Edinburgh University plans to use waste heat from its data center to warm up its buildings.
The university has received grant funding of just under £2.1 million ($2.62m) to support the energy-saving project at its Kings Buildings campus, and will also invest £520,000 of its own money in the scheme.
It will see a heat recovery pump installed at the Mary Somerville data center, which is housed in the James Clerk Maxwell building on the campus.
The recovered heat will then be used in the campus heating network, which is currently powered by gas.
The university received the grant from the Scottish government’s public sector heat decarbonization fund, which is looking at ways to boost the energy efficiency of public sector organizations.
Edinburgh University is aiming to become zero carbon by 2040 and says it has reduced its carbon emissions by 400 tonnes of CO₂e since 2016.
“The climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges we face,” said Catherine Martin, vice principal for corporate services at the University of Edinburgh. “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’s data center is named after Mary Somerville, the pioneering 19th-century Scottish scientist.
The new project is not the only heat reuse scheme being undertaken at the Edingburgh campus. In January it was revealed that a £2.6 million ($3.3m) international project would investigate storing waste heat from the university’s supercomputer in old mine workings, before using it to heat local homes.
Known as the Edinburgh Geobattery feasibility study, it will examine the idea of storing hot water at 40°C in disused mines before using it for domestic heating in the city.
The heat will come from The University of Edinburgh’s Advanced Computing Facility and could warm at least 5,000 households if the feasibility test proves practical.
