, and operational efficiency. We can scale quickly and still deliver on climate goals.
The most effective collaboration models are when owner-operators, policymakers, communities, and other key stakeholders plan together and early. This is how we approach our initiatives at the iMasons Climate Accord.
Let’s use sustainability as the example to answer this question as it can be embedded in ways that also generate economic benefit: coordinating with utilities to accelerate renewable energy projects and grid upgrades that create regional jobs, investing in energy efficiency, advanced cooling, and heat-recovery systems can reduce facility’s operating costs and emissions, and water stewardship and habitat protection protect local resources.
These are all critical to the future of a healthy planet and important to our concerned communities.
Equally important is community and workforce investment, so we can continue partnering with local governments, schools, and training programs to prepare workers for construction, electrical, mechanical, and operations roles tied to digital infrastructure growth.
Data Center Frontier: With AI demand evolving rapidly, many operators are trying to balance speed to market with long-term flexibility. How should developers and suppliers think about future-proofing infrastructure – particularly power and electrical capacity - without overbuilding or locking into the wrong assumptions?
Miranda Gardiner, iMasons Climate Accord: Our industry is under pressure to deliver capacity quickly while avoiding infrastructure decisions that could become stranded or inefficient over time. A key starting point is bringing sustainability and delivery professionals into planning early and often, so these decisions reflect both near-term deployment needs as well as long-term energy and emissions goals.
Futureproofing increasingly relies on flexible, modular power and electrical architectures such as designing substations, distribution systems, and cooling infrastructure with clear expansion pathways so capacity can scale in phases as demand materializes. Approaches like this can help operators maintain speed-to-market while avoiding overbuilding, improve energy efficiency, and align infrastructure growth with sustainability commitments.
Policy and energy market dynamics are also shaping how projects plan for long-term power needs. We can assist policymakers to focus on the needs of the digital ecosystem by working with our leaders to streamline grid interconnections and accelerate infrastructure development, particularly in regions with abundant hydroelectric, solar, wind, and natural gas resources.
We are already seeing new policies in some markets driving investment in microgrids, behind-the-meter generation, and battery energy storage systems (BESS) that help stabilize the grid while supporting lower-emissions operations. Expanded use of energy storage can also reduce reliance on traditional power supply inside our facilities, freeing up room for more high-density compute.
By combining modular infrastructure design, early sustainability integration, and proactive engagement with policymakers and utilities, the industry can future-proof both AI campuses and communities while advancing reliability, efficiency, and emissions reductions.
Data Center Frontier: Public scrutiny of large-scale data center development continues to rise, particularly around power use, land, and community impact. Looking ahead, what will define whether the industry optimally maintains its social license to operate as AI infrastructure expands?
Miranda Gardiner, iMasons Climate Accord: As AI infrastructure expands, maintaining our social license to operate will depend on demonstrating that rapid digital growth can align with responsible resource use and meaningful community benefit. Public scrutiny around power demand, land use, and environmental impact is increasing, and transparency is essential. Our communities want clear information about projects, and if we don’t provide it, misinformation will fill the gap. We are building great projects. We need to find better ways to communicate about our energy use, emissions reduction strategies, water stewardship, and efficiency improvements, while continuing to deliver advanced cooling technologies, optimized electrical systems, and growing access to lower-carbon energy sources.
One of the most significant concerns after energy/power is water, particularly in regions facing water stress. Addressing this resource requires both technical and operational solutions, such as more efficient cooling systems, increased use of recycled or non-potable water, and careful site selection aligned with local resource availability. The industry is expanding engagement efforts (iMasons Climate Accord has added water as a key vertical in 2026, and the iMasons 2026 State of the Industry report addresses the topic), supporting utility scale upgrades, and investing in local watersheds.
The reality is that not every community will welcome data center development, so we must be prepared to reallocate investment to regions that see the benefits of digital infrastructure. Given the scale of the opportunity (potentially $1 trillion in investment in 2026), we have both the responsibility and the resources to build responsibly.
If we continue improving transparency, investing in sustainable energy and water, and partnering with communities on workforce development and infrastructure improvements, we can demonstrate that the expansion of AI infrastructure supports both economic growth and environmental progress.
About the Author
Matt Vincent
Matt Vincent is Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier, where he leads editorial strategy and coverage focused on the infrastructure powering cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the digital economy. A veteran B2B technology journalist with more than two decades of experience, Vincent specializes in the intersection of data centers, power, cooling, and emerging AI-era infrastructure. Since assuming the EIC role in 2023, he has helped guide Data Center Frontier’s coverage of the industry’s transition into the gigawatt-scale AI era, with a focus on hyperscale development, behind-the-meter power strategies, liquid cooling architectures, and the evolving energy demands of high-density compute, while working closely with the Digital Infrastructure Group at Endeavor Business Media to expand the brand’s analytical and multimedia footprint. Vincent also hosts The Data Center Frontier Show podcast, where he interviews industry leaders across hyperscale, colocation, utilities, and the data center supply chain to examine the technologies and business models reshaping digital infrastructure. Since its inception he serves as Head of Content for the Data Center Frontier Trends Summit. Before becoming Editor in Chief, he served in multiple senior editorial roles across Endeavor Business Media’s digital infrastructure portfolio, with coverage spanning data centers and hyperscale infrastructure, structured cabling and networking, telecom and datacom, IP physical security, and wireless and Pro AV markets. He began his career in 2005 within PennWell’s Advanced Technology Division and later held senior editorial positions supporting brands such as Cabling Installation & Maintenance, Lightwave Online, Broadband Technology Report, and Smart Buildings Technology. Vincent is a frequent moderator, interviewer, and keynote speaker at industry events including the HPC Forum, where he delivers forward-looking analysis on how AI and high-performance computing are reshaping digital infrastructure. He graduated with honors from Indiana University Bloomington with a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing and lives in southern New Hampshire with his family, remaining an active musician in his spare time.
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