International District Energy Association

09/14/2026

How do you decarbonize a campus that's still growing? IDEA member, University of California, San Francisco, is designing an all-electric district plant at its Mission Bay campus to find out.

Pairing air source heat pumps with thermal energy storage lets the plant serve 2.7 million square feet of laboratory buildings, without the oversized equipment a conventional design would need. Shifting heating and cooling production to off-peak hours cuts the equipment capacity required for peak demand by 25%, largely by resizing equipment rather than adding more of it.

Getting that sizing right pays off twice. A lower-temperature hot water design is projected to save approximately $67 million over 25 years, while eliminating an estimated 32.5 million pounds of annual carbon dioxide emissions from on-site gas use.

Read more in the latest edition of District Energy Magazine, here: https://www.districtenergy-digital.org/districtenergy/library/

09/11/2026

AI data centers are starting to look less like pure power consumers and more like energy campuses that generate, consume, and increasingly resell their own waste heat. A recent piece from AutomatedBuildings notes that operators using liquid cooling are treating captured waste heat as a saleable output, not just a cooling burden, particularly in colder climates with existing or planned district energy infrastructure.

In Markham, Ontario, IDEA member Equinix's data center is integrated with the local district energy network, distributing recovered heat to nearby condos, schools, and a university campus. As AI-driven data center growth accelerates, district energy is the aggregating technology that can capture this thermal resource at community scale.

To learn more about what's driving this shift, read the full piece here: https://www.automatedbuildings.com/2026/08/ai-data-centers-are-redefining-the-scope-of-building-automation/

09/03/2026

Scaling AI data centers usually means finding more power. IDEA member, Johnson Controls, is finding it in a place most operators overlook: the heat already coming off their own generators.

The company’s new reference guide finds that on-site generators lose 57% of their energy this way, and recovering it through absorption chillers can cut cooling-related electrical demand by up to 44%, freeing that capacity for compute instead. According to Johnson Controls, a 1GW AI Factory using this approach could support up to 97MW of additional computing capacity without adding new generation, worth as much as $18 billion in added revenue over a facility's life.

District energy has built entire systems around that same principle for decades: energy already generated shouldn't go to waste.

Read more here: https://energydigital.com/news/johnson-controls-turns-waste-heat-into-ai-computing-power

08/28/2026

in IDEA's latest Q3 magazine issue:

📚 The University of California, Davis just secured $55 million in additional funding from the UC Board of Regents to keep building out its "Big Shift." The campus moved from gas-fired steam to an electrified hot water system anchored by a 2.25-million-gallon thermal energy storage tank. The university expects the project to cut campus emissions 40% by 2028 and save $3.15 million a year in utility costs.

📓 Meanwhile, Massachusetts Maritime Academy just finished Phase 1 of a geo-exchange system that will reach 252 boreholes once complete. The $39 million project will replace the academy's gas-fired boilers and bring air conditioning to campus buildings for the first time.

With two different climates and different approaches, both campuses teach a valuable lesson to treat their energy systems as long-term infrastructure item to save costs and cut emissions at the same time.

Read more in the latest issue of District Energy magazine: https://www.districtenergy-digital.org/districtenergy/library/

08/27/2026

For nearly 50 years, John Gray was one of district energy's most consistent voices before a scholarship ever carried his name.

IDEA's 2027 John Gray Scholarship applications will be announced this fall. Before then, meet the six students who make up this year's class, from an incoming engineering freshman to a Ph.D. candidate researching AI-driven energy optimization at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Read their stories and learn what John Gray built along the way: https://www.districtenergy.org/blogs/district-energy/2026/08/19/built-to-last-introducing-ideas-2026-john-gray-sch

08/20/2026

Sector coupling, as Norm Taylor Award recipient Bruce Ander defines it, is what district energy system operators have understood for decades. Ander, former President and CEO of Markham District Energy, knows the opportunity has been building for decades, even as the technology and business models keep evolving.

Under Ander's leadership, Markham District Energy grew from a single customer and one small plant into a system connected to 18 million square feet, including a wastewater energy transfer project that moves heat from one system to serve another. The sector coupling in practice included linking waste, water, and thermal systems so each one supports the others.

