Founder's Vision: Data Centers That Heat Homes

The vision, in one line: data centers that heat homes, grow food on their roofs to feed people, and get built with an Earth-first mindset that puts life and the environment before profits. That's our goal. It's not built yet. Here's why I think it can be, and what we're doing right now.

By Zach Wennstedt, founder of Madwackd Productions

Why I care

I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, hugging trees and getting outside every chance I had. I still do. I have kids, and I think about the world they're going to live in every day.

I also build with AI. Madwackd Studio runs on it. So I can't pretend the computers behind it are free. They use real electricity and they make real heat. The International Energy Agency estimates data centers used about 415 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, around 1.5% of the world's total, and expects that to more than double to about 945 TWh by 2030 (IEA, Energy and AI, 2025).

Almost all of that electricity ends up as heat. Most of it gets blown into the sky. That's the part that drives me nuts, because people need heat. And that's where the idea starts.

The vision

1. Data centers that heat homes

Picture a data center as the furnace for a neighborhood. The servers run, the heat goes into hot-water pipes, and the pipes warm homes, schools and pools. Families pay less to stay warm, and a city burns less coal and gas.

2. Gardens on the roof that feed people

Data centers have huge, flat, sunny roofs and a steady supply of warmth. That's a greenhouse waiting to happen. Grow vegetables up there year-round, even in a Colorado winter, and give them to the neighbors, food banks and schools nearby.

3. Earth-first from the first drawing

Build it so life and the environment come before profits. Pick the site so the heat has somewhere to go. Use clean power. Save water. Treat the neighborhood like a partner, not a parking lot.

This is already starting (real examples)

I'm not making this up out of thin air. Parts of it are already working:

Where	What the data-center heat does	Source
Odense, Denmark	Heat recovered from Meta's data center goes into the city's district heating, for more than 12,000 homes (2023), running since late 2019.	Ramboll project page
Tallaght, Dublin, Ireland	A council-owned heat network uses waste heat from a nearby Amazon data center. Operating since 2023, it heats public buildings and 133 apartments, saving an estimated 1,500 tonnes of CO2 a year.	FEDARENE case study
Paris, France	Equinix said in 2024 it would send heat from its PA10 data center to a new neighborhood and the Olympic Aquatic Centre.	Equinix newsroom
Espoo, Finland (planned)	The city says waste heat from a planned Microsoft data center region will cover about 40% of Espoo's district heating needs in the future.	City of Espoo

Governments are pushing too. The EU's Energy Efficiency Directive says data centers over 1 megawatt must use their waste heat unless it isn't technically or economically feasible (Directive (EU) 2023/1791, Art. 26). Germany's Energy Efficiency Act requires new data centers starting from July 1, 2026 to reuse at least 10% of their energy as heat, rising to 20% from July 2028 (EnEfG, German federal law).

What I haven't found yet is one place that does all three: heats homes, grows food on the roof, and was designed Earth-first from day one. That's the gap. That's the dream.

What we're doing now (the honest part)

Madwackd is a small studio. We don't own a data center, and I won't pretend we do. Here's what's true today:

1.5% of our revenue goes to carbon removal. We contribute 1.5% of our revenue to carbon removal through Stripe Climate, at no extra cost to you. More on our mission page.
No wasted renders. Every render is priced before it starts and runs on prepaid credits, so nobody burns compute on surprise or abandoned jobs. That's good for your wallet and for the planet.
Caps on runaway spending. Budget caps and daily limits stop generation from running away on its own.

Where we're going

These are goals, not claims. As Madwackd grows, I want to:

Choose computing partners that reuse their heat and run on clean power, wherever we have a real choice.
Publish how much we've sent to carbon removal, in plain numbers.
Make video for environmental and community groups so their stories get seen.
Someday help build the real thing: a data center that keeps a neighborhood warm and feeds it from the roof.

Life and the environment before profits. That's our goal, and that's my vision. If you're working on any piece of this, a city, a builder, a grower, an engineer, I want to hear from you. Call us at 1-800-481-8638 or reach out to collaborate.

Data centers that heat homes and feed people.