TQEC boosts sustainability credentials with connection to Bristol heat network

Our Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus team are celebrating a major sustainability milestone by delivering a new system that can capture and reuse heat from the University’s computer servers.

Working alongside Vattenfall, one of Europe’s leading providers of low carbon heating, and the University of Bristol, the heating and cooling system will help to provide heating and hot water for the rest of the campus in the future, as well as to homes and businesses in the local area.

The building's design uses heat pump technology to enable excess heat to be sent into the Bristol heat network, rather than being wasted. 

This innovative approach is one of the first times in the country that a building will be capable of exporting heat from its own computer servers and cooling system, and was only achievable through close collaboration and a mutual commitment to delivering world class, low carbon heating solutions.

The building will begin exporting heat and, as the Bristol heat network grows, make the heat network more resilient by adding additional low carbon heat sources.

The system is now active and will allow the building to be tested and commissioned in readiness for the project's projected completion next summer.

The TQEC Academic Building will be home to world-class teaching and research across business, innovation, digital engineering, artificial intelligence, quantum and more.

The campus is the catalyst for the UK’s largest regeneration project, Bristol Temple Quarter, a 135-hectare site that will deliver jobs, homes, public and green spaces. The Bristol heat network will underpin this through new, resilient energy infrastructure – meaning people can live, work and learn in buildings heated by low carbon sources.

Dom Barton, Director of Bristol Heat Networks at Vattenfall, said: “We’re delighted to be working with the University of Bristol to provide heating, hot water and cooling to the new Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus. This project shows how versatile and innovative heat networks are, recycling excess heat from a range of different sources like computer servers and using it in the University campus as well as in the citywide heat network.”

Stephen Runicles, interim Temple Quarter Project Director, said: “We are committed to reducing our carbon emissions and the city-wide Bristol heat network offered an opportunity for lower carbon heat energy that is commercially viable long term. Our approach in the technical design has been to effectively use, capture and reuse heat energy in the building, and to incorporate the capability to export excess heat to the city-wide network in the future as it matures. It has been a long journey for our first connection, and we look forward to a successful long-term relationship.”

“I am delighted with how well the team have coordinated and communicated over the last month. An absolute focus at an impressive pace to meet all the testing and documentation requirements - achieving ‘Adoption’ by Vattenfall on Friday, 3rd October 2025. Thanks to Vattenfall and the Bristol heat network team, Sir Robert McAlpine, NG Bailey, AECOM, Core Group, Buro Happold, Osborne Clarke, Burges Salmon and colleagues at University of Bristol.”