Rethinking AI’s Physical Footprint

Keith Zakheim

Welcome to the Age of Adoption podcast. I am your host, Keith Zakheim. Today as we do with every podcast, we're gonna ask our guest one question and one question only. What is your age of climate adoption story? A little bit about the age of adoption. We live in an era where enterprises of every shape and size, regardless of industry, must rapidly transform to become more sustainable, climate sensitive, and just. My day job as CEO of the marketing public relations firm antenna group. Our agency works exclusively with conscious brands. What is a conscious brand? It is a brand that is conscious of its responsibility to be on the right side of history. Like most businesses, our clients are experiencing a transition from an age of innovation. An era in which technologists, entrepreneurs and investors focused on innovating climate and sustainable solutions to this age of adoption, which characterizes the world today. So if you accept the age of adoption hypothesis, then there's really only one salient question to be asked. What is your age of adoption story? Elena Spencer didn't plan to become a sustainability leader when she graduated from St. Xavier University with a business degree 17 years ago, but when a proprietary trading firm handed her the opportunity. To spearhead their corporate social responsibility program, she discovered her life's calling. When I spoke with Elena earlier this summer, she was the vice president of sustainability at Clayco, a $7.6 billion construction powerhouse, where she oversaw decarbonization strategies across over 100. Projects annually, including 57 active data center projects, totaling three gigawatts of capacity. She is now the co-founder and managing partner at Alma Environmental Partners supporting the built environment and organization on their sustainability journeys. Alma Environmental Partners is proud to have Calco as a client. What makes Elena's work particularly compelling is the intersection of two massive trends, AI's explosive growth, driving unprecedented dataset construction, and the urgent need to decarbonize a built environment. Two themes that we've talked about. A lot recently on the Age of Adoption podcast and today on the Age of Adoption podcast, Elena shares how passion alone isn't enough in sustainability and why concrete and steel represent 80% of a buildings and embodied carbon footprint. And how to solve the energy water nexus challenge in data center construction. Back with Elena in a sec. Elena,

Keith Zakheim

welcome to the Age of Adoption podcast.

Alana Spencer

Excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Keith Zakheim

Oh, my pleasure. And I'm happy we're able to get this on the calendar. Uh, really excited to dive into, uh, your background, your age of adoption story. Of course, there are so many interesting developments in the world of construction, real estate development, the built environment, and of course, Clayco Don't know. How many of our listeners have heard of Clayco? I had been somewhat aware, couldn't believe how large the company is. I think it's $7.6 billion in revenue.

Alana Spencer

Last year. Last year, yeah. This year. Even more

Keith Zakheim

this year we're climbing. Fantastic. That's great. So you have a big job, let's put it that way. You got a big job. You know, ultimately you're responsible for creating this corporate wide sustainability strategy and overseeing kind of decarbonization sustainable design, sustainable construction. And interestingly, uh, over the past few years, data center, uh, which has become a huge, huge business at Clayco, which I'm sure you'll reference. And so I guess in short, sustainability at scale. Right. And that's what's interesting, you know, from an age of adoption perspective, right? Like that scale probably wasn't there prior to the age of adoption. Now of course it is. So really excited to a, just kind of understand how you got here, how you've risen to the top of your profession working for a company like Clayco. We can go through that and of course, we'll then dive into the question that strikes fear in the hearts of all my guests, your age of adoption story. But first please your background.

Alana Spencer

Great, thank you, Keith. Uh, so Elena rhymes with Dana. You said it right, but I always like to remind people. And so I'm the Vice President of sustainability at Clayco. We're a full service, turnkey real estate design. Construction design build company. We also have a procurement arm, a concrete arm, and a curtain wall. So we have development, design, construction, all under one umbrella for singular projects. And we work on over 100 projects every single year where we use all of those services. It's an enterprise wide deliverable, essentially for our clients, and our goal is. To solve our client's most complex challenges while thinking about today, but enabling future generations to still thrive. And you wrap that all up into what you had said, this large enterprise it, it's a large undertaking. So what I really do is activate the corporate strategy. From our loftier types of goals, decarbonization by 2050. What does that mean? So correlating that from a corporate perspective down to each of our business units, what should they do operationally? But then on every single project, how can we partner with clients to. Pair up their sustainability goals with not only ours, but advance them so that these are innovative solutions unique to them, so that we can offer these operationally efficient water, energy, carbon neutral types of buildings.

