Europe wants more cities to use datacenter waste heating. How's that going? As part of its 2035 energy targets, the EU wants the heating and cooling sector to be carbon-neutral, using renewable sources including waste heat from datacenters. Germany has gone even further and tried to mandate this with targets. How's it going? If you judge by recent successful EU-funded initiatives, quite well. But some …
Heat isn't the problem. Greenhouse gases are.
And to reduce those, it would make ALOT of sense to, oh I don't know, not turning off nuclear reactors and then burning more coal instead
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/12/23205691/germany-energy-crisis-nuclear-power-coal-climate-change-russia-ukraine
Or to increase the prioritisation of the availability and quality of public transport over building ever more highways and cars.
Or to strengthen the powergrid infrastructure, so that produced green energy can actually be used
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germanys-stressed-grid-is-causing-trouble-across-europe
Data centres in the UK close to business districts (think Slough, the City, Canary Wharf etc) could be plumbed into the airconditioning plants of said business districts. You don't need 300C steam to do stuff... water that is 50C warm is already enough to keep shops at a comfortable 20-22C, it's just like a heatpump that just stays on 100% of the time to quietly warm up the place.
And in summer, during the 'hot months' (where temps are over 25C) you can use the heat to drive a Sterling engine to run air conditioning. It works elsewhere, it can work here. But it requires this pesky thing called 'investment', and it's something councils don't have these days...
Existing constraints (power price, emissions trading) should already drive data centres into minimising their excess heat. In addition supply and demand are inversely correlated: data centres produce excess heat when demand for it is lower. Solarthermic adsorption for cooling in the summer could be an option but the low fungibility remains a problem.
Many existing industrial plants (steel, etc.) have long been part of district heating systems but these have declined as they've been closed down or relocated away from residential areas.
Synthetic fuels remain an option for anything operating at scale.
Even before the current energy crisis, and Germany's nuclear switch-off (which happened last weekend, months after government officials unbelievably and jawdroppingly suggested keeping the nuclear plants as an "emergency reserve"),
It's only unbelievable or jawdropping to people who are concentrating on political rhetoric rather than the boring technical issues with keeping the lights on.
There is a triad of technologies that work for large scale, reliable and always on production of electricity. Coal, Nuclear and Gas.
Germany has chosen to decommission nuclear, largely because they had a very cheap (below market price) source of gas (Russia). Therefore, the Germans decided to decommission the nuclear component of their power in favour of gas generation, publicly putting faith in wind turbines as the future (which are spectacularly unreliable as far as consistent output is concerned and so only act as load reduction for gas, so this is just greenwashing PR for remaining with fossil fuels permanently)
Then Germany was trapped in a position created by their own incompetence; they were left with a choice of appeasing a genocidal maniac for cheap gas prices at the cost of losing political leadership of the EU and becoming outcasts to every other democracy, or keeping the political leadership of the EU and ditching the genocidal maniac and losing the cheap gas. Losing the cheap gas removed gas power generation from the menu, and they'd already decided to remove nuclear which leaves coal power generation, which is why Germany is increasing coal mining output even if they have to bulldoze wind farms to do it.
Therefore in a year where the UK has barely used coal at all at the cost of rising electricity prices, Germany has been burning the dirtiest and nastiest form of coal enmasse to keep the lights on. Nuclear has been, is, and probably will remain for a long time the best option for reducing CO2 emissions while keeping prices at a sensible level.
So Germany's greens have come between the rocks of reality and an ideological hard place; eliminating Nuclear comes at the cost of increased CO2 emissions and a permanent commitment to fossil fuels, and that is increasingly obvious to anybody who cares to spend even a small amount of time looking into it.
The only reason that Russia was providing huge quantities of gas at well below market prices was to create dependence upon it and that was picked up as a risk even back in the cold war days and Germany committed to never sourcing more than a small percentage of their gas from Russia as a result. That basically went out of the window as soon as it was promised.
Truth be told, the reason why Germany has been doing very well economically for decades has been a well below market price source of cheap energy. That was Germany's interest; but it came with a price tag of letting the Russians blackmail them into doing things against their own interests; there are still what many nations see as uncomfortably large factions in Germany who want to go back to the pre war status quo and most of Eastern Europe who is on Russia's menu is not looking very favourably towards Germany at the moment as a result.
Very very early results of that can be seen already; Poland in particular has placed huge orders for weapons from South Korea in preference to weapons from Germany; Poland's order of a thousand K2 tanks is approaching half the number of Leopard 2's ever built and losing that large an order is a serious pain point for any arms manufacturer, especially since the order comes with a production line in Poland which will in a few years create an incentive for Poland to keep the production line open by securing export orders. That would be done by marketing these tanks to other eastern european countries bordering (and being threatened by) Russia which destroys the Leopard 2's export market.
