Energy from the dance floor: Inside the iconic Scottish venue powered by human body heat

What if you could capture energy from the dance floor? 

It was an unconventional idea conceived and brought to life by two Scottish business leaders from completely different sectors.

The result was Bodyheat, a heating and cooling system which captures the heat produced by patrons at the iconic SWG3 venue in Glasgow, Scotland – and then stores it underground until it needs to be reused. 

Geologist and TownRock Energy CEO David Townsend was first introduced to Andrew Fleming-Brown, the owner of the multi-disciplinary venue SWG3, in 2019.

“If you have 1,200 people dancing, and you’re capturing the heat from those people dancing, you can heat about 70 houses. So, it’s quite significant,” Townsend told CNBC’s “CONVERGE” in an interview.

The total cost for the project was £600,000 ($825,000), a third of which was self-funded by the venue. While this is about 10 times the cost of a conventional heating system, SWG3 projected Bodyheat would pay for itself within five years through energy savings.

“We were going through a large capital investment at that time anyway, which totaled about £5 million ($6.9 million), so we were raising a lot of money,” the venue’s managing director Fleming-Brown said.

Heating makes up half of the world’s energy consumption, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

The demand is slightly lower in the venue’s home, the United Kingdom, where heat represents one-third of the country’s energy needs, and 17% of its carbon emissions.

“Geothermal heating and cooling systems are very resilient to climate change, because the ground is unaffected by climate change,” Townsend said.

Since the first of its kind innovation, Townsend and his company have been busy developing sustainable solutions for other businesses, which have been garnering interest from data centers and potentially, a major European music festival.

“A Bodyheat type system at a festival, where we’re capturing heat from one tent and heating up another tent. I don’t want to say too much about it, because it’s early stage,” Townsend said. 

As for this unlikely duo, they’re currently looking into extending the Bodyheat system to a new hotel Fleming-Brown is opening down the road.

“The operational running costs of the hotel will look healthier as a result of it and also balance the system here better,” Fleming-Brown said.

Watch the video above for an up-close look at the Bodyheat system, as well as the other skill-sharing that can happen when two business leaders converge.