In 2011, Redditch Borough Council in England decided to experiment with something that hardly anyone in the UK had heard of before. Since 2013, the crematorium has warmed Redditch’s swimming pool, as per a report by WIRED. Staff announced they were going to warm the local swimming pool with heat from a nearby crematorium.
What ensued was a public firestorm with the plan making international headlines and even gaining criticism locally. Eventually, the project proved to be one of the most thoughtful decisions, winning a green award.
The crematorium will provide just under 1 gigawatt-hour of heat annually, roughly half the school’s total requirement. A heat pump will cover the rest of the facility’s needs, and the entire system should be fully operational by February 2027. Some crematoria hold coffins for up to 72 hours, so that several may be cremated in a sequence, making it more efficient.
“They were only utilising a tiny amount of the heat available; the rest was going to the atmosphere,” said Ian Davidson, chief executive of Aberdeen Heat & Power, who said that the system now has full planning permission. Ian Rudkin, who has managed multiple crematoria in the UK and is currently a board member of the Cremation Society of Great Britain, said many crematoria are becoming more eco-conscious. “When we first brought that in, [families] seemed a little bit shocked,” said Rudkin. Recovering heat from cremations is one way of attempting to counter the “devastating impact” that humans have had on the environment, said Hannah Rumble, an associate at the University of Bath’s Centre for Death and Society.
Not just swimming pools, a school currently under construction in Aberdeen, Scotland, will receive excess heat from the city’s crematorium. The crematorium already relies on waste heat to warm its own premises. Soon, however, people became more accepting. “I can see that would be a reason why people might choose to be cremated at a particular crematorium. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.