The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has announced the selection of six towns and cities to develop England’s first heat network zones.

The scheme will be deployed in Leeds, Plymouth, Bristol, Stockport, Sheffield, and London and will receive £5.8 million ($7.53m) in government funding. It will create networks of insulated underground pipes that distribute heat from centralized sources to large, non-domestic buildings and those already communally heated.

The zones will recycle excess heat generated from data centers or factories to heat several buildings simultaneously. In London, excess heat from nearby data centers will heat the Old Oak and Park Royal Development.

The project was first unveiled in November 2023, with the UK government awarding £36 million ($44.5m) to the project, which the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation will use to create the heating system to harness waste heat between 20°C (68°F) and 35°C (95°F).

Construction on the zones is expected to begin in 2026 and will deploy data analytic systems to identify the best spots and to help plan and build the technology at scale.

Minister for Energy Consumers Miatta Fahnbulleh said: “Heat network zones will play an important part in our mission to deliver clean power for the country, helping us take back control of our energy security.”

Several data centers within the UK have signed agreements to support district heating. For example, in July, Queen Mary University of London announced that it was planning to reuse waste heat from its data center.

District heating from data centers has also been extensively deployed across Europe. The Nordics, in particular, have invested heavily in the technology. Stockholm Data Parks is a prominent example of an urban data center campus in Stockholm, where each facility is linked to the city’s district heating network.

This has been bolstered by several announcements over 2024, including one from Finnish firm Remov, which announced that its 7.2MW data center would share its waste heat with the city of Seinäjoki.

In addition, Germany has taken an increasing interest in district heating following the passing of an Energy Efficiency Act in September 2023. This act requires data centers with a capacity of over 200kW to reuse 20 percent of their energy by 2028.

The announcement from DESNZ comes shortly after its decision to direct the National Energy System Operator (NESO) to produce a strategic spatial plan that provides a blueprint for the UK's infrastructure until 2050 to provide stability for investors.

NESO will develop several options for the future energy system, which will be presented to ministers.