Data Centers

North West Place Summary A planning application for a 40,000 sq ft facility providing 6MW of capacity is expected this side of Christmas and would mark the most significant step yet for the ambitious 50-acre campus. Silicon Sands’ first data centre, expected to cost somewhere between £60m and £80m, would also feature 20,000 sq ft of ancillary office space. It would be constructed on the site of the old fire station and engineering yard at Blackpool Airport, which was demolished in 2023. The council acquired the land using a £2m devolution grant. The scheme is being billed as a technology exemplar as it would pioneer the use of liquid immersion cooling technology alongside sustainable energy supply and a district heating system. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating

DCD Summary DCD's Zachary Skidmore talks with Jukka Makkonen of Helen, exploring the data center partnerships providing waste heat for district heating in Finland. Watch Video #News #DistrictHeating

itnews Summary Across the Asia Pacific, AI workloads are pushing rack densities, which averaged 8 to 40 kilowatts (kW), are now climbing to 130 to 600 kW, with projections of 1 MW per rack around 2028 to 2029. The old model of homogeneous, globally replicated facilities can no longer keep up with these extreme demands. Johnson Controls’ vice president and general manager of data centre solutions, Austin Domenici, told iTnews Asia that operators need to design for regional realities. Whether it is power availability in Jakarta, water scarcity in Mumbai, or land constraints in Tokyo, the ability to localise infrastructure strategies while maintaining global standards is a competitive advantage, said Domenici. The next phase of growth must consider how infrastructure contributes to the communities it operates in. That includes minimizing disruption, designing for low water and energy impact, and exploring opportunities for waste heat reuse and district energy integration. Continue Reading #News #MemberNewsIDEA #DataCenter

Power Summary The explosive growth of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and enterprise data storage has transformed data centers into the critical infrastructure of the digital economy. Yet their extraordinary and continuous electricity demands—often exceeding 100 megawatts per site—have made energy access and reliability the single most consequential factor in determining where these facilities are built. Meanwhile, the growing integration of microgrids and combined heat and power (CHP) systems has introduced new partnership and joint venture models between developers, utilities, and private investors. These arrangements, while innovative, require robust allocation of operational risk, environmental liability, and insurance coverage for regulatory noncompliance or emissions-related claims. The intersection of infrastructure and energy law has never been more intricate or more essential to the data center economy. Continue Reading #News #CHP #Microgrids

Coin Central Summary SK Telecom is deepening its push into the Asian artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure market with plans to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG)-powered AI data center in Vietnam. The move marks the company’s latest effort to extend its AI Data Center (AIDC) strategy beyond South Korea, following its ambitious 1-gigawatt (GW) expansion project in Ulsan. The new Vietnam facility, being developed in partnership with SK Innovation, will tap into LNG-based power generation to ensure consistent energy supply for high-performance AI computing. The facility aims to serve as a regional hub for data processing, AI model training, and cloud services tailored for manufacturing, industrial, and telecom clients across Southeast Asia. That expansion relies on electricity from SK Multi Utility, an SK Group affiliate operating a 300 MW LNG combined heat and power plant in Ulsan, a cost-effective alternative to grid-supplied energy from the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO). Vietnam’s similar industrial and energy ecosystem made it an attractive choice for replication of this model. Continue Reading #News #CHP

businesswire Summary The International District Energy Association (IDEA) has announced that registration is open for CampusEnergy2026, its 39th annual campus energy conference, to be held February 17-20, 2026, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington, D.C. More than 1,200 energy professionals, policymakers, and technology innovators are expected to attend the four-day event, which will spotlight district energy, microgrids, and thermal energy networks as essential tools for decarbonization at scale. The 2026 theme, “Advancing Thermal Networks,” will showcase how campuses—from universities to airports—are deploying innovative technologies to reduce emissions, improve efficiency, and strengthen resilience. Attendees will gain firsthand insights through over 100 technical sessions, site tours, expert panels, and hands-on workshops. “CampusEnergy2026 is about putting ideas into action,” said Rob Thornton, president and CEO of IDEA. “It brings together energy managers, city leaders, and innovators who are delivering real solutions to today’s climate and infrastructure challenges. Hosting in Washington, D.C.—a city long served by district energy—provides a fitting backdrop for global conversations on decarbonization, technology innovation, and resilient infrastructure.” The four-day conference will feature over 100 technical sessions, hands-on workshops, and case studies from campuses, military bases, airports, ...

