Pioneer and Davidson Kempner enter Partnership with Irish Data Centre Platform Echelon for €1bn investment programme.
Sustainable infrastructure firm Pioneer Point Partners (“Pioneer”), together with Davidson Kempner (“DK”), has entered into a partnership with Echelon Data Centres Limited (“Echelon”). Echelon has up to a €1 billion investment programme across two sites in Ireland totalling 184MW in capacity and has a further pipeline both in Ireland and in Europe.
Pioneer and DK’s investment will be focussed on the delivery of the energy infrastructure required for the data centres, which includes grid infrastructure, renewable energy projects (providing power directly to the data centres) and backup power generation.
The data centre sector is going through significant change driven by the exponential growth in data usage and storage, leading to the need for projects on a much larger scale than previously. This, combined with end tenant’s desire for renewable energy to meet their stated carbon neutral goals, means the energy solutions for data centres are becoming increasingly capital intensive and require specialist investment expertise. This sustainable investment theme is a key focus area for Pioneer, with Ireland being a priority due to its strategic importance as one of the largest technology hubs in Europe.
Pioneer identified Echelon as the ideal partner in Ireland due to its two developed large-scale projects, its pipeline and the strength of its management team.