The Open Compute Project, the org best known for offering designs for hyperscale hardware, has rounded up AWS, Google, Meta, and Microsoft to help it test concrete.
In a blog post on Tuesday, the Project cited a 2023 open letter from carbon reduction advocacy org iMasons’ Climate Accord that points out that concrete is a significant source of CO2 emissions – perhaps as much as 11 percent of the global total.
Concrete belches out lots of carbon dioxide for two reasons. One is that the cement component of concrete is often made with limestone, which releases the gas as it’s heated. Energy needed to make cement is also a big contributor to concrete-related emissions.
Low-carbon concrete exists, but the Project (OCP) notes it’s not widely deployed or understood.
But the role concrete plays in the datacenter is well-known: It provides the solid foundation on which the racks rest, and is present in other structural elements. Using low-carbon concrete therefore offers datacenter builders and operators the chance to meet the emission-reduction goals they’ve set – and help their tenants reach their own goals – by reducing the quantity of CO2 embedded in a building.
Which is why on August 8 the Project worked with a firm called Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates – which puts architects, engineers and material scientists to work to develop construction techniques – to pour four slabs, each dedicated to a different low-carbon concrete mixture.
Representatives from AWS, Google, Meta, Microsoft came along to watch the pour, accompanied by senior staff from the Open Compute Project Foundation and even reps from the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy.
The OCP’s four slabs of low carbon concrete – Click to enlarge
Those worthies didn’t stick around to watch the concrete dry, which would have been a fantastic use of taxpayers’ money. Others will – and they have a plan to test the slabs under the kind of conditions they would experience if used in a working datacenter.
OCP will use those tests to create a white paper that datacenter builders can use to guide their future use of low-carbon concrete.
“By aligning OCP Community’s ability to impact the datacenter building material supply chain, this demonstration project will support the creation of sustainable and scalable datacenter buildings,” declared George Tchaparian, CEO for the Open Compute Project Foundation. “This demonstration will provide valuable insights into the performance and viability of low-embodied carbon concrete, paving the way for its widespread adoption throughout the industry” he added.
Some are already there. The OCP announcement features a canned quote from AWS director of sustainability Chris Walker, who revealed the cloud colossus built 36 datacenters with lower-carbon concrete in 2023 alone, and will “continue working across our supply chain to drive its adoption.”
Canned quotes from Google, Meta, and Microsoft all hailed the test as a thoroughly worthy exercise. ®