DCD Summary North American utilities could see a capex “super cycle” driven by demand from data centers, according to credit ratings agency Morningstar DBRS. Growth expenditures by investor-owned utilities are expected to surpass $1.1 trillion by 2029 as increases in the size, capacity, and quantity of data centers in North America drives electricity demand. In the US, investor-owned utilities have already invested more than $1.3 trillion over the past decade. "We anticipate that regulated utilities with supportive regulatory commissions, solid credit ratings, and access to capital markets will deploy the needed capex to take advantage of the data center boom," said Bukola Folashakin, assistant vice president, Corporate Ratings at Morningstar DBRS. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

E&E News Summary Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s proposal for speeding up power grid connections for data centers and advanced manufacturers has excited developers, but policy watchers caution that the way federal regulators execute the plan will make all the difference. “The devil is always in the details,” said former FERC Chair Mark Christie, who earlier this year unsuccessfully sought to establish policy guidelines for co-locating large data centers with power generation. Wright is calling on FERC to create standardized rules that would lead to faster project reviews from regional grid operators, while addressing some grid reliability and cost issues hanging over a major electricity expansion tied to the proliferation of supercomputers and data centers for artificial intelligence. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

POWER Summary Google has signed a first-of-its-kind corporate offtake agreement to purchase power from a new 400-MW natural gas –fired cogeneration plant outfitted with carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Decatur, Illinois. If completed, Broadwing would mark one of the first commercial-scale natural gas plants in the U.S. to pair combined heat-and-power generation with carbon capture and dedicated geologic storage. The project also signals how corporate clean-energy buyers are expanding beyond renewable PPAs to back firm, low-carbon capacity—an emerging pillar of reliability as AI and data-center loads surge. Continue Reading #News #CHP #DataCenter

pv magazine Summary In Texas, a new kind of reliability standard is reshaping where data centers choose to build and how they power their operations. Under a “kill switch” law that was adopted earlier this year, utilities can forcibly disconnect large, noncritical industrial users like hyperscale data centers during grid emergencies to keep electricity flowing to the largest number of people. M ajor cloud players like Oracle are looking to shield their operations using onsite storage and generation. What that means in practice, however, is that a new method of data center siting is emerging, where the map is drawn around storage potential rather than just transmission lines. The general idea remains the same across state lines, but what it looks like in practice varies greatly. In California, for instance, ensuring steady access to power as quickly as possible means designing storage-backed microgrids that let a data center jump the queue and bypass long interconnection wait times. It’s more of a structural problem, though it’s one that makes traditional grid expansion nearly impossible at the pace AI-driven workloads demand. “Operators there are adopting islanded microgrids to bypass utility delays,” explained Roth. But, he cautioned, there’s also a political dimension. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

Mobile Europe Summary But A2A reckons it has the energy increase covered, along with the grid, and it can innovate with waste heat Lombardy, has over 60 data centres active or in the process of being authorised. In Milan, recent investments include Banco Desio’s €4.5 million funding for a 100 MW data centre south of Milan and Retelit’s €350 million plan for three sites between Milan and Rome. Now, the chief executive of the largest utility in Lombardy A2A has claimed that the nation’s financial capital Milan is going to add 2 GW of data centre capacity over the next five years. In June 2025, A2A inaugurated Italy’s first liquid-cooled data centre connected directly to a district heating network, located at its Lamarmora plant in Brescia. Developed with French firm Qarnot, the facility recovers heat from high-performance computing operations at up to 65°C, allowing it to be supplied immediately to the city’s district heating system. Once fully operational, the project will deliver around 16 GWh of clean heat annually – enough to warm approximately 1,350 apartments – while avoiding an estimated 3,500 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

Data Centre Magazine Summary Data centres are the backbone of the digital economy, but their rapid growth brings mounting environmental challenges. From energy-hungry AI workloads to water-intensive cooling, operators face pressure to cut carbon, conserve resources and design for long-term sustainability. The latest wave of green data centre innovation blends clean power sourcing, high-efficiency cooling, heat reuse and low-impact construction, setting new benchmarks for how critical infrastructure can expand while reducing its environmental footprint. Heat reuse is graduating from Nordic niche to mainstream design option. Capturing low-grade server heat for district networks or adjacent loads can materially improve whole-system carbon outcomes and local acceptance. In Finland, Microsoft’s new cluster is expected to provide roughly 40% of Espoo’s district heating when complete – an emblematic, grid-benefiting integration at city scale. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

