Heat pumps enabling waste heat utilization: unlocking sustainable energy from data centers
Driven by digitalization, AI and increasing demand for cloud services, data centers are rapidly emerging as one of the major energy consumers and thus play a crucial role in achieving sustainable energy transitions. With its input electricity converted into waste heat, their integration into circular energy systems offers substantial sustainability potential. Despite increasing pressure from legal requirements and industry-wide motivation to provide sustainable solutions, projects must still be economically viable, whereas the feasibility is highly dependent on project-specific conditions. This study investigates the techno-economic feasibility of waste heat utilization from a representative 4 MW air-cooled colocation data center in a typical district heating network in Austria, focusing on the role of heat pumps to upgrade waste heat for district heating supply. Three integration scenarios were analyzed, differing in heat pump integration configurations and the resulting temperature levels. Using defined technical and economic parameters, levelized costs of heat (LCOH) were calculated for each scenario, including sensitivity analyses for electricity price and annual operating hours. The results show LCOH values between 53.6 €/MWh and 91.7 €/MWh, strongly influenced by operational hours and electricity cost. The findings highlight that heat pump-assisted waste heat reuse from data centers can be cost-competitive with other renewable heat sources, particularly with year-round operation. Hence, data centers can evolve from pure energy consumers into local heat providers, supporting sustainable digital infrastructure and climate-neutral energy systems.