Bright key facts / Deployed
A Finnish district-heating network has used data-center heat since 2015.
Mäntsälä’s utility has circulated recovered server heat into the town-centre district-heating network since 2015. Nivos said in 2025 that it supplied about one-third of the network’s heat.
- AI’s role
- Computing creates the heat stream; the useful public outcome depends on conventional heat-network engineering and utility operation.
- Documented result
- Nivos reports that heat recovery from the Mäntsälä facility has fed the town-centre district-heating network since 2015. Heat exchangers capture server-room exhaust heat and electric heat pumps raise its temperature before Nivos distributes it. The utility said in August 2025 that recovered heat supplied about one-third of town-centre district heat.
- Important limitation
- Published annual figures describe different periods and measures: 30, 25, and about 20 gigawatt-hours should not be collapsed into one current total.