NETL Director Brian Anderson will deliver a keynote address at the Data Center Sustainability Summit, a virtual event on Wednesday and Thursday, April 6-7, and outline the development of innovative technologies that support solutions for a clean energy future while creating jobs for American workers and expanding the nation’s information infrastructure.

Topics to be explored by Anderson include NETL’s work, in close collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to develop carbon-based computer memory devices to meet the data-intensive, energy-efficient and fast computing requirements necessary to deploy new computing systems.

The breakthrough technology is fabricated from coal wastes. “The research team converts the waste material into a novel nanostructured carbon film that is only one atomic layer thick to make computer memory devices called memristors that overcome several longstanding technical issues, which will open doors for U.S. manufacturers to adopt the technology and establish manufacturing centers in the United States,” said Anderson, whose keynote begins at 10:10 a.m. ET Thursday.

“The offshore nature of the computer chip and microelectronics industry has caused supply chain shortages in key manufacturing sectors. The use of a domestic waste material to make computer memory devices represents a transformational approach to resolve the supply bottleneck and enhance the performance of transistors, microelectronics and much more,” Anderson said.

In addition to his role at NETL, Anderson serves as the executive director of the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization, a partnership among the White House and nearly a dozen federal agencies committed to pursuing near- and long-term actions to support coal, oil and gas and power plant communities as the nation transitions to a clean energy economy.

Anderson will share how projects such as the Mineral Gap Data Center in Wise County, Virginia, the first solar project in Virginia to be built on abandoned mine land, demonstrate how hazardous sites can be reclaimed to boost decarbonization efforts, generate jobs and support expanded data services.

Other speakers will discuss the benefits their organizations have obtained by moving to cloud computing. Cloud service providers will highlight their corporate sustainability initiatives and how the use of scalable, on-demand cloud solutions can enable organizations to reduce their carbon footprints.

The summit is designed to showcase the energy, environment and infrastructure benefits that result from a transition from government-owned data centers to commercially owned facilities or cloud computing. Data centers form the backbone of the modern U.S. economy. Additional discussions will explore adaptation and resiliency measures being taken to protect these assets from a variety of threats.

The public is invited to attend all presentations listed on the agenda for this two-day event. Click here to register.

The summit is hosted by the U.S. General Services Administration and the Information Technology Industry Council. It is sponsored by the U.S. Chief Information Officers Council’s Innovation and E-Ops committees.

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that drives innovation and delivers technological solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous energy future. By leveraging its world-class talent and research facilities, NETL is ensuring affordable, abundant and reliable energy that drives a robust economy and national security, while developing technologies to manage carbon across the full life cycle, enabling environmental sustainability for all Americans.