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£36m scheme will transfer waste heat from data centres into thousands of London homes
The mayor of London’s development corporation has been awarded £36m from a government-backed fund to harness waste heat from cooling data centres into new homes.
Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) was awarded the money from the Green Heat Network Fund (GHNF).
The project is the first of its kind to secure GHNF support and will provide low-carbon heating captured from data centres into buildings.
It forms part of a wider £65m award from the GHNF to five projects across the UK and will span three London boroughs.
The plans for Old Oak West, OPDC’s planned new development area, around the future Old Oak Common Station, will deliver more than 9,000 homes and tens of thousands of square metres for commercial development.
In a release, the OPCD said development will have excellent connectivity for the thousands of new and affordable homes in the area and that the new district heating network is key to achieving a zero carbon and sustainable new urban district.
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Data centres offer a predictable supply of low-grade heat that is often wasted, as many inefficient centres eject this heat into the atmosphere.
As a result of this scheme, the wasted heat will instead be distributed to a number of energy centres via a plastic “ambient” network, where it will supply heat pumps that then raise the temperature, and be piped into a mixture of new and existing residential buildings.
The multimillion-pound scheme is expected to deliver 95GWh of heat across five phases between 2026 and 2040, and the wider Old Oak development will create 22,000 new jobs.
David Lunts, chief executive of the OPDC, said: “Recycling the huge amounts of wasted heat from our local data centres into heat and energy for local residents, a major hospital and other users is an exciting and innovative example of OPDC’s support for the mayor’s net zero ambitions.
“We are excited to be leading the way in developing low-carbon infrastructure, supporting current and future generations of Londoners in Old Oak and Park Royal to live more sustainably.”
Lord Callanan, minister for energy efficiency and green finance, said: “Keeping homes warm with waste heat from technology is a glimpse into the future, and demonstrates just how innovative this country can be when it comes to reducing our carbon emissions.”
The mayor of London’s Local Energy Accelerator funding programme, which is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, has also provided almost £400,000 to fund technical expertise.
Infrastructure consultancy AECOM is designing the heat network.
Jo Streeten, managing director of buildings and places – Europe and India at AECOM, said: “An enormous amount of stakeholder collaboration and technical expertise has gone into getting us to this point, but we now have a blueprint for an innovative ambient heat network which we hope will provide a template for future developments.”
In other news from London this week, Inside Housing revealed that less than half of the homes started in London in the past eight years under the publicly funded Affordable Homes Programme have been completed.