Keith Zakheim

Great. And how did you get here?

Alana Spencer

So I've been in the business about 17 years. I started in business, so my background, my undergrad is in business management, and so I imagined my career.

Keith Zakheim

Where'd you go to school?

Alana Spencer

I went to seeing Xavier here in Chicago.

Keith Zakheim

Okay.

Alana Spencer

Best decision. Loved it. Wonderful school, wonderful friends. And I went immediately into an operational role right out of college at a proprietary trading firm, and that's where I was handed the opportunity to wrangle up their corporate social responsibility program. And so I was handed sustainability and loved it. I couldn't get enough of it. We were doing build outs, we were integrating lead for these. CI type projects and also philanthropic campaigns. And I realized this is my mission. This is my life's calling. And from there I jumped into consulting after that, and I've been in consulting most of my career, but I've blanketed not only projects, so I'm a building, SME, but also corporates. Sustainability, and I really wanna thank my previous firm for that. Re Tech Advisors. It's a Blackstone Legions company. They really gave me this background and education within corporate sustainability, which was perfect for when Clayco called. I had the corporate side and the building side. And was able to create the strategy here that we're implementing now across all business units and getting onto every single project.

Keith Zakheim

Yeah. We, we know Legions well, that's a client of Antenna Group. We've been doing their comms and marketing a great, great company. We, we love working with them. You know, funny, Elena, you said use two words in describing, you know, your, your position in general working in this industry passion and mission. And that is definitely a common thread really. From all our guests. Uh, and I think what makes the sustainability industry so special, uh, is that it's not just a job. It's really kind of, it is a mission. It is, uh, something that we all find to be a driving performance in a different kind of way. It's, I,

Alana Spencer

I wanna add though, what I think is most impactful is not just the passion. You need some other subject matter expertise or, for myself, I am so happy that I went and got a business degree so that I could create business cases and ROIs. Sustainability. So passion alone cannot get you there. You really need to couple it up with something else, architecture, engineering, business, you name it, and then implement sustainability. I think that's where people will have the most impact for all the things we really have to do for. Climate change and decarbonization.

Keith Zakheim

Agreed. Although you left out one huge profession that's critical to sustainability and that's communications and marketing. Yes. And we actually always, 'cause you know, we really do believe storytelling is so important in terms of moving all this forward. And, uh, you know what find interesting and, and gratifying about our employees, our professionals at Antenna, is when they look in the, when they look in the mirror in the morning, they see a sustainability professional. Their expertise and how they contribute is through communications and marketing. I think that's another way of, of kind of saying what you're saying. I completely

Alana Spencer

agree.

Keith Zakheim

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay, great. Well, uh, there's, there's lots to unpack when we talk about age of adoption story. And I'm gonna leave it to you, of course, you know how to articulate that. Although I would love, and I'll probably press you if I don't hear it all, about the data center division, uh, because again, to me, uh, everything when it comes to AI infrastructure build out and all the different ingredients. That go into that. Sustainability is such a big part, so critical to that story. But anyway. Elena, what is your age of adoption story?

Alana Spencer

So my age of adoption story is truly it. It's founded within adaptability and rising the to the occasion when an opportunity came to me. But truly what's. Important about this age of adoption or as you evolve or grow in your career, is staying on top of emerging technologies, trends, uh, vernacular and consistently modifying and adapting. We are really forging ahead here at Clayco within artificial intelligence. So ai, everyone here has a license that we can use prompting strategies to help streamline work and. That also has a demand on data centers and the use of that energy and consumption within, within our own business units. So when we build data centers, we know what the end user has in mind and we know what the client's looking for. There is. An energy and water nexus on every single data center. So we primarily work on data centers. We started to get into quantum computing and then there are other forms of it, edge computing. So there's many different types of data centers. There isn't a singular kind. Um, each of them have that energy water nexus, but they might have some additional things that are constraints within them. For instance, grid power. There might not be enough grid power. So that's where we're able to. Implement these innovative technologies. I think

Keith Zakheim

Elena, one of the things that we're hearing, I think NextEra's, CEO yesterday, this is a term we're starting to see a lot of, is we need drones on that grid from wherever we can get 'em at this point. All of it, right? Yeah, all of it,

