Data Centers & District Energy

PBC Today Summary As AI, cloud usage and digital services continue to drive demand for data centres, much of the conversation to date has centred on one issue: electricity. While these facilities are often viewed as major energy consumers , they also produce something of increasing value to the UK’s net zero ambitions: heat. The opportunity to connect these systems is becoming increasingly immediate with the Energy Act that became law in October 2023, draft heat-network zoning maps published in September 2024 and detailed zoning regulations being finalised in 2026, with the first zones expected to begin development later this year. This could enable data centres to play a much bigger role in the UK’s wider energy system. Countries such as Denmark and Sweden have shown what is possible when energy infrastructure is planned holistically. There, industrial waste heat, including that from data centres, is routinely captured and fed into extensive district heating networks that serve entire communities. The difference is not simply technology. These countries have invested in district heating infrastructure for decades, supported by long-term policy certainty and coordinated planning. The UK starts from a different position, with heat networks serving only a relatively small proportion of buildings. This means new infrastructure often needs to be developed alongside new data centres, requiring collaboration between developers, local authorities, utilities and network ...

Serbian News Media Summary A project is being developed in Stockholm that envisions using excess heat from large data centers to heat approximately 30,000 households, sources report. The idea is for the heat produced by servers, instead of being wasted, to be connected to the existing district heating network and thus heat residential and commercial buildings in the city. The Stockholm Data Parks project was created through the collaboration of city authorities and companies from the energy and technology sectors. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

Irish Independent Summary The Land Devel­op­ment Agency (LDA) says an estate of houses it is build­ing in Tall­aght, Dub­lin, can be linked to a new Amazon data centre which will have a dis­trict heat­ing sys­tem. The state-backed agency bought a large site off the Bel­gard Road and beside Cook­stown Indus­trial Estate last Octo­ber from a private seller. The 3.94-hec­tare site, which cur­rently has indus­trial build­ings, but is zoned for regen­er­a­tion, has the poten­tial to deliver over 700 new homes along with amen­it­ies and a small park, the LDA says in its latest annual report. “The loc­a­tion is next to a recently developed Amazon data centre, offer­ing the poten­tial to con­nect to the dis­trict heat­ing served by this data centre,” it notes. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating #DataCenter

Jacksonville Daily Record Summary Trane Technologies, an Ireland-based climate control systems company that owns Jacksonville-based Stellar Energy Americas Inc., is cleared for tenant improvements in AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center. “The acquisition strengthens Trane Technologies’ leadership in data center thermal management solutions, while accelerating growth, innovation and scale for Stellar Energy,” the release said. “Stellar Energy’s expertise in modular data center solutions combined with Trane Technologies’ operational excellence and global scale are well positioned to address the growing demand for pre-fabricated cooling systems and other critical equipment, which reduce supply chain constraints and enable rapid, scalable deployment.” Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #Trane #DataCenter

Fast Company Middle East Summary In a new report, the ratings agency said Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are well positioned to support the next wave of AI infrastructure investment, with regional data center capacity expected to nearly triple to more than 3 gigawatts (GW) by 2030. The UAE is already exploring ways to improve efficiency. The Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, Khazna Data Centers and Agility have launched a pilot using technology from Seattle-based AI company Phaidra to improve energy efficiency in data centers and district cooling systems. The company claims its technology can reduce cooling-related energy consumption by up to 40%. Continue Reading #News #DistrictCooling #DataCenter

RER Magazine Summary 2G Energy AG has received a 275 MW order from Energy Vault Holdings Inc., to supply power generation systems for Energy Vault’s powered land and powered shell AI energy infrastructure solutions in the United States. These solutions are designed to serve AI and data center customers, including hyperscalers. To meet growing demand and efficiently support projects of this scale, 2G is significantly expanding production capacity at its Heek facility. In addition to a new production hall that became operational earlier this year, a second production site is currently under development and is scheduled for completion by the end of 2027. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #2GEnergy #CHP

Eurobuild Summary Poland’s growing data centre market could create a significant new source of waste heat for heating networks. According to analysis by the Polish Data Centre Association, if the market continues to expand, recovered heat from data centres could equal more than 7 pct of the heat currently supplied to Poland’s district heating networks by 2030. By 2035, that figure could reach 16 pct. Servers generate heat continuously throughout the year, making data centres a potentially reliable source of waste heat. Using it, however, requires the right infrastructure. In many cases, the temperature of the recovered heat is too low for large district heating networks, meaning heat pumps may be needed to raise it to a usable level. Continue Reading #News

