Data centers don't exactly have a reputation for being climate heroes… but what if they could be? This week on Everybody in the Pool, Molly sits down with Jasper de Vries, co-founder and CEO of Lucend, to talk about the surprisingly wild world of data center optimization — and why the industry has been leaving billions of dollars and millions of megawatt hours on the table.

In this conversation, Jasper explains how Lucend’s platform uses machine learning and sensor data to make data centers dramatically more efficient. He also lays out a vision for the industry’s future; one where data centers generate their own renewable power, store it in batteries, and feed flexibility back to the grid on demand.

We talk about:

• Why data centers are sitting on a goldmine of untapped efficiency, and why they haven't captured it until now
• How Lucend uses 280 billion sensor readings to open up the "black box" of data center operations, saving customers an average of 25% on energy and 30% on water
• Why it’s so hard to make even the smallest changes in how a data center operates
• How "transparent AI" builds operator trust by showing every step of the recommendation process
• The water vs. energy trade-off in cooling, and why it's more complicated than headlines suggest
• Why Scope 3 emissions from hardware are the dirty secret behind Big Tech's broken climate pledges
• The vision for data centers as flexible grid assets, and what’s needed to get them there

Links:

• Lucend: https://www.getlucend.com/
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