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Data centers can warm homes and other buildings by transferring heat from their servers’ cooling systems into a district-heating network. Because that heat is often too cool to use directly, a large heat pump raises its temperature; insulated pipes then carry hot water to connected buildings. It works best when the data center is close to a suitable network and steady demand for heat.
How server heat reaches buildings
Servers use electricity, and much of that energy leaves the equipment as heat. Cooling systems remove the heat to keep servers within operating limits. In a heat-recovery project, a heat exchanger transfers heat from the data center’s cooling loop to a separate heating system, keeping the two circuits apart.
A heat pump then raises the temperature when needed. The heated water can feed a district-heating network: a system that distributes heat to buildings through insulated pipes. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says heat pumps can use low-temperature waste heat below 45°C in district-heating grids. In the Odense project, the source heat was 27°C and the heat pump raised it to 70°C.
What the system needs
- A usable heat source: Heat must be captured from the facility’s cooling system without compromising server cooling.
- Heat exchangers and pumps: These transfer heat between the cooling and heating circuits.
- A heat pump, where needed: It uses electricity to lift low-temperature heat to the delivery temperature required by the network.
- A nearby heat network and customers: Insulated pipes connect the data center to a district-heating system and the buildings it serves.
- A way to balance supply and demand: Storage, backup plants or other heat sources can help when available data-center heat and building demand do not match.
District-heating networks can combine heat from several sources, allowing operators to adapt as supplies change. The IEA says these networks serve around 10% of global building heat demand, based on its 2022 district-energy report. Denmark is one example where district heating supplies 65% of building heat demand, according to that report.
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Why a heat pump is important
Heat from a data center’s cooling loop may be lower-temperature than the water a heating network needs. A heat pump extracts energy from the source and delivers it at a higher temperature, but it requires electricity. Its performance and running costs depend in part on the source temperature, the required delivery temperature, operating hours and electricity price.
One way to describe heat-pump performance is its coefficient of performance (COP): the ratio of heat output to electricity input under specified conditions. The Stockholm Bahnhof Thule case study reports a COP of 3.0 for that installation. That is a project-specific figure, not a guaranteed result for other heat pumps or sites.
Examples of data-center heat recovery
| Project | What the source reports | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| Odense, Denmark — Meta data center | The European Commission technology report describes a 42 MWth electric heat pump, upgrading heat from 27°C to 70°C. It reports 160,000 MWh of district heat per year, described as equivalent to supplying 11,000 households. | These are figures for the Odense case study, not a typical output or household equivalent for data centers generally. |
| Bahnhof Thule, Stockholm, Sweden | The Smart Cities Marketplace case study reports three heat pumps, nearly 1.2 MW of cooling output, approximately 1.6 MW of heat output, district heating at about 68°C and a heat-pump COP of 3.0. | These are installation-specific reported values; they should not be treated as a benchmark for other projects. |
| Stockholm district-heating system | An IEA commentary says more than 20 data centers provide 1.5% of Stockholm’s district-heating needs. Separately, the Smart Cities Marketplace says Stockholm’s Open District Heating marketplace launched in 2014 and has more than 30 data centers connected to the city’s district-heating and cooling networks. | The sources give separate system-wide figures and use different descriptions. They do not establish that the counts share the same measurement date or accounting boundary. |
| Espoo, Finland — planned supply | The IEA commentary says a cluster of new data centers will provide enough waste heat for around 100,000 homes. | This is a forward-looking estimate, not confirmation that those homes are already being heated. |
What determines whether a project works
Distance to pipes and customers
Heat has to reach a network and buildings. Connecting a distant data center may require new long-distance pipes, adding infrastructure and cost. The IEA’s 2025 Energy and AI report estimates that about 10% of European building space-heating demand is within 5 km of a data center that is also within a district-heating service area. The estimate describes proximity, not the amount of heat that can actually be delivered.
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Temperature and network requirements
The source temperature, the network’s required supply temperature and its return temperature affect how much upgrading is needed. A site that can provide heat close to the network’s operating requirements may be simpler to integrate than one with a larger temperature gap.
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Seasonal demand and peak heating
Data centers can produce heat steadily, while building demand changes with the weather. There may be few buyers for heat in summer, and recovered heat may not cover winter peaks. Storage can shift some heat from one period to another, but seasonal storage brings additional infrastructure, investment and design requirements. Other heat sources or backup plants may still be needed.
Electricity use and the heat being displaced
A heat pump consumes electricity, so recovered heat is not automatically renewable or zero-carbon. Its climate benefit depends on the electricity used and on what source of heat it displaces. In its 2025 Energy and AI report, the IEA attributes a reduction of 50 g CO₂ per kWh of heat supplied in the Stockholm Data Parks context to the Covenant of Mayors (2023). That attributed figure is specific to the cited context; it is not a general emissions rate for data-center heat recovery.
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Whether the heat is genuinely waste
EU guidance says off-site use contributes to decarbonisation only when the heat is truly waste—that is, it could not reasonably be avoided or recovered for on-site use. The guidance also says waste heat cannot count toward the EU’s overall 32% renewable-energy target. This accounting rule does not, by itself, establish the life-cycle emissions of a particular project.
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The IEA’s 2025 Energy and AI report estimates that data-center heat demand located within a few kilometres could provide about 300 TWh of heat by 2030, equivalent to 10% of European space-heating needs. This is modeled potential based on possible recovery rates and heat-pump performance—not installed capacity or a forecast of actual deliveries. The report also notes that even strong coupling would meet only a fraction of residential demand.
For broader context, the IEA’s 2026 Renewables in District Energy report says district-energy networks supply heat to around 600 million people worldwide. That figure is for district energy overall; it is not a count of people heated by data-center waste heat.
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What to check when evaluating a project
A useful assessment looks beyond a facility’s headline heat output. The project’s value depends on how much heat can be delivered at the right temperature, in the right place and when customers need it.
- Source temperature and required network temperature
- Heat-pump performance and the electricity supply
- Heat output and annual operating hours
- Distance to customers, existing pipes and network capacity
- Seasonal match between heat supply and demand, including storage or backup needs
- Capital and operating costs
- The heat source that recovered heat would replace
The IEA says mapping heat sources by location, temperature and availability over time—alongside heat demand and existing networks—helps identify viable projects. There is no established universal figure for the share of a typical data center’s energy that can be recovered as useful building heat; results depend on the site and heating system.
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