Meet Alastair McMahon, ESG Manager at Apto: Building sustainability into the foundations of every project
With a career spanning more than 20 years and four continents, Alastair McMahon brings technical, policy and practical delivery experience to Apto’s sustainability mission. He’s worked on major construction, infrastructure and development projects in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, seeing first-hand what is takes to make sustainability actually work.
At Apto, he’s leading the charge to embed environmental, climate and social responsibility into every part of the business – the foundations of how we design, build and operate data centres, and how we work with partners, customers, suppliers and communities along the way.
From policy development to biodiversity protection, Alastair’s focus is to make sustainability part of Apto’s DNA, not a bolt-on or box-ticking exercise.
A clean-sheet opportunity
1. What attracted you to Apto, and what does your role involve?
Alastair: What drew me in was the chance to build something from the start, and build it properly, with a team that knows this industry inside out. Apto has some of the most experienced people I’ve ever worked with – who’ve delivered hyperscale projects for the biggest names in the industry which means we can get things done the right way and at scale.
My role covers ESG and Sustainability. At Apto, Sustainability means taking an integrated and systematic approach for the long term that reflects the interconnectivity of environmental, climate and social issues, with ESG providing a framework against which Apto can measure company and project performance and comply with regulatory disclosures.
Right now, I’m working on the Apto Environmental & Social Management System (ESMS), creating the systems and processes that ensure we take an integrated approach to embedding environmental, climate and social objectives into working practices. Our ESMS sets out how we identify and manage risk, how we report progress and how responsibility is shared across the business.
Nailing the definitions
2. What does environment, climate and social mean to you in practice?
Alastair: Environment, climate and social challenges are interdependent and need to be addressed by taking an integrated approach for the long term. For Apto, in addition to meeting regulatory requirements, this means
- Environmental – minimising and mitigating impacts on natural resources, biodiversity, land and air
- Climate – aligning Apto’s operational performance with the Paris Agreement climate goals and meeting our net zero by 2030 target
- And Social – aligning Apto’s operational performance with Minimum Social Safeguards and demonstrating social responsibility and community focus by being a good neighbour
What excites me about Apto is that we’re thinking about all of this from the start, designing sustainability in rather than patching it on later.
Global lessons applied locally
3. Your background spans infrastructure projects across multiple regions. How does that experience shape your approach now?
Alastair: I’ve always worked in the built environment sector, integrating sustainability into policy, architecture, planning, construction and operation.
I started in renewable energy and energy efficiency – working on energy policy and planning. From there, I worked on urban development, regeneration and infrastructure projects turning sustainability objectives into practical design outcomes supporting architecture and engineering teams.
I’ve worked in multiple regions in the real estate sector to develop sustainable design and construction tools to model in use impacts on energy use, biodiversity and natural capital, transport, water and materials. It’s not about ticking off credits on a rating system; it’s about creating projects that operate sustainability for the long term and make sense technically and economically.
Designing for scale and speed
4. What makes sustainability in the data centre sector so challenging right now?
Alastair: The pace and the scale. Demand for capacity is exploding, policy and planning systems are playing catch up, and infrastructure – especially power networks – is under pressure everywhere.
The sector must deliver faster than ever but do it in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible, and that’s the hard part because it relies on data centre developers taking a leadership role to demonstrate best practice, often ahead of the regulatory standards.
For Apto, the opportunity comes from starting with a clean sheet. We’re not tied to legacy design, so we can build in high-efficiency systems, utilising industry best practice to minimise impacts. We can build in places where investment benefits local economies and the environment, rather than adding strain.
Embedding sustainability into every build
5. How are you ensuring that sustainability principles are integrated into Apto’s design and construction process?
Alastair: We’re doing that by taking a structured approach and building sustainability into our culture. Structurally, Apto’s ESMS gives us an integrated framework for managing ECS risks and fulfilling our regulatory obligations and ESG commitments.
Culturally, everyone at Apto understands the environmental, climate and social implications of their choices. That’s reinforced through training, clear responsibilities and policies set out in our ESMS, which also covers our supply chain.
Shared standards, shared responsibility
6. How does Apto align with the sustainability expectations of its customers and investors?
Alastair: Our customers – major cloud and technology providers – are some of the most visible organisations in the world. They have ambitious sustainability goals like us. That alignment helps, because we’re speaking a common language and governed by the same environmental, climate and social regulations and legislation in the EU. Our investors also set high standards for Apto’s projects to achieve, requiring us to follow best practice industry guidance and current EU legislation to ensure we’re transparent, comparable and ahead of regulation, which ultimately builds trust with stakeholders.
Beyond compliance; creating community value
7. What does social responsibility mean in Apto’s context?
Alastair: All our projects adhere to the principles of the EU Minimum Social Safeguards and feature stakeholder consultation. We use that process to identify where our projects can add value, whether that’s local infrastructure upgrades, biodiversity restoration, creating jobs or contributing to education and skills programmes.
From policy to culture
8. What does success look like for you and for Apto in this journey?
Alastair: Success is when environmental, climate and social responsibility is embedded into the culture and becomes business as usual. It’s not a bolt-on policy or a marketing initiative; it’s how we work and how we’re judged as a company.
The ultimate sign of success is when everyone in the company sees sustainability as part of their role. When everyone, from the boardroom to the construction site, instinctively considers sustainability in every decision, that’s when we’ll know it’s truly embedded.
Part of the solution
9. If you could change one misconception about data centres and sustainability, what would it be?
Alastair: The idea that data centres are inherently unsustainable. They’re critical infrastructure that power economies, research, education and innovation. Data centres do not have present an obstacle to the sustainable future of Europe; when designed, built and operated sustainably they can be part of the clean transition – strengthening the energy system by supporting grid stability and local energy resilience, and accelerating renewable adoption and waste heat reuse.
Initiatives like the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact involve over 100 data centre operators (including Apto) working towards making data centres climate neutral by 2030. This, in combination with policy and evolving data centre focused certifications, is evidence of the huge effort in play to accelerate adoption of best sustainable practice in the sector.
Early reflections
10. Three months in, what’s been the most rewarding part of the journey so far?
Alastair: The people, without question. There’s absolutely zero resistance here to doing the right thing, everyone is genuinely committed to best practice, which is rare. Seeing that level of buy-in and enthusiasm across teams and from the senior leadership so early on has been really motivating and makes it possible to move quickly and effectively.
It feels like we’ve got the chance to prove that speed, growth and responsibility can go hand in hand, and that’s a powerful message for the entire industry.
———–
With his blend of technical depth and pragmatic leadership, Alastair is helping Apto build sustainability into the core of how it operates, ensuring every project delivers long-term value for the environment, the industry and the communities around it.
