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What Happens When Facebook Heats Your Home | WIRED

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Søren Freiesleben has lived in Odense his entire life. He likes the historic Danish city for its size. It’s not too big—just 200,000 people live there—and he never feels like he’s drowning in crowds. So far so normal. But there is something unusual about Odense: Its homes are heated by the social giant Meta. Since 2020, Meta’s hyperscale data center—spanning 50,000 square meters on an industrial estate on the edge of the city—has been pushing warm air generated by its servers into the district heating network under Odense. That heat is then dispersed through 100,000 households hooked up to the system, with Meta providing enough heat to cover roughly 11,000. Freiesleben, a local councilor, has a few gripes about sharing such a small city with one of the world’s biggest tech companies. Meta should pay more taxes in Denmark, he argues. Locals have also complained about the bright lights positioned around the data center’s perimeter, he says. But those concerns are trumped by the benefits

Save this story Save this story Søren Freiesleben has lived in Odense his entire life. He likes the historic Danish city for its size. It’s not too big—just 200,000 people live there—and he never feels like he’s drowning in crowds. So far so normal. But there is something unusual about Odense: Its homes are heated by the social giant Meta. Since 2020, Meta’s hyperscale data center—spanning 50,000 square meters on an industrial estate on the edge of the city—has been pushing warm air generated by its servers into the district heating network under Odense. That heat is then dispersed through 100

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