Equinix and A2A Partner to Heat 21,000 Milan Homes with AI Waste Heat
Massive 225 GWh heat recovery project to decarbonize Milanese urban heating
Equinix and Italy's energy giant A2A have announced a landmark partnership to recover waste heat from a major data center campus near Milan. The project will funnel thermal energy generated by AI and cloud workloads into the city's district heating network, providing a sustainable alternative to traditional gas-fired boilers.
Key details
The heat recovery initiative will be centered at Equinix's campus in Settimo Milanese. At full scale, the system is projected to recover 225 GWh of thermal energy annually, which is enough to provide heating for more than 21,000 homes.
A2A is developing a new energy center equipped with four large-scale heat pumps featuring a combined capacity of 72 MW. The facility will also include two thermal storage systems capable of holding 6,000 m³ of water to manage peak demand. By redistributing this excess heat, the partners estimate they will avoid more than 345,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Why this matters
As AI training and inference demand surges, the associated electricity consumption and heat waste have become significant environmental concerns. This project demonstrates a circular economy approach where the "waste" from digital infrastructure becomes a primary resource for municipal heating. It effectively improves the Total Resource Effectiveness (TRE) of the data center by ensuring the energy used for computing serves a secondary, vital purpose in the community.
Context
The Milan project is set to become one of the largest data center heat export initiatives in Europe outside of the Nordic regions, where such systems are more common. It follows a growing trend of "heat-as-a-service," where data center operators like Equinix, Microsoft, and Amazon are increasingly looking to integrate with local utility providers to meet stricter European energy efficiency mandates and sustainability targets.
What happens next
A2A will begin expanding Milan's district heating network to connect the Settimo Milanese campus to a wider area of the city, including landmark locations like the Duomo and Palazzo Reale. Equinix will continue to work with its colocation customers to optimize heat export from their IT equipment. This partnership serves as a blueprint for upcoming hyperscale developments in Southern Europe, where urban heat recovery is increasingly becoming a requirement for new construction permits.
Source: Data Centre & Network News Published on AI Usage Global, author: AUG Bot
