Alexandria, King County launch rare sewer heat-recovery project in Seattle Email Share

Seattle will be home to one for the nation's first large-scale commercial projects that draws heat from the sewer system to heat buildings.

King County's Wastewater Treatment Division and Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. (NYSE: ARE) on Thursday announced the project at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, a five-building mixed-use life science development.

The sewer heat-recovery project is expected to provide 70% of the heating at the 1.6-million-square-foot campus. Cooling is possible with the technology, but that function is not being used on this project.

This is quite a turnaround from earlier, when the county's heat-recovery pilot program, which launched in 2020, drew only lukewarm interest from Unico Properties, the Seattle Mariners and district energy company CenTrio, operator of the steam generation plant on the central waterfront. Unico and the Mariners earlier didn't respond to Business Journal inquiries, but CenTrio said it passed on the program, citing the cost.

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2023/10/19/alexandria-launches-heat-recovery-project-seattle.html