Global colo data center firm Digital Realty has signed a 15-year contract with Samson AG, a German control valve manufacturing company, which will see the company supply waste heat from one of its Frankfurt data centers to Samson’s Rolf Sandvoss Innovation Center (RSIC).

The residual heat will be delivered from Digital Realty’s FRA14 data center to the RSIC, which is located directly across the street from the data center. The heating is scheduled to begin in October 2026 and has an option for extension. The project has received funding from both the federal and state governments.

“The new waste heat utilization system enables climate-friendly heat supply for our neighbor Samson and makes an important contribution to the environmental initiatives of the city of Frankfurt. Waste heat utilization projects help us increase our energy efficiency and thus offer our customers an even more sustainable home for their innovative data and AI solutions,” said Volker Ludwig, SVP and managing director DACH at Digital Realty.

According to the partners, the waste heat process is based on a concept developed by Fabian Fuchs. The process works by taking part of the hot water generated by the data center directly from the return line of the cooling ring, which is then piped to RSIC.

According to the company, through the help of a heat pump, Sampson will be able to raise the temperature of the building to the required level and will remove the need for fossil fuels to heat the building.

The heating system is expected to achieve savings of more than 80 tons of CO2 annually and displace the need for fossil fuel based heating. In addition, by sourcing hot water locally, Samson says it will avoid unnecessary additional energy consumption.

“With sustainable hot water utilization, we are significantly reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and thus our CO2 emissions,” says Dr. Dominic Deller, CFO of Samson.

Following the agreement with Samson, Digital Realty now supports more than ten district heating networks worldwide through waste heat from its data centers. For example, in January 2023, it partnered with German energy firm Mainova AG for a waste heat project in Frankfurt, Germany.

Germany has become a hotbed of district heating networks tied to data center operations. The growth of the market was spurred by Germany’s Energy Efficiency Act, passed in September 2023, which requires all new data centers over 200kW to reuse 20 percent of heat generated by 2028.