After stints in different parts of renewable energy development — and a turn in public service — David Berry decided to look at energy development through a different lens. Instead of building renewable power to inject into the grid, it was now time to look at a growing use case: data centers.
“Cloud computing and data centers are growing over 20%, a year before anyone even started talking about artificial intelligence,” Berry said in an interview with the Houston Business Journal. “The trend is already here. And it's already happening as it affects power and infrastructure. And it's not speculation about the future, it's a problem that needs addressing today.”
Berry, together with Jonathan Abebe and COO Brian Janous, co-founded Cloverleaf Infrastructure. Last week, the Houston- and Seattle-based company raised $300 million from private equity investors Dallas-based NGP and Connecticut-based Sandbrook Capital. The company is now looking for land to acquire for potential projects, including in Texas, Berry said.
Berry and Abebe had worked together previously at Houston-based Clean Line Energy Partners, a now-shuttered renewable energy business. Berry and Janous, formerly of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), came together through a connection made by Michael Skelly, now CEO of Houston-based power developer GridUnited.
“We've, I think, assembled the core disciplines to build this development business, which is, in some sense, a data center development business, but it's also a power development business with a heck of a lot of continuity with the things that our team has done before,” Berry said.
Although Houston is not among one of the emerging markets for data center locations itself — the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area is ahead of the Bayou City, according to a 2024 report from New York-based commercial real estate firm Newmark — Berry said that Houston’s existing energy talent means the city will still have a role to play in the growth of data centers as companies and utilities turn to different solutions to manage the increased power load. That’s one reason Cloverleaf has a local office.
“I think we can just be honest about it — there is some concern about flood risk and natural disaster risk in the Houston area,” Berry said. “As power and electrical infrastructure becomes a bigger part of the central part of data centers, and one of the biggest economic trends of our time, there absolutely is a role for Houston into play. And that's why we're here.”
With the advent of high-power computing tasks, such as managing artificial intelligence, more power from energy grids is needed to run these data centers. Data centers can consume 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building, according to the Department of Energy.
While some major data center operators, like Microsoft, are turning to natural gas-powered microgrids to resolve their power needs — and are tapping Houston companies to bring them online — Berry sees renewable power as an option that can slot into the low-carbon niche by combining solar, wind and battery storage and replacing existing diesel backup generators with renewable natural gas-powered equivalents.
“We are not believers that, in the present world, going microgrid at tremendous scale is some magic app to power data centers,” Berry said. “The combination of utility-scale wind and solar, the right grid upgrades, the right locations on the grid, the right backup generation, the lowest possible carbon backup generation and storage, putting all those things together and working with the [utility companies], not against them, that package is what can provide the speed and scale and sustainability we need for the tremendous growth in dataset.”
Some initiatives have taken shape around the country to slow the development of data centers as their impact on power grids is studied. In Loudoun County, Virginia, which has long seen a significant amount of data-center development, lawmakers voted to approve language that would remove data centers as a byright use on all properties in all zones. That means all data-center proposals would require discretionary approval from the local board of supervisors.
Meanwhile in Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick directed interim legislative changes to the state Senate Business and Commerce Committee, asking legislators to evaluate whether Texas' grid can keep pace with factors such as population growth and “energy-intensive technologies.” Patrick also questioned how many jobs these facilities bring to communities in the end.
Berry acknowledged that jobs at facilities like the ones Cloverleaf will develop are likely to be “in the tens rather than the thousands,” but he also pointed to the tax revenue that such projects will bring to states and municipalities.
“If done right, infrastructure can end up being part of the community, rather than something taken from,” Berry said.
Next steps for the company include hiring a team that Berry described as “nimble” across both the Seattle and Houston offices. In Houston, Berry said the company was looking for workers with both technical and regulatory expertise in the power industry. Cloverleaf will also assemble a Houston-based project development team that can handle matters in real estate, interconnections and permitting.
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