The leading Nordic data centre and colocation provider has finalised its agreement with Vestforbrænding, Denmark’s largest waste-to-energy company, to use excess heat from DEN01 within Vestforbrænding’s district heating network.

atNorth’s DEN01 data centre site is located in Ballerup, Greater Copenhagen, and is due to be operational in Q1 2026. As a 22.5MW metro site, the collaboration with Vestforbrænding will see DEN01 enabling warm water as a biproduct of its energy efficient direct liquid cooling technology. This will then be used by the district heating network to heat more than 8,000 homes in the local area from 2028.

The landmark process hopes to reduce the amount of energy needed to provide local central heating.

“For many years, we have talked about surplus heat from data centres being part of the future. Now the future is here. With today’s contract signing, we are showing the way forward for how surplus heat from data centres can reach people’s homes,” said Steen Neuchs Vedel, CEO of Vestforbrænding.

“There has also been talk about sector coupling in the district heating sector – today we demonstrate how this can happen in practice, to the benefit of consumers.”

Heat reuse has been a subject of much interest, given the potential of the data centre industry to channel excess heat emitted into beneficial use. Already, companies like Equinix last year heated the Paris Olympic Aquatic Centre in Saint-Denis with its excess data centre heat.

Elsewhere in Sweden, an initiative called Stockholm Data Parks runs in partnership with political and industry leaders to warm people’s homes using waste heat generated by the city’s data centres. The goal is to run a data centre industry where no heat is wasted at all.

While redirecting heat is not a complete solution yet, it has been touted as a welcome benefit to balance AI innovation with its climate impact.

Denmark was an early leader in decarbonisation, with the government in 2022 announcing a target to become completely net zero by 2045 and a 110% reduction in emissions by 2050.

Part of its plans involve phasing out the use of coal in the district heating sector, with the Danish government supportive of heat recycling initiatives that align to its circular economy principles. This is core to atNorth’s commitment to operating in an environmentally responsible way and is a critical part of the business’s data centre blueprint for the future.

“As the demand for AI ready digital infrastructure continues to increase, it is imperative that data centre companies scale in a responsible way”, says Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, CEO, atNorth. “By actively seeking heat reuse partnerships for our data centres, we can mitigate our environmental impact, benefit the communities in which we operate and help clients decarbonise their IT workloads.”

The news also follows atNorth announcing a collaboration with Wa3rm that will reuse excess heat to grow vegetables close to its DEN02 data centre.

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