TECH & AI
This shift places energy optimisation at the centre of infrastructure planning. Rather than focusing solely on capacity expansion, operators must balance power consumption, cooling efficiency and resource utilisation. The challenge lies in managing these variables simultaneously while maintaining reliability and uptime.
At the same time, the industry is confronting the limits of traditional engineering approaches. AI-driven applications, from climate modelling to biomedical research, are introducing new requirements for thermal performance and energy efficiency that legacy systems are not designed to handle.
Strategic partnerships enable advanced thermal management Addressing these challenges increasingly depends on collaboration across the data centre ecosystem. No single organisation has the expertise required to optimise energy use across power, cooling and digital infrastructure simultaneously.
Mauro highlights this shift towards collective innovation:“ As Chief Technology and Sustainability Officer, I see first-hand that the future of data centres depends not just on isolated technological breakthroughs, but on deep, strategic industry partnerships.”
One example is Trane Technologies’ collaboration with NVIDIA, where combined expertise in HVAC engineering and digital simulation has produced new approaches
“ The future of data centres depends not just on isolated technological breakthroughs, but on deep, strategic industry partnerships”
Mauro J. Atalla Senior VP and Chief Technology & Sustainability Officer Trane Technologies
to thermal management. By leveraging NVIDIA’ s Omniverse platform, engineers can model and optimise cooling systems before deployment, reducing inefficiencies at the design stage.
These developments are already delivering measurable improvements. Enhanced thermal management reference designs have achieved close to a 10 % increase in performance, freeing up significant cooling capacity for additional IT workloads without increasing overall energy consumption. A separate duplex design delivers higher efficiency through integrated heat recovery, demonstrating how optimisation can unlock both performance gains and sustainability benefits.
126 June 2026