Since 2020, Meta’s hyperscale data center — spanning 50,000 square meters on an industrial estate on the edge of the city — has been pushing warm air generated by its servers into the district heating network under Odense. That heat is then dispersed through 100,000 households hooked up to the system, with Meta providing enough heat to cover roughly 11,000.
A heat pump still costs energy to run… And running it in reverse to cool a room is the exact same process as running an ac to cool a room. It’s all phase change cooling which we’ve been doing for decades. The only possible innovation that could be had here is using the waste heat instead of just releasing it to the outside environment, but that requires wanting to heat something else while you need to cool the server room.