Data centers use a ton of energy. That energy must come from somewhere, and too often that somewhere involves dirty, carbon-heavy sources. Carbon emissions from data centers are being reduced as more players in the sector move to using renewables. At the same time advances in efficiency and technology have brought data centers’ energy use to more sustainable, useful and multifunctional roles.

Because of the way thermodynamics work, virtually every joule of energy pumped through a computer ends up as heat one way or another. The rows of servers that make up a data center generate enough heat to pose a serious engineering problem. We at MineFreedom say, what if we can make use of this extra heat. What if we can reverse the problem? How about we look for something that needs to be heated and then install a datacenter.

MineFreedom’s mission is capturing waste heat and using it to negate energy use elsewhere. Not only does this reduce costs and carbon emissions, but it also has an appealing elegance. That elegance could come in handy as data centers fight the perception that they are at best ambivalent toward and at worst harmful to their surrounding communities.

Now, MineFreedom is turning something that has historically been a liability into an asset: the massive amounts of heat generated by servers. Let’s use it to keep us warm, cook our food, heat our pools, dry our clothes, enrich our future.