Speaker
Description
Reusing heat from computers has the potential of reducing the environmental
impact of scientific computing in cold places with low carbon electricity.
In previous work, we have done a lifecycle analysis of carbon emissions
from scientific computing[1] and in this work we included a simplistic
model for how heat reuse in northern Sweden could affect the total carbon
footprint of WLCG computing and scientific computing in general.
This is a detailed study of current practices and potential changes in how
heat reuse from HPC2N's computing facility provides heating for the Umeå
University campus. The current practice is based on heat pumps and district
heating and cooling in a mix, and we provide a study of running this optimised
for carbon emissions or minimal financial cost. Potential scenarios includes
hot water cooling and other cases that involve significant changes in both
computers and infrastructure.
We present this in both summary CO2e/HS23 ratios for lifecycle use like in[1],
but also go into details regarding practical limits and concerns from the
facility point of view for the entire campus, including reliability and cost.
1) Wadenstein, M., Vanderbauwhede, W. Life cycle analysis for emissions of scientific computing centres. Eur. Phys. J. C 85, 913 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14650-8