Data Centers & District Energy

Data centers are rapidly becoming one of the largest and fastest-growing energy users in North America, creating both unprecedented challenges and powerful opportunities for district energy systems. 

Synthesis Report - Data Centers & District Energy Northern Virginia Workshop

Workshop sponsored by IDEA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Northern Virginia Regional Planning Commission, Ramboll

This data center & district energy workshop, hosted on December 10th at George Mason University, marked a material inflection point in the conversation in Northern Virginia on data centers and district energy. The discussion moved decisively beyond whether data center heat reuse is technically feasible where participants overwhelmingly agreed it is and instead focused on how to structure markets, partnerships, and projects capable of delivering near-term pilots and long-term scale.

Data Heat - Sector Coupling of Data Centers & District Heating Report

February 2026

Authored by Reshape Strategies

Sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, NYSERDA, and IDEA

Data centers are major electricity consumers, and nearly all the electricity they consume ultimately winds up rejected as waste heat. In years to come, the amount of electricity consumed by data centers will increase significantly. Not only will their waste heat volumes grow in magnitude, but the quality of that waste heat will also increase, as changes in data centre design and operations mean that data centers will reject higher temperature waste heat, making it more favorable for heat re-use in the district heating sector. At the same time, there will also be increasing demands placed on the electric grid from decarbonizing heating and transportation. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity.

• Challenge: How can the electric grid keep pace with the demands from data centers, as well as electrifying heating and transportation, while meeting climate targets, at the least cost while maintaining reliability?
• Opportunity: Re-using waste heat from data centers helps avoid using fossil fuels to heat buildings (helping meet climate targets), and can also reduce the burden on the electric grid (reducing costs and supporting reliability).

Read the full report

Data Center News

  • Van Ness Feldman Summary On April 16, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or Commission) issued an order partially accepting and partially rejecting PJM Interconnection, L.L.C.’s (PJM) compliance filing addressing the Commission’s December 2025 determination that PJM’s tariff was unjust and unreasonable as applied to generators serving Co ‑ Located Load, including large data centers. [1] FERC accepted tariff reforms that provide clarity on interconnection pathways, but rejected PJM ’ s attempt to alter the Commission ‑ mandated definition of “Co ‑ Located Load ” and to revise behind-the-meter application requirements. The Commission also directed an additional compliance filing within 30 days. FERC’s order has immediate and practical implications for entities pursuing co ‑ located generation strategies in PJM. Co-Located Load developers may pursue reduced ‑ capacity interconnection, provisional service, and surplus service options that better align with on ‑ site load profiles which may reduce cost and timeline risk. Additionally, by reaffirming the Commission ‑ approved definition tied to the point of interconnection, FERC curtailed potential disputes regarding the boundary for Co ‑ Located Load that could delay projects. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

  • DCD Summary Microsoft has signed a heat reuse deal with Danish heat transmission firm VEKS and Denmark’s largest district heating company, Høje Taastrup Fjernvarme, to supply waste heat to a local district heating network in Høje-Taastrup, Denmark. The deal will see Microsoft provide waste heat from one of its data centers in the region into the local network, which, according to the companies, will cover the annual heating needs of approximately 6,000 households in Høje-Taastrup. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating

  • Think GeoEnergy Summary An urban heating project by Idex in Levallois, France combines geothermal heat with waste heat recovered from a local data center. Low-carbon energy company Idex has announced the launch of an urban heating project in the commune of Levallois in the Hauts-de-Seine department of France that will combine geothermal heating and a waste heat recovery system from a data centre. The pioneering project is expected to be operational by 2029. Idex will be investing EUR 70 million for the project, which includes EUR 15 million funding from the French Ecological Transition Agency (ADEME). The project will be carried out through SAS EnR, a joint stock company dedicated to renewable energies. Idex and the city of Levallois will be partner shareholders in the development company. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating #DataCenter

  • Seoul Economic Daily Summary The fuel cell industry is drawing attention as a key power infrastructure for the era of AI transformation (AX) and green transformation (GX). Fuel cells require less installation space than solar or wind power, making them suitable as power infrastructure for urban AI data centers. They can generate electricity continuously regardless of weather conditions, and their waste heat can be used for district heating in nearby areas, enabling highly efficient energy management. Continue Reading #News #fuelcells #DistrictHeating

  • Seattle PI Summary Data centers produce large amounts of heat, which must be removed from the computer chips. A data center gives off enough heat to potentially keep nearby buildings warm. Many cities around the world already have what are called “ district heating systems ,” in which a group of buildings are connected with a pipe network and receive their heat from a central heat source. Data centers could serve as a heat source for these systems. Recent improvements in these systems, called a “ thermal microgrid ” or an “ambient loop,” don’t require steam or extremely hot water, but rather use cooler temperatures of water to transport heat between the buildings. Efficient electric heat pumps in each building use that water loop to adjust the building’s air temperature in both winter and summer, creating combined district heating and cooling systems. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

