  **Title**: Energy in the North - Sam Enoka
**Date**: March 18, 2026
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Sam Enoka


00;00;00;12 - 00;00;08;16 [Sam Enoka] We're really focused on developing data infrastructure that's right sized for the communities that we want to go to,

00;00;08;16 - 00;00;32;06 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North, I speak with Sam Enoka, founder and CEO of Greensparc, a data center infrastructure company based in San Francisco. Data centers are popping up all over the country, including 杏吧原版. But data centers are not new to 杏吧原版. In fact, UAF possibly has the oldest one. I began the conversation with Sam by asking him if this demand for data centers is new.

00;00;32;06 - 00;02;56;13 [Sam Enoka] The global demand for new data infrastructure, the infrastructure that includes the buildings and the cooling systems and all the racks and all of the servers that are serving up all of this information that we need, has been growing exponentially for years now. So, we find ourselves, at the crossroads of, the supply of energy available to power, all of that infrastructure is at its limits in the major, major markets around the United States. So the NFL cities, you know, let's think about Seattle and LA and San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, new Jersey, Northern Virginia, they're out of power. There is no power available for new data center development, new data infrastructure development in those markets. But, if we look carefully around the rest of the country, if we look, at the underserved markets, there is still plenty of energy, but not in the quantities that the large hyperscale data centers need. So think about companies like Meta that runs, Facebook, think about Google, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, when they build their data centers, they need hundreds and thousands of megawatts at a time. But there's lots of stranded energy in rural communities around 杏吧原版 and, you know, around the lower 48 and around the world. And so we're really focused on developing data infrastructure that's right sized for the communities that we want to go to, like Anchorage, like Fairbanks and Juneau and Cordova. So when we go to these relatively smaller towns, we don't come with a one size fits all approach to data infrastructure. We start with a discussion with the local utility to to understand is there capacity available, and if so, great. We have to think really carefully about the kind of the size of the system that we want to deploy to, to a community like that.

00;02;56;13 - 00;03;08;13 [Amanda Bytd] And data centers are actually not a new thing. We've had a data center on the off campus for maybe years, 30 years longer than I've been here. Yeah. And that's up in the air or with the supercomputing center

00;03;08;13 - 00;04;00;02 [Sam Enoka]. Well, there's that, there's that. And then there's the, the data center in Petrovich, which serves, all of the university system. So, but it's but it's aging. And then, you know, they'd like to see some help, in modernizing it and bringing the best practices and best new technologies and best energy efficient technologies. Really to sort of bring that and that sort of infrastructure to a new level to support research, to support computing services for students. So that's, something that I think the university would, would tremendously benefit from. And, you know, its entire ecosystem of staff, students, researchers locally and globally.

00;04;00;02 - 00;04;08;17 [Amanda Byrd] Sam Enoka is the founder and CEO of Greensparc, and I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the 杏吧原版 Center for Energy and Power at UAF. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.