To my knowledge, there is not much work on data centres specifically within this community. Here are a couple papers from Google Scholar — both from the perspective of the equipment rather than system integration:
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Deymi-Dashtebayaz, Mahdi and Sajad Valipour-Namanlo (10 May 2019). “Thermoeconomic and environmental feasibility of waste heat recovery of a data center using air source heat pump”. Journal of Cleaner Production. 219: 117–126. ISSN 0959-6526. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.02.061. Closed access.
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Ebrahimi, Khosrow, Gerard F Jones, and Amy S Fleischer (1 March 2014). “A review of data center cooling technology, operating conditions and the corresponding low-grade waste heat recovery opportunities”. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 31: 622–638. ISSN 1364-0321. doi:10.1016/j.rser.2013.12.007. Closed access.
And a recent lo‑tech and quite trivial example (just 12 dumpsters of timber being dried) in the mainstream media:
- Boffey, Daniel (9 February 2022). “Can bitcoin be sustainable? Inside the Norwegian mine that also dries wood”. The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. ISSN 0261-3077.
On the question of comparing alternatives, any of the energy system modeling frameworks that support low‑grade heat would yield answers. I started that journey with this particular seminal paper:
- Groscurth, Helmuth-M, Thomas Bruckner, and Reiner Kümmel (1995). “Modeling of energy-services supply systems”. Energy. 20 (9): 941–958. doi:10.1016/0360-5442(95)00067-Q.
But today, any of the frameworks aimed at analyzing municipal systems should easily tackle the issue of waste heat from data centeres — try say ETEM.
The next point is energy quality — in this case, low‑grade versus high‑grade heat. Which can be quantified using exergy analysis. For heat, the temperature relative to the soundings is material — while noting that flow and non‑flow formulations differ. And when combined with capital and fuel and other operating costs, gives rise to the domain of exergoeconomics. Here is a Berlin example with heat storage in the mix as well:
- Christidis, Andreas, Christoph Koch, Lothar Pottel, and George Tsatsaronis (1 May 2012). “The contribution of heat storage to the profitable operation of combined heat and power plants in liberalized electricity markets”. Energy. 41 (1): 75–82. ISSN 0360-5442. doi:10.1016/j.energy.2011.06.048.
The blog you referenced refers to the EU fit‑for‑55 package on greenhouse gas reductions. Part of that will doubtless require much greater levels of high‑resolution logged reporting from data center operators in Europe. The European Commission is pushing this angle hard across all sectors these days.
So in summary, the analytical methods are well developed and much of the tooling is open‑source. Someone just needs to commission the relevant research if they want specific answers!