Data Centers & District Energy

Time Summary In the public discourse, data centers have largely been cast as the villains of the AI boom—voracious consumers of natural resources that power our chatbots but threaten our climate progress. But in fact, there are clear, actionable ways we can design, build, and operate data centers that align with both our climate goals and societal values. We can push the envelope further by recycling the massive amounts of heat generated by data centers and using it to heat buildings. This is already the case in West London, where the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation is recovering 17 megawatts of waste heat generated by local data centers to warm up to 10,000 homes and businesses; in Norway, they’re using it to heat a trout farm . By thinking more holistically about how data centers are built and operated, we can also make them more beneficial to the communities that host them and to the planet as a whole. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

Fortune Summary As AI drives a massive expansion of data centers, one of the biggest opportunities is not just building more power generation — it’s capturing the enormous amount of energy we already waste, especially heat. The energy transition will depend on both large-scale supply and a fast, often invisible layer—efficiency, thermal recovery. Moving fast and smart – as an efficiency first strategy enables – is the winner as compared to the more cumbersome and costly conventional approach. Data centers turn much of their electricity into heat that is usually rejected into the atmosphere. Instead, that heat can be captured and reused for: heating nearby buildings district energy networks industrial processes other thermal applications Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

Financial Post Summary The European Union wants to propose a sustainability rating system for data centers to encourage greater energy and resource efficiency as the sector’s rapid expansion strains power grids and the environment. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, plans to unveil a regulation later this month requiring electronic labels for new and existing data centers to encourage new designs and efficiency improvements. The proposal aims to cut energy and water consumption, promote the use of clean energy and encourage the reuse of waste heat in nearby buildings or district heating networks, according to a draft seen by Bloomberg News. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

Energy Digital Summary Equinix and A2A are using waste heat from a Milan data centre campus to heat 21,000 homes through one of Europe's largest heat recovery projects. When people think about powering a city's heating system, data centres are unlikely to come to mind. Yet in Milan, heat produced by thousands of servers is being recovered and converted into usable energy for the city's district heating network, creating a new low-carbon heat source for homes and public buildings including the Duomo and Palazzo Reale. The initiative highlights how digital infrastructure can also play a growing role in supporting urban energy systems. Equinix 's ML5 data centre at the company's Settimo Milanese campus will provide the recovered heat, which will be transferred to a new A2A Energy Center before entering Milan's district heating network. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating #DataCenter #Content

The Seattle Times Summary The Seattle City Council unanimously passed an emergency freeze on siting new large data centers on June 9, paired with a policy framework directing the city to study what these facilities would mean for the grid, water, utility rates, land use, jobs and public health. All the right subjects, but one is missing, and it happens to be the one where Seattle is better-positioned than any city in the country. A few blocks from where the council voted, Amazon’s Doppler tower is heated by the data center across the street: The Westin Building Exchange, a carrier hotel housing more than 250 telecom and internet companies, pipes up to 5 megawatts of waste heat under the street to Amazon’s campus instead of venting it from rooftop cooling towers. The system recovers about 4 million kilowatt-hours a year and delivers heat roughly four times more efficiently than burning gas, and the city of Seattle was a partner in building it. The national demonstration project for data center heat reuse is not in Helsinki, it’s at Seventh Avenue and Lenora Street. Helsinki still matters because it shows that thermal waste reuse scales. Microsoft’s facilities there deliver up to 350 megawatts of thermal output into the city’s district heating network, covering 40% of heating demand for 250,000 customers. Stockholm, Sweden, pays operators for their heat, pulling recovered warmth from more than 20 facilities into a grid that warms roughly 30,000 apartments. ...

delano Summary Google’s proposed data centre in Bissen sparked a lively exchange between MP Joëlle Welfring and the minister for the economy, Lex Delles, during the plenary session on 18 June. It is on the issue of waste heat that the positions appear to be closest. The MP points out that the heat produced by the centre could provide heating for up to 10,000 households. However, she is seeking further details on the practical arrangements for recovering the heat, the necessary infrastructure and the safeguards required to turn this potential into reality. Lex Delles has made this issue a central focus of his strategy. He believes that the heat generated by data centres should no longer be viewed as wasted energy, but as a local resource. Discussions are already underway to integrate future centres into district heating networks, particularly in Bettembourg and around the Bissen project, he explained. According to him, proximity to residential or industrial areas capable of utilising this heat is now a key planning criterion. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #google #DistrictHeating

