Jeroen Burks is the 'instigator' of Blockheating: recycling data center energy. He is the entrepreneur who answers the 'five' questions to' this time.

1. Why are you engaged in sustainable business?

Let me start that I find it very difficult to throw things away. I like to give them a second life. If you do this professionally, then you are recycling and being environmentally conscious. A lot of heat is produced in data centers. Heat that is not used and where, indeed, air conditioners run to discharge this heat (which also consumes extra power). Our conclusion: technically speaking, there is a better solution for this system.

Want to know how it works? Read: Blockheating uses waste heat from data centers to heat greenhouses

2. What, in your opinion, is needed to accelerate the path to a sustainable society?

There are already a fair number of incentives in the form of grants and the like. Currently there is also a re-evaluation of stuff and resources that we buy. This fits in well with the whole sustainability thing. A fairer price for raw materials is badly needed. Think of drinking water, which is actually cheaply priced in the Netherlands if we look at the whole impact. There are data centers that cool with water because it is so cheap. The revaluation of everything we buy, collect and need is becoming increasingly important. That reappraisal is also causing us to maybe look at local alternatives a little more often.

For Blockheating, of course, the same is true. Somewhere we are a competitor to the larger Cloud players. I think we all have to accept that things are getting less easy. Nowadays, most organizations work in the Cloud. Yes, that is the easiest option. But in my opinion, this is often not the best solution for the company in the long run and for society as a whole. Compare it to taking a quick trip to the car. Effectively, the train would be the better option, but that's just less convenience. So there are more things for which we can come up with better solutions. Just by putting a little more time into it or giving it more attention.

The alternatives are also too simple. Right now, it's easier to buy a heat pump than to insulate your entire house or to buy a new electrical appliance than to repair the old one. That still requires a different mindset: we need to start looking a bit more at longer term solutions.

3. What will you contribute to a smarter, more sustainable and healthier Limburg?

At Blockheating, we focus on two main topics: Heat and IT.

Heat We are a carbon-neutral complement to gas-based heating systems. At the moment we are at a Venlo horticulturist's and a second data center is in the works. If we run effectively at full load, each data center saves 420 tons of CO2 per year. In terms of heat reuse alone, not to mention the savings in electricity consumption due to more efficient cooling. If you have enough of these types of data centers throughout Limburg, you can also respond better to local demands;

IT Companies are storing everything in the Cloud. The large data centers have an impact on our environment. In terms of networking, it's hard to lose a lot in power. By chopping up the capacity, and setting it up spread out, we can provide much better solutions. For example, you can host data that you don't want in the Cloud locally. For example, part of it in Venlo and part in Maastricht. We then build the infrastructure for that. Where people live and work, a lot of data is generated or consumed (think of Netflix). If you can capture this locally it has much less impact on the IT network and less concentrated load on your power grid.

4. How can other organizations/entrepreneurs make that shift? Do you have any good tips?

One of the most important lessons, I think, is that we need to broaden our horizons. Parties are constantly working to optimize their own process. Smarter, cheaper, more efficient. But if you widen your view, you see that a completely different optimization is possible. One that is better for society as a whole. Slowly but surely, industrial estates are looking at whether to do something with a heat network. One has a demand for heat, the other a surplus. If we look a little wider, don't apply a quick fix but look for "real" solutions, then you can start to improve.

The big change is that we have to look not only at our own process, but also that of your supplier, your customer, your neighbor and maybe even your competitor. Look outside your traditional field of operations. Within data centers, for example, they are always working on how to make cooling more efficient. The optimization is then to (try to) build a gigantic data center, and then to use (drinking) water to keep it cool. But if you look a little wider, you can also be more sustainable here by using your heat meaningfully. Pull the frames wider, determine where you want to go and come up with solutions that are better for society. And check more often with your neighbor to see if there is a problem there for which you already have the solution.

5. Why are you a member of shiftLimburg and what can this platform do for you?

First of all, I think "shift" is a nice name. It also fits the data story. First, data was moved to the Cloud. More efficient organization, centralization. Now you see a movement back to local. We must ensure that we have more control and do not just hand everything over. We are talking about a broad shift. Not only more sustainable, but also other topics such as social and economic. Less exploitation of the environment and society around us.