Clean Heat Beneath our Feet: How Data Centre Outputs Become Positive Energy Inputs

Beneath the surface, the digital world’s hidden engines could become one of our greatest allies in the clean energy transition.

Data centres keep our connected lives running: from AI breakthroughs to your favourite streaming series. But they’ve also, rightfully, earned a reputation for being energy-hungry.

What if that heat wasn’t wasted? What if it powered homes, schools, and local businesses instead?

Across the UK and Europe, that transformation is already happening. Projects like Old Oak & Park Royal in London and Tallaght in Ireland are capturing waste heat from data centres and feeding it into local ground source heat pump (GSHP) networks. The result: clean, affordable heat for thousands of homes and businesses: and a new way for the digital world to give back to the physical one.

As Chris Davidson, CTO of Genius Energy Lab, explains:

“By taking the heat from a data centre and feeding it into a local heat network, we can drive down the heating costs of homes and other businesses in the area.”

Instead of ejecting warmth into the air, these facilities now store it underground, using the earth as a thermal battery. Heat pumps then upgrade it to usable temperatures, turning an invisible by-product into a valuable local resource.

The impact ripples far beyond carbon savings. Communities benefit from cheaper, more stable energy. Local councils gain new tools to decarbonise heat — the largest single source of emissions in the built environment. And operators strengthen trust by delivering visible, shared value.

As Davidson notes, smaller, community-scale data centres could be the next frontier:

“Many companies are now putting up much smaller and local data centres — think the size of a house — and these would work great on a heat network.”

This is the essence of our new campaign:

Beneath the Surface.

It’s about the unseen connections: the ways renewable technologies create unexpected benefits for people, places, and the planet.

Do you know a project delivering hidden benefits of the energy transition?
Whether it’s waste heat, rewilding, circular agriculture or community-owned renewables, we want to feature your story.

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Let’s turn up the volume on what’s happening beneath the surface of the energy transition