Metal and concrete, the normal supplies utilized in knowledge middle building, are main carbon emittersm however in a transfer towards sustainability, Microsoft is testing fire-resistant cross-laminated timber (CLT) in its first wood-based knowledge facilities close to a northern Virginia suburb.
The corporate says this venture is a part of an “all-hands-on-deck task” to fulfill the corporate’s bold local weather targets: changing into carbon unfavourable by 2030 and offsetting all emissions since its founding by 2050.
Though Microsoft has made progress in direction of this objective, knowledge facilities’ oblique emissions – stemming from supplies extraction, manufacturing, and transport – rose by 30.9% over three years.
A market mover
Utilizing CLT, alongside concrete and metal, within the hybrid design is projected to cut back embodied carbon emissions by 35% in comparison with conventional metal building and 65% in comparison with normal concrete.
Microsoft’s decarbonization efforts prolong past this venture, supported by its $1 billion Local weather Innovation Fund, which has to date invested $761 million in scalable environmental tasks.
Microsoft is collaborating with inexperienced constructing materials corporations, together with Sweden’s Stegra, which is growing a hydrogen-based metal course of that emits water vapor as an alternative of carbon, reducing emissions by as much as 95%. Microsoft has additionally partnered with Boston Steel, which makes use of renewable electrical energy to provide metal whereas producing oxygen as an alternative of carbon dioxide.
To reduce reliance on conventional cement, Microsoft has teamed up with corporations like CarbonCure, which injects CO₂ into concrete, and Prometheus Supplies, which creates zero-carbon cement utilizing microalgae. Microsoft plans to pilot Prometheus’s cement in its Virginia knowledge facilities to check its sturdiness.
“Microsoft is in a unique position just because they’re so large,” says Thomas Hooker of Thornton Tomasetti, a structural engineering agency working with Microsoft. “They can almost be like a market mover and to some extent actually push some of these technologies to more widespread use just because it’s a high priority for Microsoft.”
(Picture credit score: Microsoft)
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