Heat From Cremations Is Being Used to Warm Homes and Swimming Pools

European countries are leading the way harvesting heat that would otherwise be wasted as green death practices become more common.

ILLUSTRATION: ROB VARGAS

In 2011, Redditch Borough Council in England tried something that hardly anyone in the UK had heard of before. Staff announced they were going to warm the local swimming pool with heat from a nearby crematorium.

A public firestorm ensued. The plans were met with international headlines , and a labor union official branded them “sick and an insult to residents.” (A spokesman for the union, Unison, says this was not—and is not currently—the organization’s official position.)

“All you’re doing is basically heating a radiator and sending the heat down a tube,” says Guy Revans, of Redditch and Bromsgrove Councils, just south of Birmingham. “But death is always an emotive subject, isn’t it?”

Eventually, the relentless press coverage faded away.…