Think Piece: Reusing Data Centre Heat Waste

Excool sat down with Josh Godman, Head of Production at BerryWorld, to understand more about their mission to reuse heat waste from data centres to heat greenhouses in the horticultural industry.

For the last three decades, sustainability has been at the heart of BerryWorld. They have focused on reducing their environmental impact through improved growing techniques, award-winning packaging innovations and supply optimisation. All while empowering their people and ensuring fair and consistent working conditions within its wider supply chain, practices that have been acknowledged by retailers and industry bodies alike, for example, the Fresh Produce Consortium.

The interview with Josh began by discussing the challenges of traditional heat sources when it comes to heating greenhouses. Josh initially described the shift in energy sources that a lot of us would recognise, from coal fires to gas boilers, to looking at more eco-conscious options like renewable sources or heat pumps. All came with their individual drawbacks, from financial to environmental costs, or simply not being able to withstand the scale BerryWorld required. This got them thinking about alternate sources of heat that were both cost-efficient and sustainable, which is what led them to consider waste heat from data centres.

Heat is a waste product of data centres, seen as an unfortunate and expensive byproduct of computing. However, this waste heat can and has been repurposed; in the northeast of Paris, the Olympic Aquatics Centre is heated by waste heat from an Equinix data centre, known as PA10. The heat is also diverted to local housing, providing the area with free heating for 15 years after a 2M government investment was secured. As well as this, Equinix are also significantly saving on cooling costs by rediverting their waste heat, all while improving their green credentials. So, although the project required significant investment to get it off the ground, something that BerryWorld identify as the biggest limitation, the burden of data centre waste heat was turned into a mutually-beneficial solution for a large number of people.

The Olympic Aquatics Centre isn’t an isolated case study. In fact, there are many documented cases of data centre heat being re-purposed. For instance, a Meta data centre in Denmark donates its waste heat to a local hospital and surrounding houses, and an Amazon data centre in Dublin transfers the heat from their servers to an air-handling unit, turning it into hot water for local apartments and public and commercial buildings. These are further examples of companies that have seized the opportunities that data centres present, offsetting carbon emissions and creating a more circular economy by utilising waste products collaboratively.

The benefits of collaboratively reusing data centre heat to support the horticultural business isn’t just limited to financial and environmental-savings; horticultural businesses like BerryWorld already have established connections with landowners, eliminating the gruelling task of sourcing land big and remote enough to accommodate a data centre.

Despite the clear benefits of reusing data centre waste heat for the horticultural business, there are hurdles along the way. Although the re-purposing of data centre waste heat is well established, it’s a new step to involve the horticultural business. The data centre industry is naturally risk-aversive due to the large investments involved. What’s more, the process of creating a data centre from its inception is typically a long one, meaning that, in order to initiate a horticultural collaboration, it would need to be happen years in advance, ideally aligning up with the crop’s harvest cycles. A data centre’s cooling infrastructure would also need to be adapted to accommodate the transfer of heat. This is something that Excool are proud to offer. You can learn more about our adaptable cooling solutions here.

The horticultural industry is struggling, and as more and more data centres are cropping up to facilitate AI, we need to be also thinking about how we can rebalance the sustainability scales. Blockheating reported that a 200kW data centre can potentially heat 1 hectare (2.47 acres) of greenhouse, which could support the growth of more than 44,000kg of tomatoes per month without any additional energy. It’s a tried-and-tested formula that requires one person to take the leap and solidify it as a viable option for both data centres and the horticultural industry. It would become a global initiative, making the region a pioneer of sustainable solutions for data centres amidst the environmental concern over the rise of AI.

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