SAN JOSE >> PG&E, a big developer and top San Jose officials are eyeing eco-friendly housing towers and data centers to help pave pathways of innovation that can create a green energy downtown.

Westbank, a developer with a global reach, has begun floating proposals with San Jose planners to build projects that feature housing towers and data centers that would work in tandem to produce eco-friendly energy for the residential highrises that could sprout in the city’s downtown.

Canada-based Westbank believes that developing housing next to data centers could be a huge catalyst for environmentally friendly housing projects by using excess heat from a data center to provide energy to nearby homes.

“You could have an entire downtown powered by data centers,” Ian Gillespie, Westbank’s chief executive officer and founder, said Wednesday.

Westbank is eyeing thousands of new housing units in downtown San Jose as the developer pivots toward more residential development in the city’s urban core.

“When all is said and done, our housing portfolio in downtown San Jose will include over 4,000 residential units,” Andrew Jacobson, vice president of the U.S. for Westbank, said in an interview with this news organization.

These ambitious proposals have emerged at a time when PG&E is making multiple pitches to tech companies and other businesses regarding ways the utility behemoth can spur production and delivery of additional and reliable sources of energy to bolster the Silicon Valley economy.

The notion of placing housing next to data centers that can create energy as well as tech information hubs is emerging as one of the components of the grand strategy for an eco-friendly downtown.

Experts view this as a cutting-edge solution to help tackle housing, energy, and environmental challenges.

“This can catalyze investment in housing,” PG&E Chief Executive Officer Patricia Poppe said during a presentation at an Innovation Summit that the investor-owned utility hosted Wednesday in the city’s downtown. “We’re excited to power all that.”

At least two of Westbank’s housing projects will include a stand-alone data center that would rise next to the residential buildings and supply the homes with excess heat from the tech facility that would otherwise be vented to the atmosphere.

“Our focus is very much going to be on the production of residential buildings and housing units in downtown San Jose, and focusing heavily on the sustainability of those units,” Jacobson said.

San Jose is pushing ahead with what the city calls an “Innovative Project Pathway Program” that makes it easier for projects to be built downtown, even if the proposed development doesn’t quite conform to the zoning for a location, according to San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

“We launched the Innovative Project Pathway Program to encourage the market to pitch us with viable projects that will enhance the quality of life in San Jose and improve community benefits,” Mahan said.

San Jose’s innovative development program is designed to encourage creative high-density mixed-use housing, office, retail and entertainment projects. In this case, the creative twist is a data center next to housing.

“Westbank’s proposal is exciting because it tackles two of our biggest challenges in the same project: housing and energy conservation,” Mahan said. “This can be a net zero energy project through the computing power in the data center, then capturing excess heat to use it to heat the neighboring high-rise developments.”

Here are the downtown San Jose projects where data centers could sprout next to Westbank-built housing towers:

— Orchard Residential on a property known as the Valley Title site. Westbank’s current proposal envisions three housing towers, each 30 stories high, that together would produce 1,147 residential units in downtown San Jose’s trendy SoFA district at the corner of South First Street and East San Carlos Street.

— Terraine, a 17-story highrise with 345 apartments at 323 Terraine St.

“We are the first big city in the country to pledge to be carbon neutral by 2030,” Mahan said.

Data centers require plenty of electricity to operate and use cooling towers to keep equipment and electronics from overheating. Excess heat is often vented into the air and wasted.

“Our long-term vision is with multiple data centers and housing clusters, the idea is to connect them all together and create a downtown San Jose district energy system,” Jacobson said. “If we can capture low-cost, low-carbon energy, that creates a huge opportunity downtown.”

Westbank has proposed several projects in downtown San Jose, a vision that originally emphasized office towers more than housing. The collapse of the office market prodded Westbank to pivot toward residential towers on some sites where it had planned offices.

“What we need is a thriving downtown in San Jose,” Jacobson said. “San Jose has a great downtown. All that is missing is to have more people living downtown, and living here at scale. We want to drive the construction of housing. We want to do more than start just one project. We want to get many housing projects started.”

The data centers, in synergy with adjacent housing, would make Westbank’s downtown San Jose projects more energy efficient — and more attractive bets to land construction financing.

“We have a lot of conviction about downtown San Jose,” Jacobson said. “It has great bones, with fantastic restaurants and bars and places for entertainment. What downtown San Jose is missing is housing at scale.”

Downtown San Jose is a great location to attempt this sort of ambitious enterprise, officials said.

“In San Jose, you have an incredible technology infrastructure and community,” Gillespie said. “The world looks to Silicon Valley because of everything that has happened here.”