Data Center Intelligence: Becky Wacker, Vice President – Data Center Solutions, Trane

The Data Center Frontier Executive Roundtable features insights from industry executives with lengthy experience in the data center industry.

Here’s a look at the Q3 2025 insights from Becky Wacker, Vice President – Data Center Solutions, Trane.

Becky Wacker is Vice President of Data Center Solutions, where she leads strategies that enable enterprise, hyperscale, and edge data centers to achieve greater resiliency, efficiency, and sustainability. Drawing on more than 15 years of experience in energy performance, decarbonization, and critical infrastructure, she focuses on aligning innovative solutions with the evolving demands of digital infrastructure. She is passionate about helping organizations meet business and environmental goals while supporting the industry’s transition to a low carbon future. 

She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Minnesota while winning two Division I National Championships with the Women’s Ice Hockey team.  Becky sits on the board for Clean Energy Economy Minnesota (CEEM) and NAESCO, and can often be found in a sports venue playing, watching, or coaching in her spare time.  

Data Center Frontier:  AI workloads are now dominating new data center builds. What are the most critical thermal or water-related risks operators must solve at scale, and how are your solutions evolving to meet that challenge?

Becky Wacker, Trane:  As AI workloads increasingly dominate new data center builds, operators face significant challenges in managing thermal loads and water resources.

These challenges include significantly higher heat density, large, aggregated load spikes, uneven distribution of cooling needs, and substantial water requirements if using traditional evaporative cooling methods. The most critical risks include overheating, inefficient cooling systems, and water scarcity.

These issues can lead to reduced hardware lifespan, hardware throttling, sudden shutdowns, failure to meet PUE targets, higher operational costs, and limitations on where AI data centers can be built due to water constraints.

At Trane, we are evolving our solutions to meet these challenges through advanced cooling technologies such as liquid cooling and immersion cooling, which offer higher efficiency and lower thermal resistance compared to traditional air-cooling methods.

Flexibility and scalability are central to our design philosophy. We believe a total system solution is crucial, integrating components such as CDUs, Fan Walls, CRAHs, and Chillers to anticipate demand and respond effectively.

In addition, we are developing smart monitoring and control systems that leverage AI to predict and manage thermal loads in real-time, ensuring optimal performance and preventing overheating through Building Management Systems and integration with DCIM platforms.

Our water management solutions are also being enhanced to recycle and reuse water, minimizing consumption and addressing scarcity concerns.

Data Center Frontier:  How are you helping data center operators strike a balance between capital expenditure and long-term operational efficiency in thermal and water systems, especially amid AI build urgency?

Becky Wacker, Trane:  Focusing on post-initial construction CapEx expenditures, finding a balance between capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx) is crucial for efficient capital deployment for data center operators. This balance can be influenced by ownership strategy, cash position, budget planning duration, sustainability goals, and contract commitments and durations with end users.

At Trane, we focus on understanding these key characteristics of operations and tailor our ongoing support to best meet the unique business objectives and needs of our customers. We address these challenges through three major approaches:

1.    Smart Services Solutions:  Our smart services solutions improve system efficiency through AI-driven tools and a large fleet of truck-based service providers. By keeping system components operating at peak efficiency, preventing unanticipated failures, and balancing the critical needs of both digital monitoring and well-trained technicians, we maintain critical systems. This approach reduces OpEx through efficient operation and minimizes unplanned CapEx expenditures. Consequently, this enables improved budgeting and the ability to invest in additional data centers or other business ventures.

2.   Sustainable and Flexible System Design:  As a global climate innovator, Trane designs our products and collaborates with engineers and owners to integrate these products into highly efficient system solutions. We apply this approach not only in the initial design of the data center but also in planning for future flexibility as demand increases or components require replacement. This proactive strategy reduces ongoing utility bills, minimizes CapEx for upgrades, and helps meet sustainability goals. By focusing on both immediate and long-term efficiency, Trane ensures that data center operators can maintain optimal performance while adhering to environmental standards.

3.   Flexible Financial Solutions:  Trane’s Energy Services solutions have a 25+ year history of providing Energy Performance Contracting solutions. These can be leveraged to provide upgrades and energy optimization to cooling, power, water, and building systems, reducing PUE without upfront capital deployment. Additionally, Energy as a Service (EaaS) for Microgrid and Resiliency or Cooling as a Service (CaaS) are tools operators can use to shift CapEx to OpEx budgets while meeting key business metrics. These flexible financial solutions help operators manage their expenditure more effectively, ensuring they can meet their financial and operational goals.

By focusing on these three key areas, Trane helps data center operators strike a balance between CapEx and long-term operational efficiency, enabling them to meet the urgent demands of AI builds while maintaining financial and operational stability.

Data Center Frontier:  How are your customers rethinking the integration of thermal, water, and power systems as AI infrastructure scales, and what role is your company playing in breaking down legacy silos between them?

Becky Wacker, Trane:  Data centers are inherently complex with a multitude of demands and systems, and the scale of requirements for AI data centers significantly amplifies these challenges. It’s a complex ecosystem where thermal management, water, and power systems integrate to flex and scale with the variability of compute power demands.

Traditionally, these systems could be thought of in their silos, but this limits the capabilities of the technologies and efficiencies that could be found.

Breaking down silos requires thinking about the key objectives of the data center such as availability of power, fast response to power and cooling demands, reliability and longevity of systems, resiliency to utility interruptions, all driving toward minimizing downtime and achieving consistent profitability.

Our customers are rethinking this integration to achieve unified, scalable designs that enhance efficiency and reliability. Trane plays a pivotal role in breaking down legacy silos by offering integrated solutions that seamlessly connect cooling, power, and water systems. We have an extensive portfolio of Thermal Management solutions, including advanced control platforms that enable centralized management and coordination of these systems, ensuring they work harmoniously to support AI workloads.

We collaborate closely with our customers to design and implement bespoke solutions that meet their specific needs, leveraging our expertise in thermal management, energy efficiency, and water conservation to drive innovation and integration.

Additionally, we have incorporated a number of different waste heat recovery solutions to further enhance energy efficiency and sustainability, turning potential waste into a valuable resource. This approach is a performance multiplier. It not only optimizes the performance of data centers but also contributes to achieving sustainability goals.

By focusing on these integrated solutions, Trane helps data center operators rethink the traditional silos and adopt a holistic approach to managing thermal, water, and power systems. This helps ensure that data centers can flex and scale efficiently with the demands of AI infrastructure, maintaining reliability, minimizing downtime, and achieving consistent profitability.

Keep pace with the fast-moving world of data centers and cloud computing by connecting with Data Center Frontier on LinkedIn, following us on X/Twitter and Facebook, as well as on BlueSky, and signing up for our weekly newsletters using the form below.