A Hot Take, from Bits to Beets: how data centers could be growing our lunch for free

Perhaps agriculture could be the biggest ally in solving one of the main challenges in data center construction - using the waste heat to produce free local food.

This started out as a shower thought; but the more I think about it the more I'm becoming obsessed with it.

There could be a way that data centres could help provide an abundant supply of food - locally produced - across an entire nation for little to no cost. All whilst generating additional jobs to support the local economy, reducing food miles and making products previously unfeasible in localised climates to be grown pretty much anywhere in the world.

If there's one part of data centre construction that remains a continuous challenge it's the production of vast volumes of heat the equipment emits. This was always a notable challenge in a traditional compute data center; but with the rise of hyperscale and AI data centers, this challenge is just becoming greater all the time. In conventional setups, the heat is usually created in one of two forms:

1. Ambient heat (ie exhaustive hot air gas)

2. Thermally absorbed through water or liquid variants

Increasingly commonly, a hybrid approach to cooling is adopted; usually utilising a combination of the two. In particular, my aforementioned opportunity exists for recycling the hot air exhaust air that's dissipated.

Up to now, a significant effort is placed into the management of this hot air, and in particular, aiming to cool it or remove the heat from it. This is often through:

• Passive fans blending with cooler ambient air

• Refrigeration

• Condensation

• Heat exchange

Irrespective of which ever method is adopted, there is remains a significant capital cost (or operational cost) in implementing such solutions. And most solutions are active - ie requiring power - and will be an equally significant contributor to the colossal energy requirements a data center requires to operate.

I believe this provides an opportunity whereby instead of processing the hot air in an attempt to cool and recycle it; the data center could simply pump it out and it could be used effectively elsewhere. No need to cool it or recycle it; and fresh cool air could be taken in. A huge operational cost saved.

The environment where this hot air could be useful currently exists in common forms globally - dotted generally throughout a nation for certain products; ambiently as a climate for others. Up to now, this solution has not been widely adopted owing to the significant operational costs required to heat or manage the installations.

Here's the hot take: How about building a greenhouse, or food plant, or agricultural unit next to the data centre?

I'll flesh this idea out a little more:

Around the world, hot and humid environments create perfect climates to grow certain products: Bananas, Tobacco, Soft Fruits, leafy greens and many others. For the environments which don't have this natural climate for well over 200 years, humans have created artificial environments suitable for growing these products (traditionally greenhouses, but other indoor agricultural units exist such as hydroponics). These are a less common approach simply owing to the general expense required to operate them, in particular heating them up to the required climate to grow said products.

Herein lies the opportunity:

• We have a global demand for food

• We have the knowledge of the environments of which food types will thrive in

• We have a waste product from a growing industry that is also currently the road block for the wider implementation of artificial agricultural units.

In a world where data centers increase their interconnectivity and are networked throughout large continents, these agricultural units could assist in supporting them by utilizing their waste product, reducing their demand for energy, generating additional local jobs, - and most significantly, as far as the environment is concerned - eliminating food miles from having to grow products in tropical climates and import them thousands of miles.

Nearly any organic plant-based food type; produced locally at volume and scale, distributed locally at volume and scale. It enables an additional revenue stream for the data center operator or one of their partners. It utilizes a waste product that otherwise would have an overhead in dealing with it. And it creates a more abundant food supply to the local economy.

There are additional opportunities that exist as a result of this suggestion. The pressure on agriculture in recent years to be the savior of many of the world's problems continues to grow. There is a continuous battle between the food producers that wish to use the land for food production only; and the energy producers that wish to use the land to produce alternative crops - wheat for bioethanol, maize for anaerobic digestion, miscanthus/straw for biomass, or rapeseed oils for biofuels.

A challenge which is rarely communicated amongst the scientific literature in circles outside of the immediate agricultural industry, is a lack of knowledge surrounding soil types and their suitability to grow certain products. A soil's pH and macronutrient structure vastly affects its ability to grow a certain product. That is to suggest that products grown in one place cannot be grown in another. Some land is not sufficiently fertile to grow anything other than grass. Other land is so fertile that two crops a year can be grown on it. Staple crops, such as potatoes, can only be grown in very small pockets of countries, owing to their nutritional requirements to thrive and flourish.

The creation of artificial agriculture units alongside data centers would enable the new surplus land area to be allocated towards alternative energy production if needed. Poorer quality land can be used for livestock production.

The data center could be effectively housed subterranean in the basement of a building where the temperature is more stable; and then greenhouse installations are at ground level above, enabling the heat to naturally rise. Or, they could both be above-ground structures stored adjacent to each other.

Additionally, it enables the production of food in more hostile climates which are sometimes, bizarrely, the most suited to data centers. These are typically colder climates where raw intake air can be used to cool the servers and the exhaust hot air can be used to grow food for the local economy where it has never been able to be grown before owing to the harsh native climate. As there’s reduced requirement to cool any air, these data centers could operate at a fraction of the energy demand of an installation in a warmer climate.

As with many solutions, this is not a universal one - but rarely does a solution exist which proposes a universal win for the operators, local economies and global environment.

And even more remarkable - the bigger the data center, the more people it can help.

Definitely a topic that wants exploring a little further.

TH

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