Irish Independent Summary The Land Development Agency (LDA) says an estate of houses it is building in Tallaght, Dublin, can be linked to a new Amazon data centre which will have a district heating system. The state-backed agency bought a large site off the Belgard Road and beside Cookstown Industrial Estate last October from a private seller. The 3.94-hectare site, which currently has industrial buildings, but is zoned for regeneration, has the potential to deliver over 700 new homes along with amenities and a small park, the LDA says in its latest annual report. “The location is next to a recently developed Amazon data centre, offering the potential to connect to the district heating served by this data centre,” it notes. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

DCD Summary A new Goodman data center in Germany will provide waste heat for a district heating network. The Australian data center firm has signed a deal with the City of Neu-Isenburg, just south of Frankfurt, and the local utility, Stadtwerke Neu-Isenburg (SWNI), that will see it recover and provide up to 50MW from its planned FRA02 facility for the district heating network. SWNI will build and operate the district heating network, which will serve the south industrial estate (Gewerbegebiet Süd), the Neue Welt residential area and the Waldschwimmbad public pool, providing a local source of heat for 600 buildings and supporting the city's decarbonization strategy. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

Calgary Herald Summary The debate has been about what data centres take. The better question is what they can build. Change one word and the whole conversation changes. Stop thinking about a data centre as industrial infrastructure that a community must absorb, and start thinking about compute as community infrastructure. Everything downstream of that shift looks different: what we ask of developers, how we measure whether one was worth building. That means a community benefit agreement negotiated before the first shovel, not after the first complaint. Designed this way, a compute facility stops being an isolated campus at the end of a power line. It becomes the centre of an appropriately sited compute zone: new energy generation, fibre, greenhouses, district heating, and local construction and engineering work. Continue Reading #News #News #DistrictHeating #DataCenter

Forbes Summary On August 31, data center developer OnZero and Helsinki energy company Helen signed an agreement to build an AI Heat Factory in Helsinki. Scheduled to start in 2027, the facility is expected to deliver up to 525,000 megawatt-hours of heat annually, enough for about 70,000 apartments. The project uses liquid-cooled servers to capture heat, which industrial heat pumps then raise to 95 degrees Celsius for Helsinki's district heating network. OnZero rents space to cloud and AI companies while selling the resulting heat to Helen. This arrangement provides OnZero with a secondary revenue source and gives Helen heat that costs less than burning wood or gas. Helen aims to end all combustion by 2040, and the new plant will supply roughly nine percent of the heat Helen sold in 2024. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

DCD Summary Data center heat is due for a different conversation. For decades, the industry has treated it as a problem to manage, dissipate, and dispose of as efficiently as possible. But heat is not a failure of the system. It is the inevitable byproduct of useful work: every computation run, AI model trained, and inference delivered generates heat as part of doing something productive. That shift matters because the opportunity is no longer just to remove heat more efficiently or generate less of it through better design, though both remain essential. It is also to recover useful thermal energy and turn it into a practical resource. This means the practical end uses for data center waste heat are specific: district heating networks, swimming pools, and controlled-environment agriculture such as grow farms are the applications where this heat can realistically be deployed. Other applications like greenhouses, aquaculture farms, hospitals, and university campuses, can also make productive use of this heat where infrastructure exists to connect supply and demand. (See Figure 1) A real-world example is Meta’s Odense data center in Denmark , which was designed to recover and donate up to 100,000 MWh of waste heat annually to the local district heating network. Heat pumps play an important role in raising coolant temperatures so recovered heat can be reused in district heating. They are not a peripheral option but a key enabler of this end use. Continue Reading ...