PR Newswire Summary SWEP – a world-leading supplier of brazed plate heat exchangers (BPHE) announced plans to continue expanding its global manufacturing capacity to meet growing demand that serve the global data center as well as industrial and commercial heating/cooling markets. The investments will include new furnaces, test equipment, press lines and automation in all five factories world-wide as well as expanded production space in SWEP's North American factory in Tulsa, OK. The expansion is an important initiative to bolster SWEP's commitment to our customers for efficient heat transfer in liquid cooling, energy efficiency, and energy security driven by: AI data centers – the increasing demand for compute power drives the need for reliable and high-performing data center cooling solutions that manage extreme heat from high-density workloads. Industrial and commercial heating/cooling – electrification is driving replacement of conventional systems in buildings, industries and district energy with systems based on heat pumps and chillers that enables favorable payback and use of sustainable refrigerants. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #SWEP #DataCenter

The Chronicle Summary Duke recently began construction on a small graphics processing unit data center, adjacent to Central Campus, that top administrators say will boost the University’s computing capacity while adhering to its Climate Commitment. The center — which is expected to open by the 2027-28 academic year — will be around 13,000 square feet and two stories tall. Located on the east side of Anderson Street, it will connect to one of the University’s three chilled water plants. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #DukeUniversity

Helsinki Times Summary Microsoft has signed a preliminary agreement to acquire about 190 hectares of land in western Finland for a potential new datacentre development, extending the company's expansion in a country that has become a growing destination for cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure. The southern Finland development is being built in stages across three campuses. According to Microsoft, more than 3,500 people are currently employed on construction work, with the workforce expected to reach around 4,500 this summer and peak at roughly 7,500 workers during the project. The company has also linked the project to Finland's energy transition. Through a partnership with Fortum, waste heat from the future datacentres will be captured and fed into district heating networks serving Espoo, Kauniainen and Kirkkonummi. Microsoft estimates the system could eventually supply around 40 per cent of the heating demand for approximately 250,000 district heating customers and reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by about 400,000 tonnes. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating #DataCenter

Engineered Systems News Byline by Rob thornton, President & CEO, IDEA Summary Data centers are growing faster than the grid can keep pace with. Interconnection queues are long, transformer lead times are stretching to years, and communities are pushing back on new development. Meanwhile, the sector's thermal profile is shifting from air cooling to liquid cooling – concentrating heat into a form far more useful than hot exhaust. That’s the context in which district energy belongs in this conversation. By 2028, data center electricity demand is projected to reach as much as 12% of total U.S. electricity consumption – though forecasts vary widely and remain contested. What is not contested is the direction: demand is growing, and it is growing fast. For operators, energy leaders, and hyperscalers, one near-term opportunity deserves more serious consideration: the heat produced by servers. Heat recovery facilitated by district energy systems can help optimize site energy performance, reduce on-site and system-wide emissions, and support grid stability by putting otherwise rejected heat to productive use. In this model, waste heat becomes a resource that can serve real community needs. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #DataCenter #DataCenters #DistrictEnergy

Grundfos Summary Europe needs a policy framework that integrates water and energy efficiency if it wants to keep growing datacenter capacity to support its AI and cloud computing ambitions. This is the argument in a report, " Scale and Secure: Powering Europe's Digital Sovereignty ," which asserts that progress will depend not so much on access to the right silicon as on water and energy constraints. Integration between server halls and district heating networks is another aspect worth consideration, the report adds. Realizing the potential of excess heat reuse depends less on technical feasibility than on institutional and contractual alignment, with the main barrier being negotiations between datacenter operators, district heating utilities, and municipalities. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #DataCenter #Grundfos

Gadget Review Summary The complex combines AI computing, waste heat recovery, and district heating in a multibillion-dollar experiment. The real innovation lies in what else they’re building above ground. The Technology Center Laufenburg reportedly pairs the battery with a water-cooled AI data center , turning waste heat into district heating for nearby communities. This setup could prevent roughly 82,700 tons of CO₂ emissions over 30 years—basically turning data center cooling problems into neighborhood heating solutions. Construction allegedly began in spring 2025 , with Swissgrid approving an initial 800 MW grid connection. The full system should go online by 2029 , creating about 300 jobs and potentially reshaping how Europe handles renewable energy’s mood swings. Whether this underground giant becomes the future of grid storage or an expensive science experiment remains to be seen. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

Engineered Systems Summary The numbers are hard to ignore. In Northern Virginia – already home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world – peak energy usage from those facilities hit an estimated 2.8 gigawatts in 2022. By 2038, the regional utility is forecasting that number climbs to roughly 14 gigawatts. With approximately 265 data centers currently operating and another 110 planned before 2035, the region is staring down an infrastructure challenge that no single solution can fix on its own. "The practical reality is both are not going to succeed without working together," said Michael Ahern, who leads the system development group at Ever-GreenEnergy, a 225-person district energy company headquartered in Minnesota. He was referring to the data center industry and the district energy sector – two worlds that have historically operated in parallel without much coordination. "It's the right thing to do, but it's also the only way that we're going to achieve the decarbonization goals." Luke Gaalswyk, president and CEO of Ever-Green Energy, framed it in straightforward terms. "Taking every kilowatt-hour of electricity that you put into a data center as far as possible is enabled through district energy integration," he said. Connecting data centers to district heating networks reduces cooling tower electricity usage, can eliminate active cooling tower water consumption entirely, and provides a far more efficient heat source for buildings than individual ...

