University plans to capture heat from data centre

The University of Edinburgh has been granted over £2 million from the Scottish government to make energy saving upgrades at its King’s Buildings campus, including a project to repurpose waste heat from a data centre to heat buildings.  

The university will use the £2.1 million from the Public Sector Heat Decarbonisation Fund to upgrade building insulation and piping. It will also install a new heat pump system to capture waste heat from one of its data centres.

The data centre generates excess warmth as it cools its servers. The heat pump will draw this out and pipe it to nearby buildings, helping to supplement their heating requirements.

Grant Ferguson, the university’s director of estates and net zero, estimates the initial investment will save around 8% on heating costs. 

“This is a pilot,” he says. “We hope to replicate this on smaller data centres but also far bigger data centres. So, this is very much a starting point for us.”

Since the academic year 2016-17, the University has implemented over a hundred and forty energy efficiency projects, achieving operating cost savings of £1.4 million and greenhouse gas emissions reductions of 3,400 tCO2e per annum.

Catherine Martin, vice principal corporate services at the University of Edinburgh, says:

“The climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges we are facing. The University of Edinburgh has a clear commitment to take positive action to address our impact on the climate and ultimately reach our institutional goal of being net zero by 2040. We need a coordinated approach to these activities and the funding from the Scottish government will support our efforts to generate solutions and sustainably adapt the way we operate.”

The University of Edinburgh, Fife Council and North Lanarkshire Council are among the first seven projects to share grants for clean heating and energy efficiency improvements totalling £11 million from the £20 million Public Sector Heat Decarbonisation Fund.