Gene Alessandrini, Senior Vice President of Energy at CyrusOne: on Grid Constraints, Power Strategy & Delivering Energy for Hyperscale Data Centres | Season Ten, Episode Four

Welcome to Season Ten of Conversations in Cleantech!

 

This season, we’re deconstructing digital infrastructure - one of the fastest-growing and most influential parts of the energy transition. From hyperscalers and AI demand to talent, capital, software and sustainability, we’ll explore how data infrastructure gets built, powered, financed, staffed and scaled.

In this episode, Jenny Gladman and Chloe England are joined by Gene Alessandrini, Senior Vice President of Energy at CyrusOne - a company operating at the front line of one of the industry’s biggest challenges: power.

 

As AI demand accelerates and grid capacity tightens, megawatts have become more than an input; they’ve become the defining constraint on digital infrastructure growth. Drawing on decades in wholesale energy markets, renewables and structured transactions, Gene shares a clear-eyed view of what it really takes to secure, structure and deliver power at hyperscale.

 

From grid realities and renewable procurement to the complex balancing act between reliability, speed and sustainability, this conversation explores how the energy and data centre worlds are rapidly converging - and why solving the power challenge will require far deeper collaboration across industry, utilities and policymakers.

 

For anyone curious about what it actually takes to power the next generation of compute, this is a conversation well worth your time.

01:04 - Introduction to Gene
03:38 - What connects the different chapters of your career - and what first drew you into the energy sector?
05:24 - How has your background shaped the way you think about powering data centres?
08:06 - What has surprised you most about the shift from generating power to securing and delivering power for mission-critical loads?
11:13 - How do you frame energy internally today: a constraint, a competitive differentiator, a risk function, or all three?
14:25 - How do you balance where customers want to be with where the grid can realistically support growth?
16:23 - What does CyrusOne’s renewable electricity procurement hierarchy mean in practice, and why did you choose that framework?
18:13 - Where do companies often get it wrong when they claim to be powered by renewables?
20:04 - If long-term PPAs can take one to three years to deliver new electrons, how do you bridge that gap while maintaining credibility?
21:54 - Texas has over 1,100 megawatts under contract to support CyrusOne facilities — what does that represent in terms of planning, risk, and infrastructure delivery?
26:02 - What energy mix is realistically needed to meet reliability, sustainability, and scale without creating backlash?
30:46 - Looking ahead a few years, what needs to change first for the US power system to keep up with digital infrastructure demand?
32:19 - If there’s one thing you’d like listeners to take away from today’s conversation, what would it be?

 

Connect with your hosts, Jenny Gladman and Chloe England, on LinkedIn.

Find your guest, Gene Alessandrini, on LinkedIn.

Thanks for listening to Conversations in Cleantech brought to you by Brightsmith.

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