STERLING, Va. – To curb carbon emissions and reach ambitious sustainability targets, Microsoft is constructing its first datacenters incorporating a surprisingly ancient material: wood. Located in suburban northern Virginia, these innovative facilities showcase the potential of cross-laminated timber (CLT) to reduce reliance on steel and concrete, which are significant contributors to greenhouse gases.
Embodied carbon reduction and sustainability goals
The hybrid construction model, blending CLT with steel and concrete, is projected to reduce the embodied carbon footprint of the two new datacenters by 35 percent compared to conventional steel construction. This figure jumps to 65 percent when compared to typical precast concrete construction. This initiative aligns with Microsoft’s ambitious sustainability objectives, announced in 2020, which include achieving carbon negativity by 2030 and removing all historical carbon emissions by 2050.
While Microsoft has made progress in reducing direct emissions, indirect emissions, encompassing those from material extraction, processing, manufacturing, and transportation, have increased due to the growth of datacenters and hardware. Jim Hanna, head of sustainability for Microsoft’s datacenter engineering team, emphasizes the company-wide effort to accelerate decarbonization.
Strategies to accelerate decarbonization
Microsoft is implementing a multi-pronged approach to achieve its decarbonization goals. This includes updating contract language to mandate low-carbon materials and equipment in datacenter construction, requiring select high-volume suppliers to use 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2030, and investing in low-carbon building materials.
The company is specifically ramping up investments in materials like carbon-trapping concrete and hydrogen-powered steel production. The Virginia datacenters, utilizing CLT, represent one of the first instances of engineered wood being employed in a U.S. hyperscale datacenter, showcasing the potential of this European green building staple.
Industry collaboration and the climate innovation fund
Richard Hage, who leads global strategy for datacenter engineering at Microsoft, highlights that many suppliers are on the same path to reduce embodied carbon in their materials and products. However, green startups face high initial costs, limited clean energy access, fragmented regulations, and inadequate infrastructure for materials like hydrogen.
Microsoft established the $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund in 2020 to address these obstacles. This fund invests in companies and ventures that accelerate the development of climate solutions, including low-carbon building materials and clean energy. Brandon Middaugh, manager of the Climate Innovation Fund program, emphasizes the fund’s focus on transformational technologies with the potential for scalable impact and mainstream adoption by 2030.
The fund focuses on four critical areas: carbon-free electricity, advanced materials, sustainable fuels, and carbon removal. It aims to bridge the gap between current market offerings and the need for commercially available low-carbon building materials. The Climate Innovation Fund’s investments complement Microsoft’s policy advocacy, pushing for grid decarbonization, modernized electricity transmission, and a robust clean energy supply chain.
Tackling the challenges of steel and concrete
The global supply chain for building materials presents a significant hurdle in decarbonization efforts. Steel and cement production accounts for approximately 7 and 8 percent of global carbon emissions.
Transitioning to low-carbon steel production is cost-prohibitive for steelmakers and hinges on the availability of carbon-free energy, which is currently in short supply. While transitioning to low-carbon concrete is less capital-intensive than steel manufacturing, the fragmented supply chain and thin margins of smaller producers impede the adoption of new techniques. Additionally, low and zero-carbon concrete production often involves longer timelines due to more complex manufacturing processes.
To mitigate its reliance on traditional steel, Microsoft invested in Stegra (formerly H2 Green Steel), which is constructing the world’s first large-scale green steel plant in northern Sweden. This plant utilizes hydrogen generated from renewable energy, resulting in water vapor emissions instead of carbon dioxide, marking a significant departure from traditional blast furnace technology.
Beyond investments, Microsoft actively incorporates low-emission steel into its supply chain and participates in the Sustainable Steel Buyers Platform of RMI, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming global energy systems. Middaugh emphasizes Microsoft’s unique approach of investing capital and committing to purchase the output, thereby stimulating the development of early contracts for these innovative materials.
Microsoft is also investing in Boston Metal, a company pioneering a process that uses renewable electricity to produce steel, generating oxygen instead of carbon dioxide. Microsoft invested in Electric Hydrogen, a startup specializing in splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity to bolster the availability of carbon-free energy essential for green steel production.
Cost-benefit analysis and future outlook
David Swanson, a structural engineer involved in Microsoft’s datacenter design, notes that prefabricated CLT can be installed more quickly and safely than corrugated steel typically used in large commercial buildings. While CLT currently carries a premium and requires specialized expertise, its cost-effectiveness for large projects like datacenters stems from reduced construction time, lower-skilled labor requirements, and economies of scale.
Cost-benefit analysis plays a crucial role in datacenter planning, ensuring the suitability of novel materials for a demanding environment. Swanson emphasizes the importance of validating these materials’ performance, safety, resilience, and functionality.
“We’re constantly trying to validate the suitability of these novel materials for use in a datacenter environment,” says Swanson. “We want to make sure that they’re going to perform, they’re going to be safe, they’re going to be resilient, and provide all the features that we’ve grown accustomed to all these hundreds of years that we’ve been using those other materials.”
As the transition to a net-zero carbon future continues, planning will remain complex until low-carbon materials become readily available. The widespread adoption of emerging technologies is influenced by numerous variables, requiring a holistic perspective across the entire value chain. Hanna underscores the need for system thinking, encompassing materials used in datacenters and the equipment within them, acknowledging the challenges while maintaining optimism about the feasibility of achieving sustainability goals.