West Virginia Watch Summary Artificial intelligence data centers are arriving faster in Appalachia than the policies to manage them. In March, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced that Google would build an AI data center in Putnam County. At the same time, public skepticism is rising, with four in 10 Americans saying that data centers are mostly bad for the environment and home energy costs. This tension frames a real issue. As a March Brookings report on AI data centers in rural communities put it, “The central question is not whether data centers are ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ but how benefits and risks get allocated and what forms of governance, local authority and transparency can help leaders maximize local benefits while protecting community interests.” As long as these neighboring facilities are within a few miles of the AI data center, the otherwise wasted heat can be used to heat community buildings like police and fire stations, greenhouses to grow food for food-insecure populations, water/wastewater infrastructure, and local manufacturing, food processing and biotech companies. These systems have been used in communities for decades. Pittsburgh’s PNC Park and Allegheny General Hospital, for example, have been part of this type of district heating system , like this, for over 50 years. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

Natural Refrigerants Summary A panel of stakeholders ‒ representing German data center operators, energy utilities and municipality leadership ‒ shared insights into reusing data center waste heat to decarbonize district heating at Tech Show Frankfurt 2026 . Positioning themselves as pioneers in data center heat-reuse schemes, the panel emphasized that successful projects rely on early municipal planning that aligns power, heat and zoning. Other points discussed included financing, potential for industrial applications and regulations. The event was held May 6‒7. At its Maniz energy campus, KMW is building three data centers with a combined IT power capacity of 54MW. The facility will be powered by renewable energy from KMW’s wind and solar portfolio, with gas turbine generators providing the backup power. The site currently produces district heating for Maniz via gas-fired power plants. However, the new data centers, cooled using water from the Rhine River, will also be able to supply district heating when surplus wind power is available, according to Blüm. “As the central operator of both the data center and the gas power plant, we can optimize [the usage] on an hourly basis,” he said. Continue Reading #News #CHP #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

EQS Summary 2G Energy AG (ISIN DE000A0HL8N9), one of the internationally leading manufacturers of sustainable power plants and combined heat and power (CHP) systems as well as a producer of heat pumps, has secured a substantial order in its Data Center business segment. Order volume is in the low triple ‑ digit megawatt range. The order, placed by a North American customer whose identity remains confidential, includes a large number of containerized power plants, including on‑site commissioning. The order represents the largest single contract in 2Gs’ history. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #2GEnergy #CHP

Intelligent CIO Summary Once viewed as a secondary Nordic destination for digital infrastructure, a report by DC Byte says Finland has become one of Europe’s most strategically important data centre markets. Sustainability is becoming a defining battleground in the European data centre sector and Finland is positioning itself at the forefront of waste heat reuse innovation. The country has emerged as the Nordic region’s largest district heat producer through projects that repurpose industrial waste heat into local energy systems. Data centres are playing a growing role in this transition. Google’s Hamina campus remains the most visible example, using seawater cooling and waste heat integration to support sustainability objectives. Other notable projects include atNorth’s FIN04 facility, the LUMI supercomputer in Kajaani and Novagen’s Voikkaa development. These projects highlight Finland’s ability to combine hyperscale growth with energy efficiency and circular economy initiatives. For operators under pressure from regulators and investors to demonstrate environmental responsibility, waste heat reuse is no longer simply a sustainability initiative. It is increasingly becoming a commercial differentiator. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter

Telecom Review Summary Telehouse Canada has announced the completion of a major infrastructure upgrade designed to support the next generation of AI ‑driven workloads. By introducing direct liquid‑to‑chip technology, Telehouse enables high‑density AI inference deployments within its interconnection‑rich downtown Toronto data center environments, reinforcing the company’s leadership in delivering resilient, future‑ready facilities that power Canada’s digital transformation and support the next wave of innovation. Liquid cooling is more thermally conductive than air, allowing Telehouse Canada to remove up to 80% of heat directly from high-power server components. As a result, reliance on power-intensive computer room air conditioners and server fans is reduced, lowering overall energy consumption while delivering a more sustainable and efficient cooling model. The direct liquid cooling system transfers heat from the server components to a cooling distribution unit, where it is carried away via a dedicated coolant loop. This heat is then transferred to Enwave’s closed-loop district energy system, where it is captured and repurposed through a fully isolated process to help heat Toronto’s municipal drinking water rather than being released into the atmosphere, which improves Telehouse Canada’s power usage effectiveness (PUE). Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #EnwaveToronto #Content #DistrictEnergy #DataCenter