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    Canadian Property Management Summary Energy management and innovation could be a key enabler and sustainable competitive edge for data centre development and related economic growth tied to smart technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). A new report sponsored by the MaRS Discovery District, a Toronto-based incubator for research, development and commercialization, models the potential for accommodating up to 3 gigawatts (3,000 megawatts) of additional data centre capacity in Ontario over the next 10 years, and explores how that could occur synergistically with other development demands. Factoring in planned expansions to 2035, researchers conclude that Ontario’s electricity system could support up to 1.5 gigawatts (1,500 megawatts) of new data centre load plugging into the grid if it occurred in tandem with various conservation and demand management (CDM) strategies. Supplementary sources, such as on-site generation or district energy networks, would be needed to power data centre expansion beyond that. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

  • Facilities Management Advisor Summary Hyperscale data center growth is running headlong into real-world constraints—interconnection queues, transformer lead times, water stress, community scrutiny, and tightening climate policy. At the same time, the thermal profile of the data center sector is shifting decisively from air to liquid cooling, concentrating heat into a form far more useful than a plume of hot exhaust. In that context, district energy—the practice of distributing heating and cooling through shared underground networks—is a strategic lever. Data centers accounted for roughly 4.4% of U.S. electricity use in 2023 and, while forecasts vary widely, projections consistently point to significant growth through the end of the decade. For facilities executives managing data center assets or properties that host them, the constraints bearing down on this sector—power, water, and community acceptance—are precisely the areas where district energy integration has demonstrated measurable, operating-scale impact. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #DataCenter #DistrictEnergy #Content

  • Wired Summary The US federal government’s central energy information agency is planning to implement a mandatory nationwide survey of data centers focused on their energy use, according to a letter seen by WIRED. This survey would be the first effort of its type to collect basic information about data centers. The letter was sent to senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley on April 9 by the head of the Energy Information Administration, Tristan Abbey, and comes in response to a previous inquiry from the senators about the EIA’s plans to get more information about data centers Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DataCenters

  • w. media Summary Singapore’s plan for a 700MW data center park on Jurong Island is as much about kickstarting a renewables economy as it is about expanding capacity. Though data centers don’t need a lot of the shared infrastructure created for the petroleum industry, some existing services make sense, such as demineralized water, water for firefighting, and seawater cooling circuits, along with wastewater treatment facilities. Others could be explored, including district cooling, pooled diesel fuel storage, and off-site Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). The idea is to leverage economies of scale for cost savings, or to tap into capabilities that would otherwise not be practical, such as off-site BESS. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictCooling

  • Castanet Summary The Thompson Rivers University Community Trust (the Trust) is pleased to announce that construction has officially begun on a new data centre at 1452 McGill Road, which will form part of Bell Canada’s Bell AI Fabric – a national full-stack AI infrastructure platform that brings together secure data centres, high-performance compute, networking and managed services to support advanced research, innovation and AI adoption in Canada. Sustainability is a core component of the Project’s design. Notably, the facility is being planned with the capability to capture and repurpose waste heat as part of a future Low Carbon District Energy System, supporting TRU’s broader climate and sustainability goals. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

  • Power Summary Social media group TikTok said it would invest €1 billion ($1.16 billion) to build the company’s second data center in Finland. TikTok on April 7 said the new facility would be in Lahti, in southern Finland, and would have capacity of 50 MW, scalable to 128 MW. Google last year announced a project designed to cool a data center in Hamina, in the south of Finland, that would expand into a district energy project for the community. The offsite heat recovery project is being done with local utility Haminan Energia. Continue Reading #News

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    Facility Executive Summary Across the U.S. and around the world, data centers are multiplying to support an exponential increase in digital demand. Cloud services, streaming platforms, and artificial intelligence applications are driving unprecedented growth in data processing—and in both the amount and temperature of the heat that processing produces. With that growth comes a parallel surge in thermal output and new operational considerations for facility leaders responsible for managing energy use, cooling capacity, and system resilience. Excess server heat can support district heating, and facilities that plan for heat recovery from the beginning have far more flexibility than those trying to retrofit later​​, especially when anticipating higher future coolant temperatures driven by AI and high-performance workloads. Continue Reading #News

