Investigation of opportunities for utilising waste heat for district heating networks in cities

Heating and cooling accounts for approximately one third of carbon emissions and half of the energy consumption in the UK, hence, reductions have a significant impact on efforts towards reaching the net zero emissions target. Cities contain a range of sources of waste heat, local to potential heat users, therefore making low-cost, low-carbon district heating viable. This paper investigates the opportunity for heat recovery from data centres and electricity cable tunnels, using case study data in modelling. The energy available from data centres far exceeds that from cable tunnels. The results so far show promising heat energy savings of 1.5 GW (13 TWh p.a.) from data centres, and from cable tunnels annual carbon emissions savings of 27 million tonnes of CO2e with reduced operating costs.