Urban Land Summary Data centers have a reputation for high energy use. EcoDataCenter 1 in Falun, Sweden, offers an alternate model: its two data centers, DCA and DCB, derive all of their power from nearby renewable energy sources; 75 percent comes from hydropower and 25 percent from wind. EcoDataCenter 1 also partners with the local energy providers, Falu Energi and Vatten, to transfer waste heat from the server halls to a nearby combined heat and power plant, where it can contribute to the manufacture of fuel pellets that keep local buildings warm in cold months and support industrial processes. Continue Reading #News #CHP

Clean Technica Summary Every data center is a heat opportunity. When a facility uses 100 MW of continuous power, the question naturally arises: could that same 100 MW of heat serve a purpose beyond the server hall? This opens the door to direct connection with modern district heating networks that no longer require steam-level temperatures. The physics of liquid heat transfer also mean smaller pumping energy and steadier control, which reduce losses. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

T_HQ Summary A new whitepaper from climate finance company Opna calls for a fundamental redesign of how artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure is built, powered, and financed. The paper argues that the current hyperscale model—massive, resource-intensive data centres concentrated in a few regions—threatens to deepen global inequalities and strain vital resources such as water, land, and energy. Instead, the report proposes a shift to inference-first, modular, and distributed data centres – a model that aligns AI’s physical footprint with climate resilience and community prosperity. Properly designed, these “right-sized” facilities can anchor clean energy projects, stabilise grids, reuse waste heat and water, and drive demand for low-carbon materials and carbon removal. “Decentralised compute decentralises power,” said Shilpika Gautam, CEO and Founder of Opna. “By embracing modular, inference-first design, we can redirect the trillions flowing into AI infrastructure toward assets that strengthen both communities and the planet. AI infrastructure can and should become climate infrastructure.” The paper outlines seven principles for achieving this transition, including anchoring clean power, embedding circularity, advancing water stewardship, using low-carbon materials, and establishing binding community benefit agreements. It also calls for rigorous transparency in energy and water data, localised siting strategies, and policy frameworks that reward integration ...

DCD Summary Nordic fiber broadband and data center firm GlobalConnect is expanding its data center in Stockholm, Sweden. The Nordic telecoms firm this week announced it is expanding its data center in southern Stockholm with 600 sqm (6,458 sq ft) and 1.2MW of new capacity. The extension, which will amount to “several hundred” new racks, is due to launch in 2026. The expansion will take the site to 2.7MW, representing an 80 percent increase. The facility is set to be connected to the local district heating network from Exergi, and be able to heat around 2,700 nearby homes via its waste heat via a heat pump. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating

Urban Realm Summary Fresh from fielding plans for a 300MW data centre in Bishopbriggs , green energy and digital infrastructure specialist Apatura has upped the stakes with a 550MW partner facility at Ravenscraig. Paired with a 650MW battery storage system, the giant facility would comprise the largest artificial intelligence (AI) energy campus in the UK, providing the computational horsepower needed to underpin anticipated growth. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

GeekWire Summary When Phaidra CEO Jim Gao describes the AI agents that his Seattle company built to improve data center efficiencies, one can imagine an army of behind-the-scenes digital minions working away. Their job is to fine-tune data center operations with a focus on cooling the electronics — which typically accounts for 30% of a facility’s energy use, ranking second to the power required for the data processing operations. They’re tracking temperatures, voltages, the spinning of pumps and other infrastructure to understand how well the center is operating. The company’s AI agents operate autonomously and evolve through reinforcement learning — observing outcomes, adapting and improving. The startup cuts energy use from cooling by 25% through its technology. The savings matter. Continue Reading #News #MemberNewsIDEA #DataCenter #phaidra

The New York Times Summary It’s been a big week for A.I. data centers. That means it’s also been a big week for coal and natural gas. Nvidia this week announced a $100 billion investment to support OpenAI’s enormous build-out of data centers that use its chips. The next day, OpenAI said it had signed deals with SoftBank and Oracle to build five new data centers as part of the Stargate Project, a $500 billion plan for A.I. infrastructure. (The three companies unveiled it at the White House back in January.) But there are reasons beyond politics that help explain why smog-spewing fossil fuels have become the go-to power source for futuristic data centers. The pairing is almost unavoidable — at least for now. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