  • Natural Refrigerants Summary SWEP, a global manufacturer headquartered in Landskrona, Sweden, has been producing brazed plate heat exchangers (BPHEs) since 1983. A subsidiary of the Dover Corporation since 1994, the company operates five production facilities across three continents and maintains entities in more than 20 countries. In 2023 alone, the company produced and sold more than 3.5 million BPHEs worldwide. SWEP’s products are designed for efficient heat transfer across a wide range of sectors, including comfort cooling, power generation, industrial manufacturing and data centers. “We have been working with heat recovery for many years with applications like power generation and combined heat and power [CHP] systems, steel mills and paper mills,” said Christer Frennfelt, Business Development Manager at SWEP. “Now we have another heat source to work with: data centers.” Continue Reading #News #MemberNewsIDEA #SWEP #CHP #DataCenter

  • Capacity Summary Microsoft has officially opened its new Danish data centre region to provide Microsoft customers in Denmark with local and secure cloud infrastructure. Referred to as Denmark East, the new data centre region has campuses in Høje Taastrup, Køge and Roskilde on Zealand. The region has been designed with sustainability as a critical priority, with Microsoft having entered into long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) to provide 130 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy every year. It will also use HVO for backup power generation across the region. The company said its data centre site in Høje-Taastrup will be Microsoft’s first operational at-scale waste heat recovery in Denmark – with the data centres engineered to recovery surplus heat for local district heating systems. It will have the capability to heat around 6,000 homes in the local area at first, with future expansion planned in Køge, the company said. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

  • w. media Summary Berlin’s research landscape will soon get a new AI facility and data center through a collaboration between the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB). The center aims to provide scalable, secure infrastructure for high-performance computing (HPC), data management, and AI applications. According to a press release, development will start in 2026-2027 with consolidated infrastructure at ZIB in Dahlem and a new site at HZB in Adlershof. By 2029-2030, additional computing capacity will be added. Sustainability is a priority, including energy-efficient hardware and plans to use waste heat locally. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

  • DataCentre Summary atNorth and Kesko have brought a new heat reuse partnership online, marking a step forward in integrating circular economy principles into data centre operations. The initiative channels waste heat generated by atNorth’s FIN02 data centre in Espoo to a neighbouring Kesko retail store, repurposing excess heat from the facility’s infrastructure. The project is supplying almost all of the store’s heating requirements, which reduces its reliance on district heating while hitting sustainability targets by lowering emissions for both organisations. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating

  • MSN Summary Echelon Data Centres' DUB20 data centre campus in Arklow, Co Wicklow will become Ireland's first Green Energy Park. Green Energy Parks are defined by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment as developments that co-locate large energy users, such as data centres, with renewable energy generation. They are required to be primarily powered by renewables with battery storage or dispatchable backup from energy centres, can demonstrate reduced reliance on the national grid, and can promote innovation and system-wide benefits, such as using waste heat for district heating schemes. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

  • Microsoft Summary Microsoft today announced the official opening of its new Danish datacenter region, Denmark East, with campuses in Høje Taastrup, Køge, and Roskilde on Zealand. The datacenter region will provide Danish Microsoft customers with local, secure state of the art cloud infrastructure designed with sustainability as a key focus. The opening of the new datacenter highlights that Køge is an attractive location for large, future-proof projects. We have strong infrastructure, attractive business areas, and a strategic location that makes it possible to develop new solutions and create value locally. This is exciting for Køge and for the entire surrounding region, and we welcome Microsoft. At the same time, we are pleased that, over time, Microsoft’s new datacenter will contribute surplus heat to the local district heating network. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating #DataCenter

  • Computing Summary Ireland was the canary in the coal mine. The country was an early leader in the datacentre building frenzy, driven by favourable tax rates for tech companies, subsea data cables to the US and the UK and a skilled workforce. Datacentres sprouted like mushrooms around Dublin - until one day they didn’t. In 2021, regulators imposed an effective moratorium on new datacentre builds around Dublin because of the massive demand for power and worries about the stability of the grid. At the end of last year, the authorities unveiled a plan. Datacentres and other “large energy users” would once again be able to connect to the grid, but only under strict conditions. These include generating their own power while also contributing to grid stability. In other words, they must act as energy infrastructure participants, not just passive consumers. Moreover, at least 80% of annual electricity demand must be matched by new renewable generation, with developers allowed a six-year "glide path" for renewables to be deployed. In addition, operators are obliged to submit annual emissions figures. This arrangement specifically favours microgrids. On emissions, the plan is to phase in renewables, with the Dublin site becoming operational net zero by 2040. The structure includes heat recovery for potential combined heat and power (CHP) export for community use and rainwater harvesting. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #CHP ...