Alana Spencer

absolutely. And if we don't have them, where do we get the power? And this is where innovation really comes in. So age of adoption again is. Staying on top of technologies and trends and what can be implemented. Every project is not the same. It's just not. And if we see a grid constraint, maybe that's an opportunity for a microgrid, for a small molecular reactor. SMRs are coming up more and more PV wind and these renewable types of energies that can help power the need for these massive data centers that consume that much power. And then also water. Where can we really figure out? The capture, reuse, filtration, reuse of these projects and we're the innovative technologies. So could it be, uh, lakefront, cooling, water? Could it be other types of water sources that we're able to cool down and reinject back into the water supply? It is really interesting. You have to have a technical aspect. I think when you're looking at sustainability, and that's where I go back to passion isn't enough. You need more of a backbone and a governance so that you can implement these solutions, especially at the large scale, but you have to understand what that large scale means to singular projects or smaller projects, one off at a time. So I'm, I'm in love right now with artificial intelligence. We're actually using it to streamline more. Repetitive or redundant type tasks. So we do a lot of specification reviews and submittal reviews for projects. We're always looking for the same things, but we're combing through thousands of pages of documents. So now we have these prompting strategies with AI that can look for the words that we need. Then we do a double check. AI's not perfect, and it has still helped to streamline so much of what we do. And the same thing for me. I'm. Looking for a client strategy for ESG sustainability, I, I have AI comb through their ESG or sustainability reports and pull out or glean the factors that are most important to them. And then we come up with strategies for clients. It also helps out in the pursuit process. Now we understand them even more and we can partner with them so that they can select us to be their, their constructor on the project.

Keith Zakheim

Yeah. Uh, there, there's really some said at the beginning. There's so, so many things to double click on here. I I, I, I'm curious, you know, we're seeing a lot of our clients in the built environment in construction, uh, talking about. Advanced building materials, and I know that you've worked with Amazon, Google Meta, and Microsoft on testing lower carbon concrete for data centers. Uh, you know, it's a couple of our clients in that, so not

Alana Spencer

all of those. I just wanna

Keith Zakheim

Okay. Okay, great. Yeah. Not all of

Alana Spencer

them, but yes, some of them.

Keith Zakheim

Some of them. Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. I don't know if maybe my AI research then I should have double checked it, uh, to talk, getting back to ai. Uh, but yes, so some of them at least, are you working with on that initiative? So I'm curious like how. What is the scale of that kind of deployment? Are there tech, are those technologies ready for scale? Uh, really curious about that.

Alana Spencer

So there's been market transformation, some of these materials. So it, it's called embodied carbon, so it's the extraction, manufacturing, transportation of the materials for the project. So it's basically construction. Then

Keith Zakheim

concrete's a massive emitter of carbon,

Alana Spencer

concrete seal, your structural materials that you're, you're looking at about. 80% of your embodied carbon profile for a project. And so you really wanna, in, in terms of an order of magnitude, you wanna reduce those first. But there's a laundry list of others that I don't think are really being looked at right now in the way that concrete and steel has been advanced, primarily concrete. Uh, steel has some ways to go. Me, mechanical equipment, insulation, gypsum, drywall, I, all of these things, if we start to see concrete and steel reduce their embodied carbon, those pieces of the pie just start to get larger. So my, my thought is right now we should not only be focusing on concrete and steel, even though there's lawn just right now. At some point, they're all going to become large pieces of the pie, so we need to start delving into each of them on projects. We do have a client where we've provided them an embodied carbon roadmap for their particular data center and. It, it's fairly alarming that these other materials are there, and because we're really focusing on concrete and steel, we haven't looked at the others. So now we're taking this opportunity to look at those other pieces and who are the providers and suppliers that have low embodied car carbon, concrete gypsum insulation, et cetera. So concrete and steel concrete. We have some great providers. We have our own concrete company too, but there's ready mix or concrete mix suppliers that have market ready, low and body carbon concrete that we can use on our project sites. And we can reduce fairly easily, fairly without, you know, schedule costs. Durability impact, um, about 20 to 30% of embodied carbon just on concrete. That's fairly standard. When you start to go beyond that, that's where we do the testing. We wanna understand what is the curing time or the hardening time of the concrete so that we can pour the rest of the foundation and or rebar, steel. How does it all connect together and based on the types of materials that are within that concrete to make it low body carbon? The duration of curing can vary. So that's where we do testing on a small batch, and we let the client understand this is what we'll take, and this is how it will impact schedule. They might choose to not go for that because it, it might impact the schedule, which is an added cost, but we find ways to implement it somewhere within the project so that it's not. All, you know, high carbon concrete, and we can implement different ways to reduce it. So we do a lot of testing for that. But next is truly delving into steel and then these other materials because we want to ensure that the market transforms as much as concrete is.

