this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
474 points (96.1% liked)
Technology
83264 readers
4865 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Would be nice if they built them in cold climates and piped the heat to houses and buildings like the steam era of old.
This would require investment in infrastructure, which is a completely foreign concept to american politicians when it's not about adding one more lane
"Like the steam era of old"? 🤣
What you're describing is called district heating and is totally a thing in Europe. There actually are data centers in Europe that contribute to their local district heating grid.
Yep it's how I heat my place, though 40-60% of the heat still comes from natural gas unfortunately.
That's exactly what Google did in Finland.
Microsoft also has a similar project.
Tax them enough to install geothermal heat pumps in the surrounding homes.
No one uses in ground heat pumps, especially not existing units where you have to dig up the yard, but regular air source heat pumps are still good enough by far.
In-ground pumps are better, they're just very expensive, hence the taxes.