The Westin-Amazon EcoDistrict is a unique arrangement that transports waste heat from an urban data center to Amazon’s new Seattle corporate campus. While many buildings and industrial processes recover heat internally, this novel approach is believed to be the nation’s largest-scale heat recovery system to cross property lines.

The Westin Building, owned by Clise Properties, is one of the largest urban data centers in Seattle. It sits across the street from Amazon’s new corporate campus of office towers. The EcoDistrict captures the waste heat emitted by thousands of server racks at the Westin Building, pipes it underground and draws it back out via a heat recovery system to warm the Amazon office tower.

This approach offers Amazon up to five megawatts of power and will save over 75 percent of the energy that Amazon would otherwise have to purchase.