Microsoft is building wooden data centers in its latest push to cut emissions - could this be the future of AI power?

Steel and concrete, nan accepted materials utilized successful information halfway construction, are awesome c emittersm but successful a move toward sustainability, Microsoft is testing fire-resistant cross-laminated timber (CLT) successful its first wood-based information centers adjacent a bluish Virginia suburb.

The institution says this task is portion of an “all-hands-on-deck task” to meet nan company’s eager ambiance targets: becoming c antagonistic by 2030 and offsetting each emissions since its founding by 2050.

Although Microsoft has made advancement towards this goal, information centers’ indirect emissions - stemming from materials extraction, manufacturing, and carrier - roseate by 30.9% complete 3 years.

A marketplace mover

Using CLT, alongside actual and steel, successful nan hybrid creation is projected to trim embodied c emissions by 35% compared to accepted alloy building and 65% compared to modular concrete.

Microsoft’s decarbonization efforts widen beyond this project, supported by its $1 cardinal Climate Innovation Fund, which has truthful acold invested $761 cardinal successful scalable biology projects.

Microsoft is collaborating pinch greenish building worldly companies, including Sweden’s Stegra, which is processing a hydrogen-based alloy process that emits h2o vapor alternatively of carbon, cutting emissions by up to 95%. Microsoft has besides collaborated pinch Boston Metal, which uses renewable energy to nutrient alloy while generating oxygen alternatively of c dioxide.

To lessen reliance connected accepted cement, Microsoft has teamed up pinch companies for illustration CarbonCure, which injects CO₂ into concrete, and Prometheus Materials, which creates zero-carbon cement utilizing microalgae. Microsoft plans to aviator Prometheus’s cement successful its Virginia information centers to trial its durability.

“Microsoft is successful a unsocial position conscionable because they’re truthful large,” says Thomas Hooker of Thornton Tomasetti, a structural engineering patient moving pinch Microsoft. “They tin almost beryllium for illustration a marketplace mover and to immoderate grade really push immoderate of these technologies to much wide usage conscionable because it’s a precocious privilege for Microsoft.”

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