Happy Nice Mall

In the pre-vaccine pandemic days, as the closures get longer, eulogies lost joys of the dance floor became a motif in the media. Memories of sweaty nights spent in crowded clubs have captured much of what Covid has taken from us: community, freedom, fantastically messy physical intimacy.

As restrictions began to relax, the nested dance floors became a symbol of recovery around the world. hour SWG3 — an arts venue in Glasgow, Scotland that hosts some of the city’s biggest dance parties — Club night tickets sold out quickly in the summer and fall of 2021, before the Omicron variant arrived. “The appetite for these events was stronger than ever and fueled it as we’ve been denied for so long,” said Andrew Fleming-Brown, SWG3’s general manager. “We missed out on the shared body temperature experience huddled together in a packed space.”

What if catharsis on the dance floor could be good not just for the soul, but for the planet? This month, SWG3 and geothermal energy consulting TownRock Energy will begin to install a new renewable heating and cooling system that uses the body heat of the dancing clubbers. The plan should eventually reduce SWG3’s overall carbon production by 60 to 70 percent. And it can be repeatable. TownRock and SWG3 recently formed a company to help other venues implement similar technology.

There is poetry in the idea: the power of dance, made literary. “Conversations about sustainability can be pretty abstract,” said TownRock founder and CEO David Townsend. But if you can connect it to something that people love to do – everybody loves a dance – that can make a lot of sense.”

A mutual friend introduced Townsend and Fleming-Brown in 2019 after Fleming-Brown became interested in exploring low-carbon energy systems for SWG3. Townsend, 31, is a regular in the club scene and had been to this venue several times. (“You’ll usually find me right in front of the room, always dancing, sometimes with my shirt off,” he said.) At that point, Fleming-Brown said more than 250,000 people come to SWG3 each year. Townsend knew from experience how big and how hot the crowd could be.

Many geothermal energy projects involve deep wells that use the earth’s naturally occurring heat. But digging them can be extremely expensive. “Trying to do a geothermal well would be millions of pounds,” Townsend said. “Instead, why not use the soil to collect and then store the heat that your customers already have?” we thought.

At rest, the human body produces about 100 watts of energy. The strenuous dance can multiply this output by a factor of five or six. Dance and sports medicine specialist Dr. Selina Shah said club dance floors can be especially good at creating heat. “If it’s really high-energy music, this often results in very fast, high-energy movement, so you’re looking at a significant level of heat generation — potentially equivalent to running,” he said.

To capture this energy in SWG3, TownRock developed an application for an already common technology: the heat pump. One of the most common heat pumps is the refrigerator, which moves warm air outside, providing a cool interior. The SWG3 system, called Bodyheat, will cool the space by transferring the heat of the dancing clubs not to the atmosphere as in conventional cooling, but to 12 boreholes approximately 500 feet deep. The wells will convert a large underground rock cube into a thermal battery and store energy so it can be used to supply the building with heat and hot water.

The development of the system began in 2019. The pandemic cuts and the accompanying financial uncertainty put the project on pause for several months. But when the event calendar was empty, SWG3 leadership had time to develop a larger sustainability plan for the building and set a goal of achieving “net zero” carbon emissions by 2025. “That moment allowed us to stop and really evaluate what was important to us. an organization,” said Fleming-Brown. “We decided to make it a priority.”

As work continued on the project in the fall of 2020, body temperature became a central component of the plan. The first phase of installation will be completed in early spring and will provide heating and cooling to SWG3’s two main venues. In later stages, hot water will be provided to the bathrooms and heating to the foyer and art studios. At this point, SWG3 will be able to get rid of three gas boilers and reduce annual carbon production by up to 70 metric tons.

The system is not cheap. Fleming-Brown estimates that a conventional heating and cooling system for a similarly sized space will cost £30,000 to £40,000, or £40,000 to £53,000; Phase one of Bodyheat will require an outlay of £350,000 or $464,000. But the timing was coincidental as Glasgow hosted. 2021 United Nations global climate summit “It created a huge momentum behind this kind of project,” said Fleming-Brown. a grant from Scotland Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Program covered half of the costs for the first phase, and a government-backed low-interest loan helped for the rest. Fleming-Brown estimates that the savings in energy bills will make the investment recoverable in about five years.

While developing Bodyheat, Townsend and Fleming-Brown realized that their system could work elsewhere. New TownRock and SWG3 joint venture body temperature clubFounded in November, it aims to help a number of event spaces and gyms renovate their buildings with a version of Bodyheat. Berlin club SchwuZ, a British gym chain, and the Scottish arts council, which oversees various creative spaces, have already expressed their interest.

Townsend stressed that the idea is not proprietary. “If we come across other companies trying to build systems similar to Bodyheat to be more sustainable, that’s great,” he said. “We just want to gain momentum around renewable heating and cooling.”

Dance was previously used to generate energy. More than ten years ago, the Dutch company Energy Grounds introduced a series of tiles that convert the dancers’ steps into electricity. Club Watt in Rotterdam laid the tiles media fanfare They’ve been used in hundreds of other projects in 2008 and since then. group Coldplay plans to use a similar “kinetic” groundDesigned by British company pavegen, during the environmentally friendly 2022 tour. Townsend said TownRock and Pavegen are discussing a possible collaboration.

Kinetic dance floors produce only small amounts of electricity. Body temperature should have a more significant effect on carbon production, but generally speaking, dancing isn’t a very effective way to build body heat. Dr. Shah said dance studios wouldn’t be great candidates for a Bodyheat-style system because most of the dance performed there isn’t aerobic. The slow, methodical warm-up exercises that make up a large part of most dance classes create very little heat; powerful movements tend to be only in short bursts.

Gyms that place an emphasis on aerobic exercise seem more appropriate for projects that take advantage of the work of the body. Townsend noted that in addition to capturing body heat, gyms can use equipment like stationary bikes to help generate electricity.

Dance may not be the best source of renewable energy, but it has proven important in another way: storytelling. There’s a vague ferocity about harvesting heat from gym rats pumping it onto the treadmill. The energy from dance – born of joy – captures the imagination in a different way.

“We didn’t initially think dance would be such a big part of this project,” said Fleming-Brown. “But you need a visual language to convey an idea, and people’s emotional attachment to live music and dance soon proved to be a winning streak.”

To help tell the Bodyheat story to the crowd at SWG3, Fleming-Brown and Townsend are considering ways to show the amount heat dancers create, perhaps with a large thermometer or a heatmap similar to those used in weather reports. Townsend spit on holding competitions to see which dancer can generate the most renewable energy – sustainability as performance art.

Renewable energy systems for nightclubs can be as business-friendly as eco-friendly options. The youth clubbing demographic is particularly interested in the debate over climate change. Natalie Bryce, 30, a regular at SWG3, said she took the club’s greenery into account when choosing where to go to the dance. “All my friends who love to go out, we care deeply about sustainability and how what we do affects the climate,” he said. Fleming-Brown said he asked DJs and other artists about the organization’s environmental policies during booking negotiations.

However, technology based on large crowds of people is not crash-friendly. Fleming-Brown expressed concern that the Omicron surge in Britain could impact attendance or lead to capacity constraints that would make Bodyheat less sustainable – especially before the system’s thermal battery has time to “charge” with clubbers’ heat. Also eager to see what is installed and functioning. “We still have a system to deliver,” he said. “We’ve discussed it a lot and everything has been really positive, but it has to work.”

As soon as Bodyheat is ready, club-goers – Covid will allow – will be ready.

“It’s great that you can do good things just by having fun and doing what you love,” Bryce said. “Will it encourage me to go out more? I can’t afford it, but yes!”