Body Heat is One of the Main Heat Sources for the Mall of America

Did you know that one of the Mall of America's main heat sources in the chilly, Minnesota winter is all of our body heat?! I was kind of shocked, I thought I had come across some bologna, but no. The Mall of America doesn't use a central heating system.

I originally learned about this on Reddit, where someone had asked how the Mall of America kept the mall warm when not as many people were out shopping because of COVID. I thought, "that's a dumb question, they'll just turn up the heat." But nope, the person continues by saying that since there were so few people out and that's a main source of heat for the Mall of America, out of curiosity they wanted to know what was being done to heat the place.

Get our free mobile app

Body Heat is One of MOA's Main Heat Sources

So I had to do a Google search. I didn't believe it so I had to know for myself if this was true or not. Sure enough, on the Mall of America's website, they confirm that body heat is one of their main sources of heat in the winter. Here's the direct quote from their site:

MOA does not use a central heating system; instead, 70 degrees is maintained year-round with passive solar energy from 1.2 miles of skylights and heat generated from lighting, store fixtures and body heat.

A comment on the Reddit post claims that the Mall of America also has space heaters at the entrances because of all the cold air that comes in, which I would believe because the entrances are always very toasty. But who would have thought that this massive mall in Minnesota didn't use a central heating system in the winter?