Airah Summary The company is expanding its research and development (R&D) capacity for high-performance cooling and heating technologies aimed at data centres, industry and large commercial buildings. With concentrated growth of data centres in European hubs expected to add 13 GW of new supply by 2030, the new facility will strengthen the company’s industrial and R&D capabilities. “The combination of higher test capacity and advanced environmental control let us validate performance with zero tolerance, bring solutions to market faster and give customers the confidence to move ahead on high-efficiency cooling and heating for data centres, industry and district heating,” says Bertrand Rotagnon, Carrier’s Executive Director, Commercial Business Line & Data Centres Europe. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #CarrierCorporation #DistrictHeating #DataCenter

w.media Summary The Nordic region has become one of the world’s most important locations for new data center construction. A defining feature of Nordic data centers is what happens to heat once it is removed from servers. Instead of being released into the atmosphere, many facilities capture the warm water generated by cooling systems and send it into municipal heating networks. For example, Equinix operates facilities in Espoo, Finland whose cooling systems recover heat from servers and transfer it to the regional district heating grid. The recovered heat around four megawatts in the initial phase can supply enough energy to warm roughly 2,000 homes each year. Continue Reading #News #DistrictEnergy #DistrictHeating #DataCenter

DCD Summary Telehouse is deploying liquid cooling in its Canadian data centers in Toronto. KDDI’s Telehouse Canada this week announced it has introduced direct liquid‑to‑chip technology at its downtown Toronto data center environments. The excess heat from liquid-cooled equipment is set to be transferred to Enwave’s closed-loop district energy system, where it is captured and repurposed through a fully isolated process to help heat Toronto’s municipal drinking water. Continue Reading #MemberNewsIDEA #District Heating #Enwave #DistrictEnergy

propmodo Summary Most people think of data centers as buildings. They are, technically, but they are more usefully understood as heat machines. Every computation generates heat. Every server rack in a modern AI data center generates heat at a density that would have been considered extraordinary just a few years ago. Cooling already accounts for about 40% of total data center energy use, which means that improving thermal management is one of the highest-leverage levers available for reducing both operating costs and environmental impact. Germany’s new Energy Efficiency Act requires that starting July 2026, new data centers must prove they are utilizing at least 10% of their generated waste heat, rising to 15% in 2027 and 20% in 2028. Scandinavia is further along. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway already routinely integrate data center waste heat into district heating networks, with Stockholm’s district energy operator actively connecting excess heat producers into its network. The real-world results are meaningful. An Amazon Web Services data center in Tallaght, Ireland, provides recycled heat free of charge to a scheme initially planned to heat 55,000 square meters of public buildings, commercial space, and 133 apartments. Continue Reading #News #DistrictHeating #DistrictEnergy #DataCenter

Data Center Knowledge Summary Underground facilities represent a small but growing niche in the global data center market, driven largely by adaptive reuse of retired mines and bunkers in North America and Northern Europe. Swedish internet service provider Bahnhof has become one of Europe’s most visible advocates of underground data centers, using hardened facilities to combine energy efficiency, security, and resilience. Its best-known site, Pionen, is located nearly 100 feet beneath Stockholm in a former civil defense bunker originally built during the Cold War. The facility relies on thick granite walls for physical protection and stable temperatures, while district cooling and renewable energy help reduce operating costs and environmental impact. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter #DistrictCooling

Big News Network Summary Google has officially broken ground on its first data centre in Austria. Located on a 50-hectare site in Upper Austria, the facility is designed with an operational capacity of 150 MW to address the rising demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence solutions. The project is a cornerstone of Google's commitment to operate on carbon-free energy by 2030 through a reliance on solar power, photovoltaic systems, and plans to repurpose waste heat generated by servers for industrial processes and district heating networks. Continue Reading #News #MemberNewsIDEA #google #DataCenter #DistrictHeating

EESI Summary The U.S. energy sector has a data center problem . In 2023, data centers accounted for 4.4% of the nation’s energy consumption, a significant increase from the 1.9% reported in 2018. This surge has taken a toll on both consumers and the environment due to rising energy and water consumption. With data center development projected to rise, their energy consumption may nearly triple by 2028, placing an unprecedented amount of strain on the already-stressed electrical grid and raising electricity prices for nearby communities One promising solution is to establish district heating systems that take waste heat from data centers and reuse it in nearby buildings through an efficient community-wide network of heat-carrying pipes. By viewing the heat generated by servers as a commodity rather than a byproduct to be discarded, district heating systems can capture and divert excess heat to warm homes, factories, and public facilities. This approach, already used across Europe , has the potential to deliver substantial benefits for the climate, environment, and economy. Continue Reading #News #DataCenter