Keith Zakheim

Yeah. Thank you for that. And I know we're almost at time, but I I, I could pick your brain forever here. I, I wanna get back to data centers if I can, and really talking about energy and power consumption. So this is what I found about Clayco and then the industry. You can tell me if I'm wrong on the Clayco side. So you, 57 active data center projects about three gigawatts across the country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Plus or minus. Yeah. And you know, we think we mentioned 3.6 billion in data center revenue in 2024. That's projected to increase significantly by 2026. So let's just pivot over to, uh, the energy, uh, energy challenges and, and power challenges. So right now, already, and we're at kind of just at, at the, you know, beginning of all this, it accounts for one to one and a half percent of power consumption world. I think Goldman Sachs has something around the power demand surging by 160% by 2030. Again, these numbers become so massive, it's hard to digest,

Alana Spencer

and, but they're fairly based in, in reality.

Keith Zakheim

Yeah. Yeah. So, and I could keep throwing out statistics out there, but it's, it's a massive, massive challenge. So. In two minutes or less, I guess. How are you approaching this? Again, a lot of this falls on your shoulders around, I don't know if procurement, you know, you, you get involved in the energy side, but certainly making this sustainable. You mentioned water before. Grid management, I assume interconnections. I mean, a lot of this stuff you have to be thinking about. So two minutes or less, if you don't mind, Elena. Gimme some of your insights on that.

Alana Spencer

You know, generally from a Smart Start program, we look at what is the energy consumption of this, of this building, and where is the energy coming from Data centers, it's process energy, so how do we reduce that process energy and or reuse? So whether it's energy ventilation. How do we reduce from that standpoint? From there, how can we, from the delta of what's needed from the grid and and reuse, what can we do to minimize the impact on carbon emissions? And that's where renewables can come into play. But renewables often on site, especially pv, they cannot handle that order of magnitude for energy usage. So we need to really be looking at. Infrastructure reformation. Our infrastructure, our grid truly needs to adopt more renewable practices. It will become a hurdle in the future, especially for us. Decarbonization by 2050 might not be achievable without grid infrastructure, having more renewable energy powering it. It's just things that are out of our hands. So we need to continue to work with clients who want to decarbonize when we do thank goodness to. And work with them on innovating how they're doing their process energy, their different types of reuse within energy and the likelihood of renewables powering that site. But again, small molecular reactors I think are coming into play as well that might turn into something larger in the future that could really help out with data center energy power.

Keith Zakheim

Elena, to paraphrase. I think the character was Chris Traeger in Parks of Recreation. That was awesome. So really appreciate, uh, your time and your insights. Selena, it's, it's clear that there's so much more to to learn here. If our listeners wanna kind of follow you, I know you're on LinkedIn, but content or that type of stuff, is that where they should go?

Alana Spencer

Absolutely. So Elena Spencer on LinkedIn, vice President of Sustainability at Clayco. And feel free to reach out if there's any questions. From the viewers. Happy to talk further. It's a community. We all have to do this together, so sharing best practices is key.

Keith Zakheim

Elena Spencer, thank you so much. Thank you for coming on the Age of Adoption podcast.

Alana Spencer

Thanks.

Keith Zakheim

The Age of Adoption podcast features CEOs, investors, entrepreneurs, and policy makers sharing their climate and sustainability business transformation stories. Episodes can be found on your favorite podcast apps, including. iTunes and Spotify. The Age of Adoption podcast is brought to you by Antenna Group. Antenna is the home of conscious brands. We partner with companies that don't wait for change to happen. These brands shape the future, are awake and already moving. Unsure if you are a conscious brand. Or even if you are one, whether you are positioned as one, please visit our website@www.antennagroup.com and take the Conscious Compass Assessment, a groundbreaking tool that enables enterprises to assess their brand against the eight traits of brand consciousness. At Antenna, we partner with companies big and small from growth stage to Fortune 100 to tell their climate and sustainability stories. So once again. If you're interested in joining the Conscious Brand Movement and learning more about Antenna Group, please check out our website at www.andantennagroup.com. Ping us on LinkedIn and make sure to visit the conscious Compass.

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