  • The International District Energy Association (IDEA) announced today that registration is now open for the 117th IDEA Annual Conference and Trade Show (IDEA2026). The event will take place June 23 to 26, 2026, at the Rogers Centre Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. IDEA2026 will convene the global district energy community for three days of education, innovation, networking, and technology discovery, bringing together leaders and practitioners shaping the future of district energy. This year’s theme, “Connecting Networks,” highlights both the interconnected nature of district energy systems and the people and partnerships that bring them to life, supporting community decarbonization, resilience, and long-term sustainability. “District energy succeeds when people and systems connect,” said Rob Thornton, President and CEO of IDEA. “IDEA2026 in Ottawa reflects the industry’s focus on strengthening partnerships, improving system integration, and accelerating progress through collaboration. We’re bringing our international community together to help cities and campuses meet their energy and resiliency goals.” IDEA2026 programming will feature an extensive educational experience including preconference workshops, podium presentations organized by technical track, poster sessions, plenary panels, exhibit-hall learning, dedicated opportunities for peer-to-peer networking, and technical tours of local district energy systems. The IDEA2026 Exhibit Hall will showcase technologies, ...

  • World Economic Forum Summary Every industrial age delivers its own plot twist. The 19th century had steam, the 20th had oil, and the early 21st was supposed to be defined by a harmonious rise of clean energy and digital transformation. Instead, a new character has entered the story with disruptive force: the artificial intelligence-era data centre. What was once an invisible backend of the digital economy has become one of the most powerful drivers of global electricity demand , and an unmissable risk for leaders setting intention at the beginning of the year. Across Europe, billions are spent annually to heat homes with gas and other fuels. At the same time, data centres, which operate continuously, vent enormous quantities of low-temperature heat into the sky. In London , research suggests that as much as 1.6 TWh of heat from data centres could be recovered each year, enough to warm half a million homes. Across Europe, the theoretical potential is 221 TWh per year, or 12% of EU district-heating demand. The infrastructure exists. The heat exists. The urban demand exists. What doesn’t exist is the policy coordination to connect the dots. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating #DataCenter

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    Argus Media Summary Google's contract with electric utility DTE Energy to power a 1GW data center in Michigan points to an emerging framework that shifts financial and capacity obligations on to large load customers. Google signed a 20-year power supply agreement (PSA) with DTE that commits the tech giant to paying the full cost of adding 1600MW of renewable power and 480MW of battery storage for a data center supporting artificial intelligence (AI) in Van Buren Township, Michigan, according to a DTE filing this week with the state regulator Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC). Google also agreed to provisions intended to minimize financial risks for the utility in case its plans change. "The special contracts establish a balanced and protective framework that includes appropriate safeguards and minimizes the risks associated with service large load customers," DTE said in the filing. Continue Reading #News #MemberNewsIDEA #DTEEnergyServices #DataCenter

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    Google Summary Today, we announced plans to develop a new data center in DTE Energy ’s service territory in Michigan and shared details of our energy-first approach in partnership with DTE. As part of the agreement, we will be adding clean, around-the-clock power directly to the grid to support the new data center, enhance the state’s grid reliability and further establish Michigan as an innovation leader in infrastructure development. Google is committed to responsibly growing its infrastructure by expanding local energy supply and funding energy affordability initiatives in the communities where it operates. As part of this announcement, Google is introducing a $10 million Energy Impact Fund to scale and accelerate energy affordability initiatives that are designed to drive down monthly bills for communities in Michigan. These include home weatherization, efficiency technology innovations for households and energy workforce development projects. Google will kick off a funding application process for local organizations. Continue Reading #News #MemberNewsIDEA #DTEEnergyServices #DataCenter

  • West Virginia Public Broadcasting Summary It looks like West Virginia is getting an early jump in the race to power the nation’s artificial intelligence data centers – and it’s happening in Mason County. Nscale , a London-based tech company that builds and operates the infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence development, is setting up shop on the 2,200 acre Monarch Compute Campus in Mason County. Under a new deal the company secured with Microsoft, Nscale plans to build and operate an advanced AI data center powered by a microgrid that will begin operation by late 2027. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #Microgrids

  • Power Engineering Summary Caterpillar moved to the center of the AI infrastructure buildout this week as developer Nscale said it would use the company’s natural gas generator sets to power a major new West Virginia data center campus tied to Microsoft and NVIDIA. Monday’s announcement positions Caterpillar’s G3500 series reciprocating engine platform as core infrastructure for what Nscale said could become one of the country’s largest dedicated AI compute developments. Under the plan, Caterpillar equipment would support 2 GW of onsite generation by the first half of 2028 at the Monarch Compute Campus in Mason County, West Virginia, giving the project a faster path to power as grid access and transmission upgrades remain a constraint for large data center loads. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #MemberNewsIDEA #Caterpillar