Poland will be the latest to see that the overheating data centre market can find useful ways to dissipate the root cause
Last month Polish data centre operator and cloud company Beyond.pl announced plans to grow its Poznan campus by 150 MW of IT capacity. It said at the time the new capacity will support high-density and AI workloads of up to 132kW per rack – way beyond the realms of air cooling.
Now, the operator has come up with a solution on what to do with all that excess heat. It has signed a deal with Veolia Energia Poznan to recover waste heat generated at the campus and as part of a feasibility study, the two will look at how they can reuse thermal energy produced within the data centre infrastructure to feed the city’s district heating network. The solution will provide a source of “low-emission heat” for Poznan’s residents, reduce the use of fossil fuels and improve the energy efficiency of the district heating infrastructure.
Over the past year, the market for recovering waste heat from data centres to heat communities has seen growing interest, particularly in Europe, where several companies and governments have launched or expanded district heating projects.
Scandinavian countries are leading the way. Stockholm’s data centre heat recovery project aims to provide 10% of the city’s heating needs by 2035, while in Denmark, companies like Meta and Apple are integrating heat recovery systems into their data centres. Google is doing similar in Finland – although Microsoft’s Espoo plans could make this DC the biggest heat recovery campus in the world – while Telenor wants to do the same in Norway.
“Data centres are very stable energy sources independent of weather conditions. The continuous evolution of information technology and thermal management systems steadily increase the quality of waste heat, enhancing its potential for efficient use within the energy ecosystem,” said Beyond.pl head of innovation Piotr Kowalski. “Similar innovative projects have been implemented in Ireland, Denmark, and Finland, where Amazon Web Services, Meta, and Microsoft data centers are connected to district heating networks, supplying up to 40% of the local heat demand.”
Poznan plans
The joint project between Veolia and Beyond.pl aims to recover heat generated by servers operating in the operator’s data centres, using AI – no doubt consuming as well. The initiative involves the construction and operation of an advanced waste heat recovery solution. The key element of the solution stems from the combination of next-generation high-density servers with industrial-grade heat pumps, which will enable the supply of heat to the district heating network at required parameters.
Recovered heat will serve as a source of low-emission energy for residential, commercial, and industrial buildings in Poznan, the capital of the Greater Poland region. As a result of the collaboration between Veolia and Beyond.pl, a new heat source can be harnessed in the southeastern part of Poznan with a thermal capacity of approximately 30 MW in the project’s first phase. The reduction of CO2 emissions from the solution is estimated by approximately 52,500 tons annually and the reduction in water requirement by approximately 76,500 cubic meters annually.
The initiative will also enhance energy security of Poznan and the region, as the heat production process does not depend fossil fuels. The collaboration is the first heat recovery initiative of such scale in Poland between a data centre and a district heating company.
“Using waste heat in our installations, a by-product of data processing will reduce fossil fuel consumption. This means that Poznan’s district heating network will in a greater proportion be powered by green energy,” said Luiz Hanania, CEO of Veolia Group in Poland.
Beyond.pl said its data centres were the first in Poland and the region to be fully powered by renewable energy, guaranteed by certificates of origin. Data Center 2, located on the Poznan Campus, boasts high energy efficiency and low water consumption. The operator also has experience recovering heat for its own needs. Since the commissioning of Data Center 2 in 2016, heat generated in the data halls has been re-used to heat the office and logistics and staging facility building located on the campus.
“Thanks to ongoing initiatives and investments, Beyond.pl is today one of the lowest-emission data center service providers in the country and the region. We use 100% renewable energy to power our data centre facilities, while concurrently implementing real actions that combine highest-quality data centre security with a focus on resources and environmental care,” said Beyond.pl CEO Wojciech Stramski. “The collaboration between Beyond.pl and Veolia Energia Poznan on heat recovery is a unique project in the region and a bold step towards promoting decarbonisation efforts in Poland, which will tangibly benefit Poznan’s residents.”
Waste heat, a byproduct of data processing, could soon become an important part of the overall supply of low-emission heat. Heat recovery and re-use projects fully align with the EU’s sustainable development and energy transition goals.