Working in partnership with networks.coop, and building on a series of previous collaborations between the two organisations, Lancaster City Council is pioneering a new approach to sustainable data centre design by combining immersion cooling and air cooling on the site of an existing leisure centre. The facility is relatively small compared to traditional data centres, but it is packed with innovations that maximise energy efficiency and heat reuse.
Heat Integration with a swimming pool
Unlike conventional air-cooled data centres, Lancaster’s system uses air-cooling first to preheat the dielectric fluid. This warmed fluid then passes through the immersion tanks, carrying heat away from high-density computing hardware, which in turn preheats an air-source heat pump. The heat pump already serves the site’s swimming pool, ensuring that a significant portion of the data centre’s waste heat is captured and used directly in water heating. This multi-stage approach allows Lancaster City Council to reduce its gas consumption and overall carbon footprint
Linked to a Solar Farm
Power requirements for the data centre are partially met by an existing council-owned solar farm, contributing further to the site’s low-carbon credentials. Since the heat produced goes to a ready-made use on-site (the swimming pool), the data centre effectively turns what would have been wasted energy into a valuable resource for the community.
Financing and Cooperative Access
The Council has financed the build primarily through borrowing, leveraging its access to low-interest public-sector finance. It plans to use a portion of the compute capacity for its own workloads and make the remainder available through Cooperative Network Infrastructure (CNI), ensuring that local businesses and public agencies can benefit.
By uniting clean energy, immersion cooling, and shared infrastructure, Lancaster’s project demonstrates a scalable model for smaller, community-focused data centres across the UK.