So yeah, that decision is going to be haunting Germany for decades on any number of different levels, including those that aren't even foreseeable at the moment.
"a price tag of letting the Russians blackmail them"
Are you sure? I get the feeling that the Germans welcomed them with open arms. Gerhard Schröder worked for Gazprom. They even sold off the gas storage facilities to Gazprom!
There is documented evidence of Russian backing to the anti fracking and anti nuclear movements. The rooskies knew exactly what they were doing and we let them do it in the name of green.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/19/russia-secretly-working-with-environmentalists-to-oppose-fracking
Truth be told, the reason why Germany has been doing very well economically for decades has been a well below market price source of cheap energy.
That's reductivist and not entirely accurate. Lots of countries have cheaper energy than Germany and yet it still managed to compete with them. The deals with Gazprom did, however, provide long term price security and that's often worth more than the actual price itself. Yes, it was recklessly naive but it's what the majority of the politicians and industrialists wanted.
"rational leaders (in which number Putin - or at least the oligarchy -was once believed to count) would choose GDP over war."
Putin and his family lack for nothing other than the ability to travel internationally. Even with invading other countries, his quality of life remains unaffected. A business leader whose salary, stock options and bonuses that are tied to GDP and economic prosperity will be more peaceful.
That's because he's a dictator. If he had to face voters in fair elections where his main opponents weren't regularly poisoned, jailed or falling out of 7th story windows he'd either have already been tossed out or would be tossed out when they held their next election.
If not for being a dictator able to line his pockets with countless billions stolen from the Russian people he might be comfortable but not "unaffected" by Russia's shaky economic future.
The majority of the population was against nuclear for decades. For over fifty years, Germany had also failed to deal with the issue of where to put the waste, something that all densely populated countries have to deal with. Also, considering that the reactor rods come Russia, sticking with it wouldn't really solve the problem of being dependent upon Russia.
A lot of these issues are self induced. Recycling fuel was deemed 'bad' as you could make bombs from it (which really you couldn't as most civilian reactors didn't make good bomb plutonium) and after Jimmy Carter effectively banned recycling pretty much everyone went to the 'once through' fuel cycle. That then leads to the 'what to do with the waste' problem.
If you are throwing away 95% of the usable fuel then nuclear looks bad. Sadly we are still going down the road of Gen3/3+ reactors with little prospect of recycling so just like Germany with the gas we are making a rod for our own back.
If we started down the path of Gen4 reactors then what the UK has stored at Sellafield could power the country for centuries.
"after Jimmy Carter effectively banned recycling pretty much everyone went to the 'once through' fuel cycle. That then leads to the 'what to do with the waste' problem."
The ban was lifted (Ford, I think) but no company was going to invest in that business out of fear it might get banned again while they still had an enormous amount of un-amortized capital expenses still to make up. The US government made themselves responsible for the waste to make sure it was responsibly stored and that it was diverted. The problem is that while they took responsibility, no work was down on the storage issue before politicians moved on to the next topic they could yell and scream about.
"Ban on recycling nuclear fuel in the US: 1977
Still currently in effect (from what I could find)."
I'm pretty sure I read that the ban was lifted. It might be moot anyway as I doubt any company would take on the work. I would be a very hard business to get insurance and if the majority party swung one way or the other, the policy might be reversed yet again. The US also doesn't have any reactors that use Mox fuels and none are even being considered which would mean any recycling would only be to recover U235. I'm not sure if there is any ROI in that over just taking natural ore and enriching it.
I was given to understand that one reason that many of the reactor fuel rods come from Russia is that they have been turning the soviet unions nuclear weapons into reactor fuel, and recycling from a weapons grade material downwards to a middle grade fuel is much cheaper than making it from scratch, especially if the weapons grade material is essentially "free".
IMO That's a solid win, and it's well worth buying up as much as they'll sell us even at this point purely so they literally couldn't use it as warheads or sell the stuff to the axis of autocratic idiots.
(Preferably while keeping our own facilities for making reactor fuel running so that we have a fallback for when they either run out of old soviet era nukes or decide to stop sawing them up for fuel rods)
I've never come across that argument so I'd be tempted to call it specious. Germany has always been prepared to extend "Ostpolitik" to Russia in the forlorn hope that trade would somehow lessen Russia's expansion tendencies. Actually, listening to politicians across the spectrum talk about Russia is a good way to induce nausea: from "ostalgia" to the thought of a resumption of the 18th and 19th century "special relationship", all top quality bullshit.
One of the reasons Russia is involved in the Sahel is access to the Uranium there.
"I was given to understand that one reason that many of the reactor fuel rods come from Russia is that they have been turning the soviet unions nuclear weapons into reactor fuel, and recycling from a weapons grade material downwards to a middle grade fuel is much cheaper than making it from scratch, especially if the weapons grade material is essentially "free"."
