Using Heat Recovery to Improve the Sustainability of Data Centres

Data centres are essential to the UK’s digital infrastructure, but they are also highly energy-intensive facilities. As demand continues to grow – driven by cloud services, data storage and AI – the volume of heat generated by data centres is becoming an increasingly important environmental consideration. How this heat is managed will play a growing role in the sustainability of future developments.

Heat generation and environmental impact of data centres

The UK is now facing a potentially significant challenge: the rising demand for data centres and the resulting heat produced, much of which is currently released into the atmosphere, with potentially serious environmental consequences.

The generally accepted figure is that for every 1 MWh of electrical energy consumed, an equal 1 MWh of heat energy is produced. This represents a substantial amount of heat being released and is a clear environmental concern. For data centres providing cloud storage, electrical demand and heat production are already significant. For data centres running AI workloads, these figures are considerably higher.

Using heat recovery and heat networks to reduce waste heat

District heating uses networked air-source and ground-source heat pumps to provide centralised heat and hot water for towns, campuses and housing developments. These systems remove the need for individual boilers or electric heaters in each building, helping to reduce electrical loads while providing reliable, cost-effective, low-carbon heating and hot water.

Power On’s solution to the data centre heat challenge is to utilise waste heat to warm adjacent residential and commercial properties. In much the same way that heat is harnessed from ground source heat pumps and transferred to the heating and hot water systems of high-density developments, heat from data centres can be captured and distributed to meet local demand.

There are two clear benefits to this approach. First, excess heat is not released into the atmosphere. Second, there is no need to generate heat specifically for homes, campuses and towns. This delivers significant environmental benefits on both sides.

Commercial and planning benefits of data centre heat recovery

There are also benefits for data centre operators. In some cases, data centres can be paid for the waste heat they supply, while also strengthening their corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability credentials.

Alex Randal, Business Lead for Sustainable Heat at Power On, says:

“With the numbers of data centres growing and climate change an ongoing and rising issue, data centres are going to have to think carefully about their PR. As more data centres are needed in more built-up areas, planning rules may soon change to ensure that data centres are meeting new environmental requirements. Having plans for heat recovery and transfer in place (using excess heat to provide heat and hot water to local communities) is likely to help to fast-track planning and data centres will surely have to start working in conjunction with housing developers.”