Veronika Wild

Capturing and Storing other Forms of Heat -Diagram created by ChatGPT    Other Heat Sources Data centres aren’t the only producers of waste heat. It is generated by all sorts of activities and places including offices, hospitals, shops, institutions,and industrial activities. Indeed, collectively they contribute to making our cities hotter than the surrounding countryside and increase the need for services such as air conditioning and refrigeration. I have already discussed the use of High Temperature Incineration and Biogas (from farm and food waste) elsewhere and these are commonly used in co-generation for district heat, but here are some of the more unusual sources of waste heat which are being used for this purpose. Sewage Heat Scandinavian countries are no slouches either when it comes to capturing heat from treated sewage water.  Treated waste water leaves sewage works at between 12 and 23 °C. and like data centre heat, must first be boosted to the right temperat...

From Data Centres to Warm Homes  -Diagram created by ChatGPT   As cold weather approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, many countries are saving on costly heating oil or gas by using waste heat from other activities to meet their heating requirements. In 2024,  heating  accounted for almost half of the world's total final energy consumption and 37% of energy-related CO2 emissions and that figure was rising, so recovering waste heat, particularly that from data centres, makes good sense. In 2025,  Energy Solutions -a hub for grid-scale transitions, estimated that the heat recovery market was worth $4.2 billion and expected it to reach $11.8 billion by 2035.  Apart from the loss of Russian gas and the rising cost and uncertainty around fossil fuels, it is also significantly cheaper – 12-30 € per MWh vs 35-55 € per MWh. The latest development in microchip technology which allows the cooling water in data centres to get much hotter (50-60°C) and closer to...

Historic British Child Immunisation Poster from the 1950s issued by Glaxo Laboratories Ltd., Greenford, Middlesex; designer unknown.  -Image from the Antikbar Original Vintage Posters collection What short collective memories people have. I have just been going back over old posts to label them before Google disappears them forever and came across one from 2011 when we were utterly distraught because our newborn granddaughter had caught Whooping Cough in the hospital. She had to be resuscitated at least three times while there and twice more after being allowed to go home, where she had to remain on an oxygen monitor. I also had to have the ‘Grandma Booster’ before I was allowed to hold her for the first time. Until I was revaccinated against Tetanus prior to helping out with a penguin rescue (after an oil spill), I had no idea that even the vaccinations we had had as children, could become less effective over time. Now I was reminded again, so make sure you are up to da...