Russia was also having an issue processing the material themselves so it was backing up. The US buying up that 'packages' to recycle into power plant fuel was a bonus to getting it out of Russia and preventing it from being sold "on the left".
And where did they get that opposition from? From CND, who in turn opposed nuclear power not for the power aspect, but the fact that the early nuclear reactors generating power were after all there to breed plutonium for nuclear weapons. CND was a pacifist organisation, but over the years, especially after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, it reminded the world that nuclear is not perfect and that those claiming it is are wrong (and that many in the industry are happy to brush incidents under the carpet).
Nuclear waste is a problem, yes, reprocessing is a problem, yes. We've seen how much of a mess the THORP plant in Sellafield was in as it was decommissioned. HOWEVER - nuclear waste would be less of a problem if the original breeder concept were to just burn through all the nuclear fuel. Breeders found themselves regularly defuelled to get the plutonium out, instead of letting the fuel transmute further and further down the actinides until it ended up at stable and not radioactive isotopes. Because cheap new uranium reserves were found (Africa, Asia, Australia), there's no reason to 'burn up' nuclear fuel anymore because you can simply defuel, chuck the rods into a pool to let them stabilise, and finally chuck them into concrete/glass barrels to glow away for another millennium in storage somewhere. It's yet more wastefulness.
And yes, Charlie is right in also pointing out that a lot of the nuclear fuel used comes from Russia (via Rusatom) or Kazakhstan, which is something the Greens pointed out when the whole debate of reviewing and reviving nuclear in Germany flared up last year. They pointed out that it was not the catastrophe risk (as it was after Chernobyl and Fukushima) but rather the supply risk. "We're just exchanging one fuel for another, supplied by Russia" was the argument, and I can't see fault with that either, to be honest. After all, this is what it is about, energy independence away from Russia. Also, nuclear power stations are not connected to district heating systems either (because of the fear of radiation), so while Germany might have all the electricity in the world from nuclear, the heating that you get from gas you wouldn't be able to replace with nuclear (which is also true).
It's a very complicated mess whichever way you swing it.
The article you point to is only partially right. Yes, Garzweiler is still being mined but will be shut earlier than originally agreed. In total less coal will be mined and burned than originally planned.
I agree that German energy policy has been an inconsistent mess over the last twenty years, but the last year has forced some very difficult decisions that had been continually put off and has provided long-needed clarity. But more controversy is to come, so watch this space.
Germany is increasing coal mining output even if they have to bulldoze wind farms to do it.
And they are strip mining lignite; the lowest quality, dirtiest form of coal containing the highest amount of CO2. Yet in Britain we have large reserves of the highest quality lower CO2 anthracite coal, but if anyone suggests we make any use of it, even as coking coal rather than power generation, we are made out to be international pariahs.
Why ? They'll be selling the heat, won't they ? So, there's profit to be made and, if you want to make money, you have to start by paying money. They've already done the hard part anyway : the heating process is up and running already.
This reflex of not wanting to pay in order to get something has to stop. It's not because you're a corporation that you have the right to government handouts and tax breaks.
they'll be selling the heat, won't they ? So, there's profit to be made
1, install, operate and maintain all the plant to concentrate the heat
2, run distribution network to nearest town cos zoning didn't let you build your massive DC in the middle of the village
3, install, operate and maintain all the heating in the houses
4, generate the list waste heat when the weather is hot and nobody wants their central heating on
5, profit
That’s what those who actually created the Industrial Revolution.
The idea of money for nothing was a feature of the victorians, namely those who in the main were able to live off the fruits of their fore fatherslabours…
Unfortunately, in the UK the Conservatives still think like the indulged late Victorians…
"Greenhouse heating?"
That's the low hanging fruit (pun intended) which means that siting data centers should include planning to have other businesses around that can use low grade heat. Food processing is another industry that uses lots of heat for things. Even if the temperature has to be boosted, it's still cheaper to start from a higher temp in the first place.
"Initially used for tomatoes, the operator changed to cannabis for pharmaceutical use."
Oh, lovely. From food to dope, what a mess. They could just work a deal to buy pot cheap from legal states in the US. It's been taxed and regulated so heavily that all of the black market dealers that thought they'd just get out of the weed business are making even more money. That's leaving many legal growers with tons of product they can't shift fast enough. I think that beyond the get rich quick thinkers, the act of legalizing marijuana isn't bringing in people that didn't take it due to the legality like they thought. If it's ever legal on the federal level, the big ag, pharma, tobacco and booze companies will get into the market and they know all about branding, distribution and advertising. All of the little players will be toast. It won't even be a benefit for the big companies to buy them out vs. just rolling straight over them.
