With millennia of history, hundreds of miles of underground rail and thousands of miles of sewers and pipelines, making large-scale sustainable infrastructural changes in central London is incredibly complex. A redevelopment project in west London is nevertheless set to use waste heat from a data centre in an ambient loop network to supply low-carbon heating to 4,000 homes and a new commercial district.
The network will circulate low-temperature water through underground pipes to capture heat from the Mopac Tower data centre, nearby Tube tunnels and other local sources. Building-level heat pumps then raise it to usable temperatures for heating and hot water. The development’s latest sustainability statement says these systems operate at about 264% efficiency, far higher than traditional gas boilers of around 80–90% because it is simply moving heat to create energy, rather than burning energy.
Developers say the 44-acre, £10bn Earl’s Court project is one of the largest systems of its kind in the UK and almost entirely privately funded, supported by £1.3m of public grants.
