Whether free or for a fee, heat recovery from data centers, crypto mining operations, or supercomputers can be utilized to form a symbiotic relationship with its local community. It can also be used to offset commercial heating needs. Bathhouse, a luxury spa with facilities in Brooklyn and Manhattan that was designed by the AD100 2025 Hall of Fame firm, the Rockwell Group, is using energy from its Bitcoin mining process to heat its thermal guest pools (all while earning, on average, one Bitcoin per year, currently equivalent to nearly $100,000 as of the time of publication).
When it comes to the ecological benefits these heat recovery methods claim, changes on the larger scale make the most impact. But without embracing renewable energy sources upfront to do the facilities’ data processing, some climate experts argue that recycling their reject heating for residential or community use doesn’t go far enough to mitigate the climate harm these centers’ energy requirements cause.
Other data centers might not have the resources to do so. “While some of the most advanced, ‘hyperscale’ data centers, like those maintained by Google, Facebook, and Amazon, have pledged to transition their sites to carbon-neutral via carbon offsetting and investment in renewable energy infrastructures like wind and solar, many of the smaller-scale data centers that I observed lack the resources and capital to pursue similar sustainability initiatives,” writes anthropologist Steven Gonzalez Monserrate.
At the moment, the United States hosts the most—and soon the world’s biggest—supercomputers; China runs a close second. The US is also home to a third of the globe’s data centers, followed by Europe at 16%, and China at nearly 10%. The IEA predicts that 2% of all global electricity usage will be consumed by such centers in 2026; the majority of that electricity will be sourced through traditional fossil fuel methods, releasing even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere per annum. Cryptocurrency mining, supercomputers, and data centers are also great consumers of other natural resources, including drinking water, which is favored for its lack of microorganisms, says Gonzalez Monserrate, and used for necessary continuous cooling. Because many of these physical server farms are located in arid states to protect the electronics from moisture, this can exacerbate already difficult droughts or fresh water accessibility for residents.
