The article is a bit light on details, but I'd guess that both heat and cold generation (due to compression and decompression of the air) could be used for a district cooling system.
It's called evaporative cooling, and until recently the principle was the way the vast majority of Arizonans cooled their houses. (They are called swamp coolers down there.)
It only works in dry climates, but it makes such a difference.
Interesting approach from Munich, my home town: district cooling, i.e. using cold water from inner city streams and distributing the cold to shops and offices, so they don't have to use air conditioning. "produces far fewer CO2 emissions and reduces primary energy costs by around half":
The new Case Middle School buildings at Punahou (my alma mater) use something like that, but on a smaller scale. They freeze water at night when electricity is cheaper and then use it for cooling during the day.
No, what I was remembering was a building design for datacenters, but I can't find a reference. Maybe it was only conceptual. The design was to pull in cold exterior air, pass thru the dehumidifiers to bring some of the moisture levels down, and vent heat from a high rise shaft out the top. All controlled to ensure humidity didn't get wrecked.
interesting that Refrigerant management tops the list (of solutions to global warming). I recently read about district cooling, where e.g. cold water from rivers is used as an alternative to air conditioning. Seems to be used successfully in my hometown of Munich: https://www.swm.de/english/m-fernwaerme/m-fernkaelte.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_cooling
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