DATA CENTRE COOLING


Three steps to more effi cient edge data centres:


Choose high-effi ciency cooling systems ■ Customised air and liquid cooling solutions for optimal performance.


■ Advanced HVAC systems for space- restricted environments.


■ Precision cooling for IT equipment longevity and reliability. Design for the application ■ Inner-city data centres must consider limited space and potential plant noise.


■ Modular systems are ideal and can scale with a facility’s needs.


■ Choose compact, high-performance systems for optimal footprint utilisation.


Recover heat, improve sustainability ■ Capture and repurpose waste heat to power nearby buildings.


■ Integrate with district heating systems for energy effi ciency.


■ Reduce carbon footprints while improving operational effi ciency.


and heating. For QMUL, this has led to a signifi cantly reduced dependence on conventional gas boilers. Some waste heat has also been diverted to adjacent residential properties. The project is estimated to reduce the university’s Scope 1 emissions by 625 tonnes of CO2e annually, with a net annual reduction of circa 553 tonnes of tCO2e and only a modest increase in electricity-related emissions. From a design standpoint, the industry needs to stop thinking of cooling purely as a cost centre. If you factor in heat recovery from the start — selecting chillers, heat pumps and piping that can operate at the temperature bands required by local networks — you unlock system-level gains. At Klima-Therm, we increasingly specify high-temperature heat pumps and ambient loop architectures that intentionally recover and export heat. These approaches are mature: they rely on well-understood refrigeration cycles, robust hydraulic design, and the same robust controls we’ve used for decades in process and commercial cooling.


Boom or bust? New UK data centre projects are being planned specifi cally to host AI workloads, and the speed of investment means we must consider sustainability at the earliest design stages. If we build AI centres as isolated power-and-water-hungry islands, we will multiply grid stress, water risk and community opposition.


If we plan them as heat suppliers, integrated into district energy ecosystems, they become part of a smarter


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urban energy architecture. Operators, landlords and local authorities should be proactive: map heat demand, coordinate planning consents, and use pilot projects to establish proven contractual frameworks that pay for exported heat. The projects already underway in the UK show it can be done; the next step is scale.


If we get this right, data centres will stop being seen solely


as energy gluttons and start to be recognised as urban energy hubs that supply warmth to homes, lower urban carbon footprints, and help us use water and electricity more effi ciently. In an ideal world, every data centre proposal should be evaluated for its potential to be a good neighbour.


Heat pump help


With the excess heat from servers typically low in temperature, heat pumps can help in both the heat recovery process and in raising it to a higher temperature for various applications. A typical industrial heat pump, for example, can raise temperatures to 60°C or more, while multi-stage heat pumps can achieve temperatures of over 150°C.


For the data centre, capturing waste heat is not just a good thing to do; it can also improve overall effi ciency, as expelling heat into the atmosphere can use more energy than recovery and reuse.


"New UK data centre projects are being planned specifi cally to host AI workloads, and the speed of investment means we must consider


sustainability at the earliest design stages."


www.acr-news.com • November 2025 13


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