DCD Summary The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has announced the construction of an AI data center at its Campus North area in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. The university said the facility will cost an estimated €24 million ($27.2m) and be designed to support other higher education institutions, government organizations, and researchers. “With the new data center, we’re laying the foundation for tomorrow’s research and AI applications,” said KIT’s vice-president for digitalization and sustainability, Professor Kora Kristof, in a statement . “At the same time, we use the waste heat generated to heat buildings on campus and optimize the data center's operations in line with sustainability criteria. This strengthens our digital infrastructure and drives KIT’s decarbonization and other sustainability efforts forward.” Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #CHP

Manchester Evening News Summary A major plan is being developed that could power thousands of homes with the heat from baked beans, sewage, and data centres. EnergiRaven, a UK-based green energy transition consultancy, is pitching to council bosses to introduce a network of pipes across the region. These would take captured heat from different sources and transport it to people’s homes potentially cutting down on people’s energy bills by up to 38 per cent. Nicknamed the ‘Bee Network for Heat’, the project could link homes across a ll ten boroughs in Greater Manchester providing heat to thousands. It is based of a publicly-owned model that has been running in Denmark for decades. Continue Reading #News #CHP #DataCenter #WasteHeat

DCD Summary Altarea Group subsidiary Nation Data Center has broken ground on a mixed-use project that includes a data center with 7MW of IT capacity in Vélizy-Villacoublay town, north-central France. The project will be designed to support AI and high-performance computing workloads. Nation Data Center said the facility will have a PUE of 1.2 and use direct liquid cooling, with waste heat recovered by Vélizy district heating network. The development also includes 365 social student housing units and four local shops. Nation Data Center says the data center’s waste heat will contribute to the heating of the student residence. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

Virginia Summary Virginia lawmakers are considering allowing utilities and local governments to test geothermal heating and cooling networks. The discussion builds on legislation passed earlier this year. Senate Bill 252 and House Bill 1102 created a carve-out for geothermal heating and cooling systems within Virginia’s renewable portfolio standard and require Dominion Energy Virginia and Appalachian Power to begin obtaining a portion of their renewable energy certificates from qualifying geothermal systems in 2027. Lawmakers also heard about a geothermal project underway at the University of Virginia’s Fontaine Research Park. Paul Zmick, UVA’s director of energy and utilities, said the university is already integrating a data center into its heating and cooling system at Fontaine Research Park, where 100 geothermal wells have been drilled and as many as 650 are planned. Continue Reading You can watch the discussion below; the UVA presentation given by Paul Zmick takes place 1:16:22 in the video. Watch the Session! #MemberNewsIDEA #UniversityofVirginia #GeothermalandGeo-Exchange #DataCenter

Irish Examiner Summary New EU laws requiring data centres to re-use waste heat can be a "gamechanger" for Ireland, with a positive knock-on effect for homes and businesses, according to a lobby group promoting the rollout of district heating systems in Ireland. The Irish District Energy Association is a lobby group with membership from public, private, and academic sectors. promoting the rollout of district heating and cooling from renewable energy sources. The group will hold its annual conference in Dublin on Wednesday. On Wednesday, association chief executive Pauline O’Reilly will tell Wednesday’s conference in Dublin that harnessing the heat produced by data centres would be a significant improvement in terms of their environmental performance. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #DataCenter

Public Summary Creating smart district heating networks integrating a growing number of renewable sources thanks to artificial intelligence is the goal of researchers at the ENEA Energy Efficiency Department. They have developed a model based on artificial neural networks capable of predicting, six hours in advance, how much thermal energy a prosumer (a user who is both a producer and a consumer) will be able to feed into the grid. The results, published in the journal Energies, pave the way for the development of increasingly smart district heating systems that mirror modern smart electrical grids. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating

Network World Summary AI infrastructure has a resource problem that gets worse the more you try to solve it. Every generation of GPU accelerator draws more power and rejects more heat than the last — next-generation AI racks are projected to reach densities north of 300 kW , up from roughly 6 kW just a few years ago. The industry’s answer has been liquid cooling: direct-to-chip cold plates, rear-door heat exchangers, immersion tanks. It works. But it also creates a second, quieter problem that gets far less boardroom attention than the first: liquid cooling is extremely good at capturing heat and comparatively wasteful about what happens to that heat afterward. Most of it is still rejected to a cooling tower or dry cooler and paid for twice — once to remove it from the chip, and again to run the electric chiller plant that keeps the facility cold. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictEnergy

Engineer Live Summary As AI, cloud usage and digital services continue to drive demand for data centres, much of the conversation to date has centred on one issue, electricity. While these facilities are often viewed as major energy consumers, they also produce something of increasing value to the UK’s net zero ambitions, heat. Countries such as Denmark and Sweden have shown what is possible when energy infrastructure is planned holistically. There, industrial waste heat, including that from data centres, is routinely captured and fed into extensive district heating networks that serve entire communities. The difference is not simply technology. These countries have invested in district heating infrastructure for decades, supported by long-term policy certainty and coordinated planning. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

