Can Data Centers Power the Next Phase of CEA Growth?
January 21, 2026 
Photo: Pavel, via Adobe Stock
As data center construction accelerates across the U.S. to support artificial intelligence and cloud computing, there’s been a lot of buzz around the potential for colocation with greenhouses to tap into the centers’ waste heat and energy infrastructure. In a recent webinar titled “Data Centers and Greenhouse Colocation,” hosted by Agritecture, Derek Smith and Rob Eddy from the Resource Innovation Institute (RII) expanded on the potential to make the most of this promise in the U.S.
Turning Energy Strain into Agricultural Opportunity
Modern, water-cooled data centers generate large volumes of low-grade waste heat, energy that’s typically rejected back into the environment. Many in the CEA industry are exploring ways to repurpose this heat to offset one of CEA’s highest operating costs, particularly for greenhouse heating.
Rather than pairing a single greenhouse with a single data center, RII outlined a larger-scale “farm park” model. These developments would cluster multiple greenhouses alongside cold storage, food processing, logistics, and shared energy infrastructure, allowing heat, power, and CO₂ to be exchanged efficiently while keeping each operation independent.
Heat pumps play a central role in the concept, boosting data center waste heat to temperatures suitable for greenhouse heating, while centralized resource hubs allow systems to remain decoupled — an important requirement for data center operators concerned with reliability and security.
Why Scale and Partnerships Matter
One key takeaway for growers is the importance of scale. Data centers often operate at energy levels far exceeding the needs of a single greenhouse, making multi-acre greenhouse developments more practical. At that scale, growers could diversify crop portfolios, improve distribution efficiency, and stabilize long-term energy costs.
“This is both feasible and strategic,” says Derek Smith, executive director of RII. “There are a lot of technical challenges to solve, but they’re solvable. The secret is to align the public and private sectors to make this happen.”
The role of economic development agencies, utilities, and policymakers in coordinating zoning, financing, and permitting is key. For U.S. CEA growers, the discussion suggests that future expansion opportunities may increasingly emerge through regional infrastructure planning — rather than standalone farm projects — as energy, food, and data systems become more tightly interconnected.
You can read more about the RII farm parks concept here, which includes a link to download the full RII report on the topic.