Be Beez Summary Cudo Compute has signed a capacity leasing agreement with Conapto for its data centers in Stockholm, Sweden. Cudo will deploy Nvidia GPUs – including H200s and L40Ss – in the data centers, which are powered by renewable energy. According to its website, Conpato has four data centers in the Stockholm area. STHLM1 offers 1MW of capacity, STHLM2 4MW, STHLM3 6MW, and STHLM 4 24MW and 1MW of retail colocation space. All of Conapto’s data centers are powered by renewable energy via Vattenfall 24/7 matching, and the latter three listed are connected to district heating networks. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating #Topics #DataCenter

Inc. Summary Data centers—and the AI boom they’re being built to meet demand for—are on track to more than double electricity use by 2030 to 945 TWh, the International Energy Agency estimates. AI is the biggest driver of the monumental increase in energy demand, which would be just under 3 percent of global power demand in 2030. But data centers put out a lot of heat, up to 50kW per rack in the GPU-intensive facilities—each rack more than enough to heat a home. Usually that heat goes to waste. However, recovering waste heat from data centers could help tackle the energy crisis. The question is whether industry can move fast enough to capture it at scale. Across Europe and beyond, utilities, operators and startups are trying to turn that liability into a resource. In Denmark, Meta’s Odense campus routes server heat into the city’s district network, with Fjernvarme Fyn and engineering partner Ramboll heating thousands of homes with around 100,000MWh of recovered energy a year. In Ireland, South Dublin County Council’s Tallaght District Heating Scheme takes waste heat from a nearby AWS facility and supplies it to civic buildings and apartments. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #Content #DistrictHeating #MemberNewsIDEA

ComputerWeekly.com Summary The government should consider expanding the availability of renewable microgrids as a cheaper and faster alternative to building nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) to meet the energy needs of datacentres, according to the Centre for Net Zero (CNZ). The government is championing the use of nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) as a possible answer to shoring up the nation’s energy supplies, as part of its push to get UK energy grids running on clean energy by 2030. However, the CNZ, which is a research institute focused on predicting future energy demands, said its analysis shows that expanding the number of renewable microgrids across the UK could offer a faster and more cost-effective way of meeting the growing energy needs of the nation’s burgeoning number of datacentres. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

DCD Summary Data4 has broken ground on its new data center campus on the site of a former military base in Hanau, Germany. Brookfield-owned Data4 plans to develop a 180MW campus at the site of the former Großauheim military base in Hanau, and held a groundbreaking ceremony on Monday. The company purchased the 25-acre site in 2023, and says the campus will create several hundred jobs. It will invest up to €2 billion ($2.37bn) in the facility. The new campus will run on 100 percent renewable energy, and Data4 plans to construct a combined heat and power plant, along with an electrical substation. The company hopes to use waste heat from the data center to warm homes in the area, while materials from the old barracks will be reint Continue Reading #News #CHP #DataCenter

DGA Summary David Gardiner & Associates (DGA) is pleased to share the release of a new white paper, Data Center Heat Reuse: The Opportunity for States. The report outlines nine policy recommendations that can advance the deployment of heat reuse technology. Data centers use as much as 40% of their power to cool their servers, which results in large quantities of low-temperature heat. While that heat is ordinarily wasted, it can instead be repurposed at nearby facilities in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical or commercial building sectors, among others. By establishing a closed loop piping system, the heat can then return to data centers at a lower temperature for use in server cooling. According to research, heat reuse technology can lower data centers’ power consumption by up to 30% while providing offtakers with an alternative to gas boilers for hot water production. The white paper focuses on three primary types of policy recommendations: Enabling policies that help demonstrate the feasibility of heat reuse projects and build new connections between data centers and potential offtakers. Financing incentives, including tax credits, grants, and low-interest loans. Standards that incorporate waste heat reuse into energy efficiency or permitting requirements for data centers. DGA was contracted for this work by the U.S. Energy Foundation, a partnership of philanthropies focused on securing a clean and equitable energy future to tackle the climate crisis. Fill ...

Impact Alpha Summary Albany, New York-based Soluna builds and manages modular data centers co-located with wind turbines, solar panels and other renewable energy assets. It taps the excess and waste energy production to power for bitcoin mining, generative AI and other energy-intensive applications. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter