# Computing Facilities Can Save Big and Keep Cool by Looking Underground > Source: > Published: 2026-08-12 01:05:57+00:00 # Computing Facilities Can Save Big and Keep Cool by Looking Underground *Support CleanTechnica's work through*[a Substack subscription](https://cleantechnica.substack.com/subscribe),[on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/cleantechnica), or[on Stripe](https://cleantechnica.fundjournalism.org/contribute/). Help us produce all of the[high-quality, original content we publish week after week](https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/14/10/)despite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles.**A New National Laboratory Study Finds that Underground Thermal Energy Storage Can Keep Servers Cool Year Round** To ensure equipment in computing facilities function, they need to be kept cool, which can require a lot of energy and water—as much as [40% of their total annual energy consumption](https://restservice.epri.com/publicdownload/000000003002028905/0/Product). Typical cooling systems blow cold air over components using a water-cooled fan coil, or flow cool water through pipes next to the equipment. These methods can add to the growing loads straining the grid and require expensive, time-consuming upgrades to grid infrastructure to expand capacity and transmission abilities. In contrast, cold underground thermal energy storage (cold UTES) captures the thermal energy from cold ambient air in winter or cool nights in subsurface reservoirs or boreholes, where it stays until needed. The scales of energy storage capacities and durations are enormous: up to TWh storage capacities and spanning diurnal to seasonal storage durations. Incorporating cold UTES into existing cooling technologies and using the stored energy during times of high demand, when energy usage is more costly and strenuous on the grid, can reduce the electrical cooling load and annual energy costs for facilities with heat-generating equipment, like computer servers that support artificial intelligence. “The energy involved in large cooling systems is a pressing issue faced by developers of facilities like data centers,” said Guangdong Zhu, a senior researcher in NLR’s Center for Energy Conversion and Storage Systems and principal investigator for the lab’s cold UTES research. “Providing alternative methods to maintain cooling systems can benefit everyone from building operators to consumers.” ## Lower Energy and Water Demands A [new study](https://docs.nlr.gov/docs/fy26osti/100780.pdf) led by the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) used advanced computational modeling to analyze how cold UTES can help manage cooling loads to save energy and water. In partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the University of Chicago, Princeton University, and industrial advisors, the researchers demonstrated cold UTES deployment at a sample of 12 data centers in two geographically different areas: Arizona and Virginia. Researchers developed a comprehensive analysis that involved both a facility-level and grid-level model that provided different perspectives on cost and value. “These different approaches had broadly similar conclusions,” said Josh McTigue, a senior researcher at NLR who led the technical work for the analysis. “This included an NLR-developed techno-economic model to simulate the annual performance of site cooling with and without cold UTES. With this, we were able to assess the energy consumption and cost of cooling over its lifetime.” Shifting electricity use for cooling to low-demand hours, like nights, has shown that cold UTES has the potential to reduce annual energy costs. At the Virginia site, for example, the analysis showed that developers’ annual electricity costs for cooling could be reduced by 70%, roughly ~$20 million per year for a 1-gigawatt site. It also means less strain on the site’s grid capacity, allowing that energy to be put to better use on their compute power, providing [more GPUs](https://climate.uchicago.edu/news/a-new-technology-to-save-cooling-power-could-give-data-centers-a-boost/) for consumers. In addition to lowering utility bills, building owners can also reduce costs by limiting their need to buy and maintain large chiller equipment. According to scenarios run through NLR’s Regional Energy Deployment System and Princeton’s GenX modeling optimization tools, cold UTES could even reduce building grid infrastructure and fuel costs by $90–$390 million for that 1-gigawatt reference hyperscaler. ## From Analysis to Commercial-Scale Demonstration Sites The findings from this report were recently shared at the Data Center Cooling: No Water Consumption and Peak Load Reduction Using Cold Underground Thermal Energy Storage (Cold UTES) workshop, hosted on NLR’s South Table Mountain Campus in Golden, Colorado, on June 30–July 1, 2026. This event involved over 100 participants, including researchers, industry partners, and developers, who discussed the benefits of cold UTES. Although the project team’s analysis showed that cold UTES could be a cost-competitive solution to cooling challenges for facilities with expansive IT infrastructure, the work is far from over. Expanding on the multilab efforts made during the first phase of the project, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Geothermal has launched a new initiative—the Underground Thermal Energy Storage Collaboration—with a goal of developing commercial-scale demonstration sites. Led by NLR, the collaboration includes four national labs and will recruit additional project partners for demonstration development. “The research plan aims to align all UTES research under one collaborative effort,” said Zhu, who will serve as director of this three-year research project. That includes not just cold UTES, but also other geothermal storage opportunities, like hot UTES, which stores excess heat underground until it’s needed for industrial heating or power generation. The work will incorporate some of NLR’s advanced research platforms, like the [Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems](https://www.nlr.gov/aries) (ARIES), to evaluate how these types of storage can effectively connect with energy systems. Systems like ARIES help researchers understand the full picture of how emerging opportunities may impact energy systems at a real-world scale, allowing for reduced risk and quicker deployment. “Cold UTES and other geothermal storage technologies have the capacity to reduce the peak-load energy needs and the water consumption of large computing facilities as they continue to boom across the United States,” added Zhu. That is a relief for the grid and for developers, who could save millions of dollars in annual energy costs. For the average energy consumer, cold UTES can mean fewer concerns about potential outages and more reliable computational processing. *Learn more about cold UTES and * *other geothermal research on NLR’s* [Geothermal webpage](https://www.nlr.gov/geothermal) *.* *By Alyssa Bersine, NLR* *Sign up for* [CleanTechnica's Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott's in-depth analyses and high level summaries](https://cleantechnica.substack.com/subscribe), sign up for[our daily newsletter](https://mailchi.mp/cleantechnica/daily-newsletter), and[follow us on Google News](https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqLQgKIidDQklTRndnTWFoTUtFV05zWldGdWRHVmphRzVwWTJFdVkyOXRLQUFQAQ)!*Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast?* [Contact us here](https://cleantechnica.com/contact/).*Sign up for our daily newsletter for* [15 new cleantech stories a day](https://mailchi.mp/cleantechnica/daily-newsletter). 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