Read more about Markham’s effective sector coupling and the 2026 Norm Taylor Award recipient, Bruce Ander, here: https://www.districtenergy.org/blogs/district-energy/2026/06/24/built-to-last-bruce-ander-named-ideas-2026-norm-ta

08/18/2026

IDEA President and CEO Rob Thornton joined S&P Global's Energycents podcast to talk about where district energy fits into the bigger energy conversation.

In the episode, Thornton spoke with hosts Hill Vaden and Sam Humphreys about the range of applications for district energy, from college campuses to medical centers to centrally planned communities, and why the model should be considered a serious contributor to meeting decarbonization and grid-resilience goals, not just a niche solution for dense urban cores.

Check out the episode: https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/podcasts/energycents/060426-hot-n-cold-talking-efficiency-with-international-district-energy-association

District energy uses a centralized network of underground pipes to transport produced steam and hot or chilled water to heat or cool end-use buildings. The model is most commonly found in densely populated and connected environments, such as college campuses, medical centers, or centrally planned re...

08/12/2026

Paris offers one of the clearest examples of what district cooling can look like at scale.

In a new Q&A with The Energy Mix, IDEA President and CEO Rob Thornton described how the city recovers waste heat from a waste-to-energy plant to produce cooling, uses the Seine River as a condenser loop, and switches to the river as its primary cooling source once temperatures drop in winter. The mayor has pledged to double the system's size by 2030.

As Thornton put it, district energy "becomes a quiver of technologies. It isn't a single plant serving a little district. It's an aggregation of assets that really results in more resilience, higher efficiency, lower fuel consumption, reduced emissions."

Read the full interview: https://www.theenergymix.com/qa-extreme-heat-is-a-hidden-epidemic-district-energy-can-help/

Extreme heat kills more people each year than gun violence, says Rob Thornton, president and CEO of the International District Energy Association. That’s one of the reasons district energy “is really surging right now.”

05/28/2026

What do jazz and district energy have in common?

Neither works when one player carries the load. You need the whole ensemble.

Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity—nearly all of it rejected as heat. District energy networks can capture that heat and put it to work for buildings across entire communities. That's sector coupling. That's the conversation happening at —right next door to the Ottawa Jazz Festival's 46th edition.

Before the main conference opens, IDEA2026 kicks off with two full-day pre-conference workshops on Tuesday, June 23.

The District Energy and Data Centers Workshop moves through the full arc—from policy pathways for heat reuse to engaging data center developers directly to market-ready models for turning waste heat into community energy—with presenters from CenTrio, Corix, FVB Energy, and others who are building these systems right now.

The TENs Market Development Workshop works through implementation from every angle: international, municipal, private utility, and government—with panelists from Con Edison, Creative Energy, Building Decarbonization Alliance, and the City of Vancouver, moderated by the team at Reshape Strategies.

You Oughta Be in Ottawa this June 23–26. Come for the discussions, stay for the music.

Register: https://na2.hubs.ly/H05NHYq0
Book your hotel: https://na2.hubs.ly/H05NHpV0

05/20/2026

Something big is happening in Ottawa this June.

The global district energy sector gathers for a moment years in the making at —the International District Energy Association's (IDEA) 117th Annual Conference and Trade Show—June 23-26.

✅ Five program tracks: clean heat and electrification, district cooling, waste heat integration, finance and delivery models, and digital operations
✅ 100+ exhibitors on the trade show floor
✅ The ESAP ribbon-cutting on June 23—marking a $3.4B public-private investment in low-carbon district energy and up to 92% GHG reduction across 80 buildings in Canada's National Capital Region
✅ An international MOU signing with 20+ countries at the IDEA Awards Luncheon
✅ The IEA District Heating and Cooling Executive Committee—17 countries, convening alongside
✅ Facility tours: Cliff Energy Centre, Tunney's Pasture, the Gatineau Plant, and the Zibi Community Utility
✅ 800+ professionals from 28+ countries are networking and in the sessions
✅ DEWI programming and Young Professionals networking throughout the week

This is where the decisions get made. You Oughta Be in Ottawa.

Register now: https://na2.hubs.ly/H05DJ570

Read the press release: https://na2.hubs.ly/H05DHL20