The Asia Business Daily Summary SK Innovation is expanding its focus on AI data centers with an integrated energy strategy that brings together power generation, storage and thermal energy. The company plans to combine technologies including renewable energy, battery storage, small modular reactors (SMRs) and LNG-based combined heat and power (CHP) to provide reliable, distributed energy for large data center loads. Of particular interest to the district energy industry is SK Innovation’s emphasis on CHP, providing both electricity and useful thermal energy as part of a broader energy solution. The approach reflects a growing shift in the data center market toward integrated energy systems that optimize multiple resources rather than treating electricity and thermal needs separately. As data center development accelerates, strategies like these could create new opportunities for district energy, thermal networks and waste heat utilization. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

National Laboratory of the Rockies Summary As data center growth puts increasing pressure on power grids, a new report from the National Laboratory of the Rockies explores an intriguing opportunity: colocating data centers with airports. The concept could help both facilities share energy infrastructure, improve resilience and manage growing electric loads—but it also presents a compelling district energy opportunity. Because many large airports already operate central heating and cooling plants and thermal distribution networks, waste heat from nearby data centers could be captured and used for building heat, hot water and even snow melting and de-icing applications. The report examines how bringing these two energy-intensive facilities together could turn infrastructure challenges into opportunities for greater efficiency, flexibility and energy reuse. Read the Report #News #NREL #DataCenter #DistrictEnergy

Science Blog Summary Almost all the electricity a data center pulls off the grid comes back out as heat. One overview of the field puts the figure at roughly 90% . A data center is, in effect, a very expensive radiator. But most of that warmth goes nowhere useful. It gets blown into the sky. Cooling is where the energy disappears. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute estimates that about 40% of the energy a data center uses goes to keeping the servers cool, and nearly all of that ends up as heat. The catch is temperature. Server exhaust comes off warm but not hot, and warm-but-not-hot isn’t much good to anyone who wants to heat a building. The low temperature of that waste heat limits its direct use, so it has to be raised before it can heat homes. Which is where Odense gets clever. The method is less exotic than it sounds. Water from the city’s district-heating network is run through the data center’s cooling units, where it picks up the low warmth coming off the servers. It then travels to a nearby plant full of heat pumps, which lift the temperature the rest of the way before the water goes out to homes. The engineering consultancy Ramboll , which designed the recovery system for the district-heating company Fjernvarme Fyn, says the ammonia heat pumps raise the water to 70 to 75°C, hot enough for radiators, before it enters the network. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #Ramboll #DistrictHeating #DataCenter

York Region Summary Announced last week in Markham, a national “framework” for data centres is encouraging for a Richmond Hill councillor, who is now calling on York Region to assess the effects of each of the area’s planned or completed data facility. The framework unveiled at the Markham District Energy facility on Warden Avenue was described as “a first step, not the final destination,” but includes a pledge that data facilities “must not shift electricity costs to Canadians” and must create “lasting local benefits” while minimizing water use and environmental impacts. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #MarkhamDistrictEnergy #DistrictEnergy

EnergyNow Summary British Columbia has a genuine opportunity. Our electricity grid is among the cleanest in North America. Our climate is favourable for cooling. We have strong universities, a growing technology sector and industrial expertise in power, construction, engineering and resource development. That makes B.C. attractive for artificial intelligence and data infrastructure. The overlooked heat question This is where Vancouver’s current debate becomes more interesting than the slogans suggest. In a companion article, engineer Matthew Klippenstein explores one underappreciated possibility: data centres can produce useful heat. If designed properly and placed near district energy systems, the waste heat from servers can help warm nearby buildings. That can reduce natural gas use and cut urban emissions. This matters in Vancouver. The city already has district energy systems that move heat through underground pipes. The False Creek neighbourhood energy utility uses sewage heat recovery and already supplies low-carbon heat to parts of Southeast False Creek, Mount Pleasant and the False Creek Flats. Creative Energy’s downtown steam system has long supplied major buildings around the core. A data centre connected to those systems can be part of an urban energy network, not just a box of machines.. That doesn’t make every proposal automatically good. The details matter. The public should know how much electricity will be used, how much heat can actually ...