Assessment of the Potential to Use the Expelled Heat Energy from a Typical Data Centre in Ireland for Alternative Farming Methods

Abstract

Data centres, though a necessary part of modern society, are being stigmatised for consuming vast amounts of electricity for their operational and cooling needs. Due to Ireland’s reliance on fossil fuels to meet the increased energy demand of data centres, the data centres are contributing significantly to Ireland’s total carbon emissions. As much of this energy is expelled from data centres as waste heat energy, the potential for recycling some of this wasted heat energy was explored using environmentally friendly systems from recent publications. The recovered waste heat energy was applied in a vertical farming system, and the benefits of this waste heat to the vertical farm were analysed and quantified in two scenarios. Using conservative estimates, it was predicted that each vertical farm could be between 5–23% the size of the data centre and produce enough food to feed between 14–61 adults their daily calorie needs, and between 13–58 people their daily fresh produce requirements, depending on the scenario applied. For a more accurate prediction, each vertical farm would have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, as there is no current research in this area. However, there was not enough data available on Irish data centres to perform these calculations.