Energy efficiency and sustainability of AI data processing in Data Centres (IA) -

Pilots for new technologies and a demonstration site which contribute to energy-efficient and sustainable AI data processing in data centres, reinforcing EU strategic autonomy and climate goals. Project results are expected to contribute to one or more of the following outcomes (see more details in scope):

• Demonstrated innovations that substantially improve heat removal from high-power AI chips (e.g. direct on-chip cooling, advanced thermal interface materials, multi-scale thermal management), enabling higher performance without thermal throttling. This should lead to lower cooling energy needs and higher reliability for dense AI workloads.
• Prototypes of novel backup power systems (such as graphene-enhanced batteries) that operate with minimal cooling requirements, improving data centre resilience and enabling better use of renewable power.
• New methods and frameworks that optimise the entire data centre for energy-efficient AI processing. This includes intelligent workload scheduling and AI model optimisation techniques to reduce energy use (e.g. carbon-aware job scheduling and power capping to cut energy demand and peak temperatures), as well as designs for integrating on-site/off-site renewables and waste-heat reuse.
• As a result of all the above bullet points, an open pilot demonstration site that allows for the testing and integration of the outcomes of these projects and serves as the European reference for showcasing the breakthroughs and cutting-edge technologies for energy-efficient and sustainable data centres developed under this topic. This site should serve as a model for technology uptake for the European data centre industry.

Outcomes should demonstrate potential for improved power usage effectiveness and utilisation of waste heat in external applications, aligned with European targets for carbon-neutral heating/cooling.

Actions should address the following development areas:

Aside from these, the pilot demonstration site must allow to combine the outcomes supplied by the other funded projects in the topic and enable for showcasing, benchmarking, and promoting their results across interested industrial stakeholders, including the European data centre and collocation industry, as well as other AI data centre operators, such as cloud and edge computing providers.

Overall, this topic is expected to fund four projects. Three projects are expected to address expected outcomes 1-3, while a fourth project is expected for expected outcome 4 (the open pilot demonstration site). For projects addressing expected outcomes 1-3 at least two use cases should showcase each project results.

Beneficiaries that intend to transfer ownership or grant an exclusive licence must formally notify the granting authority (i.e. DG-CNECT and HaDEA) before the intended transfer or licensing takes place and the granting authority may up to four years after the end of the action object to a transfer of ownership or the exclusive licensing of results.

Projects funded under this topic are encouraged to build synergies and leverage their outcomes with funded projects from Cluster 5 HORIZON-CL5-2027-05-D4-06: Thermal energy optimisation and waste heat recovery of high energy demand IT rooms in buildings or small edge data centres.

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