Analysis of urban scale factors for data center waste-heat use: Three case studies in Sweden

Data centers (DCs) bring important positive economic impacts to the cities and regions where they are established, however, in exchange of a high electricity consumption, which in the end is transformed into unused waste-heat. Only 10% of the DCs in Sweden utilize their waste-heat by generally plugging it into the district heating (DH) network. Despite having a DH tradition in most of Swedish cities, DC waste-heat utilization is not a rule. Data center strategical planning and urban strategical planning should be well coordinated, in order to offer alternative strategies to integrate the DCs waste-heat inside the local sectors/ services constellation in need of heat. Therefore this paper will focus on understanding how the urban planning practice can support DC’s waste heat utilization by proposing an urban scale analytical approach to identify factors in relation to spatial and energy resource planning at a municipal level that may facilitate the DCs’ waste heat utilization in cities.