ONCE FULLY OPERATIONAL, THE PROJECT WILL RECOVER UP TO 225 GWH OF THERMAL ENERGY PER YEAR.
I N T E L L I G E N T T E C H N O L O G Y ENERGY
Equinix and A2A partner to turn server heat into district heating for Milan
Equinix, the world’ s digital infrastructure company, and A2A, Italy’ s second-largest energy operator and a leader in circular economy solutions and district heating, have announced the start of an industrial collaboration dedicated to the recovery and valorisation of heat generated by data centres, which will be integrated into the district heating network of the city of Milan.
The project represents one of the most significant circular economy initiatives applied to digital infrastructure in Italy and will enable the recovery of thermal energy produced by servers housed in Equinix’ s campus in Settimo Milanese( MI), transforming it into an energy resource for the benefit of the local area.
As part of the partnership, Equinix will design and manage the system for exporting heat from its campus, collaborating with various stakeholders( including its customers, whose servers constitute the heat source within the data centre) to make the thermal energy generated by data processing activities available. of approximately 220,000 trees – delivering a significant environmental benefit for the city.
At the same time, A2A will expand its district heating network, enabling the distribution of heat recovered from the data centres across a wide area of the city – from the centre to the outskirts – including iconic Milan landmarks such as the Duomo and Palazzo Reale, which are already heated through the Group’ s district heating network.
“ Our collaboration with A2A is a clear example of how essential digital infrastructure and local sustainability goals can work in service of each other,” said Adaire Fox-Martin, CEO and President, Equinix.“ By putting thermal energy from our operations to use for local homes and residents, we ' re eliminating waste and moving Milan towards a low-carbon future.”
“ We are very proud of the efforts and achievements Equinix has done in blazing a trail for data centre heat export in Europe and we’ re applying learnings
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ONCE FULLY OPERATIONAL, THE PROJECT WILL RECOVER UP TO 225 GWH OF THERMAL ENERGY PER YEAR.
from our successes to our efforts in Italy, helping create a market for data centre heat that can greatly contribute to the decarbonisation targets of the overall country,” said Emanuela Grandi, Managing Director of Equinix Italy.“ By scale, this initiative in Italy is expected to become among the largest data centre heat-export project in Europe outside the Nordics.” �
The recovered heat will be transferred to the new Energy Center built by A2A near the site, where it will be utilised through four large-scale heat pumps with a total capacity of 72 MW, two thermal storage systems with a capacity of 6,000 cubic metres and an infrastructure dedicated to transporting thermal energy to the urban network.
Once fully operational, the project will recover up to 225 GWh of thermal energy per year, increasing the heat distributed through A2A Group’ s Milan district heating network by about 20 %. This recovered energy will be sufficient to meet the heating needs of more than 21,000 homes and will avoid over 345,000 tons of CO₂ emissions – equivalent to the annual CO₂ absorption
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