In Finland waste heat already is a high value commodity. Most cities have central heating, power plants generating heat that's transferred to apartment buildings as hot water. Excess heat from data centers works well as an extra heat source there. Of course Finland is well north of 54th parallel, indeed almost entirely north of 60°, and so obviously colder than most of Europe.
"In Finland waste heat already is a high value commodity. "
A data center is a business that's easy to integrate into a residential area. It doesn't create noise, smells and add lots of traffic so it could be in the center of residential buildings and even single family homes where it would be easy to transport the heat.
"I guess you've never been around one when it does its weekly or monthly diesel generator testing? I sure wouldn't want to live in a single family home next door to that."
As opposed to diesel city busses going by several times a day? I'd call generator testing a minor thing. Traffic is a major issue in siting businesses in residential areas and a data center has very little of that other than set up and refits.
"Those datacenter generators typically use diesel locomotive engines. Compare the volume of a city bus versus a diesel locomotive from up close and get back to me."
Ok, make them stick the generators below grade and do some sound mitigation. I had a business a block from some busy freight lines and know how loud a team of locos are when accelerating and pulling a heavy load. It's not impossible to silence big generators. The movie industry uses heavily sound-proofed mobile generators on sets. They used to have to be massive since some lights would run up to 10kW-20kW each. With LEDs and more sensitive digital sensors, there isn't the same power demand, but it's still quite a bit for a whole location. All of the honey wagons with AC running full blast suck up lots of juice.
Need to be careful about what you mean by “data centre”. The typical bit barn will have much in common with a warehouse/distribution centre, not sure how many people want a warehouse/bit barn with 11 m ceiling at the end of their patio (about all of a “garden” many modern houses possess).
However, given all the things “edge” is being touted as the solution for, I suspect a house sized “edge” data centre is in the realms of possibility.
This article has popped up in a few guises in recent weeks/months.
Datacentres do produce large volumes of heat, but it is of low grade. Lots of 60-90 deg C air is not particularly useful. The low temperature/pressure differential means that moving the heat to where you want it costs a lot of energy. The cost of implementation versus realities of where things are installed are hard to make stack up.
Considering that Network Rail could not make heat recovery from the concentrated heat in the braking zones of Crossrail at Canary Wharf economic, with customers available on tap; the problems of making it work on a datacentre are somewhat more intractable.
"Lots of 60-90 deg C air is not particularly useful."
If your food processing company needs to generate steam, it would be easier to start with water that is already 80C. There are lots of other processes that can use heat at that temp as is or would benefit from being able to pre-heat using that supply if it will reduce energy costs.
That is by design.
Currently, heat is regarded as a low value waste product. Hence solutions that treat all heat the same such as immersion cooling, that simply create large volumes of low grade heat.
Begin to treat heat like cold and things can look very different:
Data centres with highly insulated walls to keep the heat in, so it can be better channeled to low heat capture devices. Systems being cooled, like gaming PCs, with one system for hot components and another for the cooler bits.
Obviously, the real challenge is converting the heat to something that can be usefully passed on. Market gardens seem a good proposition, given this would be a constant supply of heat, rather than the more intermittent heat cross rail was having to deal with.
I worked in a shopping mall back in the day. I remember when a new large department store opened with the latest in energy conservation measures. Their claim was that the specially designed climate control system gathered body heat from shoppers to recycle it throughout the premises, thereby lowering energy consumption. All of the local media repeated these claims whenever the mall was mentioned in the "news."
The fact of the matter was that the store was in a desert climate and didn't need to be heated. With a daily high temperature of 104-degrees F (40-C) for over 100 days a year and the average annual low about half that, most commercial buildings had massive cooling systems and rarely used heating.
When the environmental pretense begins to take hold, what happens is that the claims of extraordinary and magical properties increase instead of the beneficial and practical stuff.
Not sure I'd want my district heating to be based on a datacenter's waste heat. While they do have a back-up, the servers are naturally dependant on grid electricity. The underlying technology also ages very rapidly - various generations and computing use can generate vastly different heat - and while the thermal side of the problem can surely be balanced out, it feels like a perverse incentive against computing efficiency. Not to mention the provider's whole business model is extremely closely tied to economic cycles - come a recession corporations will start discontinuing their cloud subscriptions and a data center surplus might lead to your heat provider going bankrupt. So maybe with a government or university datacenter that is very likely to still be around in 40-60 years yay, otherwise nay.
"Burning coal releases a significant amount of radiation too, some studies say more radiation is released from coal fired power station than from nuclear power plants."
There's a certain amount of radioactive elements contained in coal and they get concentrated when the coal is burned. Most coal power plants have scrubbers to minimize particulates from going up the flue and most naturally radioactive elements are on the dense side so they get collected, but those fly ash piles are more radioactive than the land surrounding nuclear power plants by a considerable amount.
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