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I comment on industrial cooling, data-center energy and manufacturing in Russia. Below: ready-to-use bios, photos and a request form for comments.

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Maxim Krasnov, founder and CEO of Cold Energy (NCT)

Short bio

Maxim Krasnov is the founder and CEO of Cold Energy (NCT), a St. Petersburg manufacturer of industrial cooling equipment (cooling towers, chillers, dry coolers) and the exclusive distributor of Thermax absorption chillers in Russia and the CIS. Academician of the International Academy of Refrigeration.

Full bio

Maxim Krasnov was born in St. Petersburg and in 2004 graduated from the Saint Petersburg State University of Refrigeration and Food Engineering. He worked as the representative of York International (Johnson Controls) and Trane Technologies in Northwest Russia. In 2011 he founded Cold Energy, and in 2014 launched the company's own manufacturing under the NCT brand in Sertolovo. The company's solutions run at more than 1,000 plants and facilities in Russia and abroad. In 2025 Cold Energy launched Russia's first finned tube line for closed-circuit cooling towers and announced an investment project for a new plant in the Novoorlovskaya Special Economic Zone (St. Petersburg). He is an academician of the International Academy of Refrigeration and speaks at industry conferences on industrial and data-center cooling.

Expertise in numbers

≈1.8 GWof cooling installed since 2016

1.6 GWof NCT cooling towers, open and closed

150 MWof Thermax absorption chillers

1,000+plants and facilities in Russia and abroad

20 yearsin industrial cooling

200people: design office, plant, installation, service

Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (Bangladesh): NCT closed cooling towers with finned heat exchangers — two years of adaptation to nuclear standards, every unit accepted by the customer.
Plant in St. Petersburg: ISO 9001, in-house design office and quality control, listed in the Russian Ministry of Industry registry; Gazprom and Rosatom audits passed.
Exclusive distributor of Thermax absorption chillers in Russia and the CIS.
Academician of the International Academy of Refrigeration (2024).
Engineering education sessions: the 3rd session on October 2, 2026 brought together more than 60 specialists from 18 cities and 4 countries.

Cold Energy data as of October 2026.

Topics for comment

Industrial cooling: how it works and what it costs
Data-center cooling and data-center energy use
Import substitution in cooling equipment
Manufacturing equipment in Russia: people, localization, investment
Industrial energy efficiency, heat recovery, trigeneration
Absorption chillers: cooling from heat and gas

Quotes for publication

«A chiller for a data center (and not only there) costs 5–15% of what you will spend on cooling over 15 years.»
Telegram channel, October 27, 2026

«In summer the line is cooled by the machine, and in the cold season the weather takes over its job, so the plant spends less on electricity.»
Telegram channel, October 23, 2026

«You pay for a pump and a fan, not a compressor, and electricity use drops several times over.»
Telegram channel, October 9, 2026

«It is us who cool plants, data centers and nuclear power stations — all of that is on us.»
Telegram channel, September 25, 2026

Publications

October 25, 2023Fontanka.ru (St. Petersburg news outlet) — Russian cold: why temperature is the decisive factor in manufacturing (in Russian)
March 2023Expert (Russian business weekly) — Feature on Cold Energy and its founder (PDF, in Russian)

Talks

October 2, 20263rd Cold Energy Education Session, St. Petersburg
August 26, 2026ABOK online forum «Industrial Facilities: Innovative Building Services Equipment and Technologies»
August 6, 2026Cooling-tower webinar «How to cut the energy cost of data-center cooling»
June 25, 2026Online tour of the NCT cooling equipment plant
June 17–18, 2026EVO.INDUSTRY-2026, Russian national forum on maintenance and repair
May 26, 2026Data Center Design & Engineering 2026 forum
May 21, 2026MAP Russia 2026 exhibition
May 20, 2026Compressor Technologies 2026 conference
January 29, 2026Oil and Gas Sovereignty 2026 conference
January 20, 202615th International A.N. Kovalev Conference
November 2025Big 5 Global, Dubai