Make Heat Change

If you have an idea and a team: You can create your own team and register on this platform. If you have an idea but don't have a team: You can start recruiting your partners through the platform. Alternatively, you can join an already created group and request to join.

The challenge in a nutshell 

In France, around 90 TWh of waste-heat potential remains to be recovered every year, including 85.2 TWh from industry alone (ADEME, 2025). This represents a significant underused resource at a time when France must decarbonize its heating sector and reduce energy dependency. The opportunity is growing further with the rapid expansion of data centers. In a rapid-decarbonization trajectory, their electricity consumption could reach 15–20 TWh per year by 2030, compared with around 5 TWh in 2025 (RTE, 2025). As data center electricity consumption grows, so will the amount of waste heat generated by these facilities.

Simultaneously, new regulations stemming from the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (2023/1791), transposed into French law through the 2025 DDADUE Act and its implementing decree, require data centers with a total nominal power of at least 1 MW to recover and reuse their waste heat. As of 2026, the French regulatory framework sets an Energy Reuse Factor (ERF) of at least 20% as the threshold for meeting the heat-reuse requirement.

Despite this urgency and regulatory push, recovery remains limited due to technical barriers (low heat temperatures, distance to end-users), economic constraints (high infrastructure costs, seasonal demand mismatches), and governance gaps (fragmented stakeholders, lack of territorial coordination). Your mission is to design a realistic pathway and concrete solution to recover and utilize waste heat from data centers and/or industrial sites, demonstrating how 100% recovery could become achievable by 2035.

Your proposal must show:

  • A concrete recovery solution (technical system, business model, or territorial arrangement) with a clear timeline indicating key milestones toward scaling up to full heat recovery.

You are free to choose an angle from which to explore technical, economic, social, or territorial solutions that:

  • Optimize existing resources (e.g., heat pumps, district heating, thermal storage, direct reuse in buildings/agriculture),
  • Overcome obstacles (e.g., financing models, stakeholder coordination, regulatory incentives),
  • Prepare for the post-2035 period (e.g., integration into urban planning, "heat-ready" data center design standards).

 

Prices and incentives


Winning prizes includes: 

 
  • 1st place: 3 000€ per group
  • 2nd place: 2 000€ per group
  • 3rd place: 1 000€ per group
 

+ All teams will also be able to submit their project to participate to the EuroTeQaThon and/or join the EuroTeQ Bootcamp.

Eligibility 

This Challenge is open and offered solely to: 

 

Students: Any individual aged eighteen (18) years and/or with full legal capacity, who is currently enrolled as an undergraduate or master student or PhD student.

 

If you have an idea and a team: You can create your own team and register on this platform.


If you have an idea but don't have a team: You can start recruiting your partners through the platform. Alternatively, you can join an already created group and request to join.

During the project you will be challenged to:

 

Apply specific technical skills and knowledge from your academic background in an operational project.

 

Articulate your skills and knowledge in a multidisciplinary context to develop cross-cutting solutions to a chosen question.

 

Use a scientific and technical approach to propose solutions that are economically viable as well as socially responsible.

Participate