Atoco has been selected to join the Net Zero Innovation Hub’s 2026-2027 program. The initiative exists to identify, test, and de-risk the technologies that will move data centers toward net zero. Atoco was chosen from a field of more than 45 applicants across 19 countries, evaluated by a judging panel that included representatives from Google, Danfoss, and the Technical University of Denmark.
Atoco Selected for the Net Zero Innovation Hub’s 2026-2027 Program
Turning Ultra-Low-Grade Waste Heat into Clean Water
Data centers generate ultra-low-grade waste heat in abundance and consume large amounts of water for cooling this heat, often in regions already under water stress or scarcity. As a consequence, facilities face permitting delays and reputational risk when they are seen competing with local communities for a limited water supply. A tension that has only grown as AI-driven data center construction accelerates.
Atoco’s off-grid atmospheric water harvesting technology turns the liability of cooling ultra-low-grade waste heat into an asset. Atoco’s systems utilize ultra-low-grade waste heat from data centers to generate clean water from air. Because the system runs entirely on ultra-low-grade waste heat the facility is already producing, it needs no grid connection and no external power source, which means it can be deployed at sites where electrical capacity is already stretched thin or where adding load is not an option.
The generated water is ultra clean, meaning that it can be used for cooling or – in the case of data centers with closed-loop cooling, for instance – supplied to local communities. Potentially, with Atoco’s off-grid atmospheric water harvesting technology, data centers can become water positive as the water generation can be scaled to millions of liters per day while providing supplementary cooling performance.
Looking Ahead
Being selected for the Net Zero Innovation Hub gives Atoco direct access to the operators, investors, and technology partners best positioned to put off-grid atmospheric water harvesting to work at scale. Over the coming months, we will be working within the Hub’s network to bring this technology based on Nobel Prize-winning science by our Founder and Chief Science Officer Prof. Omar Yaghi into real-world data center deployments.
To learn more about how Atoco’s off-grid atmospheric water harvesting technology addresses data center water and cooling challenges, visit our dedicated application page.