CERN’s LHC cooling system supplies local heat network
1st February 2026
FRANCE: Waste heat from the cooling system of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is supplying a local residential and commercial heating network.
The network, inaugurated on 12 December, is expected to supply the equivalent of several thousand homes in the French town of Ferney-Voltaire.
Ferney-Voltaire is located close to Point 8, one of LHC’s eight surface points – critical, above-ground infrastructure sites – situated around the 27km subterranean ring on the French-Swiss border. These locations serve as the interface between the CERN laboratory infrastructure and the underground accelerator, providing power, cooling, and access for the massive detectors.
At present, Ferney-Voltaire is only using up to 5MW from CERN but, with two heat exchangers in the system, this could theoretically be doubled, especially when CERN’s accelerators are fully operational.
This summer, CERN will stop the LHC for several years of maintenance and upgrades to prepare for the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC. Some Point 8 installations will continue to be cooled, enabling CERN to supply between 1 and 5MW to the upgrade, with the exception of a total of five months spread over this multi-year period.
