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How greener concrete and steel can decarbonise the cloud

Datacentres can be constructed with less embodied carbon

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Datacentres can be constructed with less embodied carbon

Amazon and Microsoft are leading the way for lower carbon construction

The sustainability of cloud services, and of datacentres more widely, is an increasingly important factor to organisations when procuring these services.

This is why Computing has researched and written extensively on cloud sustainability. As we dug into cloud hyperscalers' environmental data, we found varying degrees of obfuscation on progress towards net zero emissions, water positivity and circular economy targets.

However, what we all need right now is cause for some optimism, and the work the cloud giants are doing on reducing embodied carbon emissions might provide it.

The majority of the overall carbon footprint of a datacentre is incurred at the beginning of the building lifecycle. Embodied carbon includes emissions created by extraction, manufacturing and transport of materials, and those created during the actual process of building. Embodied carbon also includes maintenance and repairs, decommissioning and disposal including transportation to waste processing and disposal.

Embodied emissions (along with other indirect emissions) are included within the 15 categories of scope 3 emissions, and constitute by far the largest proportion of overall emissions - even in buildings as energy intensive as datacentres.

Hyperscalers' annual disclosures of scope 3 emissions data do include some measure of embodied carbon, but the extent of understanding of the true carbon cost of vast buildings filled with infrastructure varies. Both Amazon and Microsoft acknowledge the importance of embodied carbon (Google says little on the subject for now) and both can explain how they are actively seeking to reduce the carbon embodied in new datacentres. Amazon looks to be more advanced at present.

Greener concrete and steel

Much of the embodied carbon in datacentres is bound up in concrete and steel, so the speed of industrial decarbonisation will have subsequent and sizeable impact on cloud decarbonisation. Steel manufacturing accounts for 7% of global CO2 emissions, and cement manufacturing accounts for 8%. Reduce the emission of the buildings themselves, and cloud becomes greener by default.

AWS in particular is leading a more sustainable approach to the built environment, and showing other industries what is possible. By taking the initiative in using lower carbon construction materials, this in turn boosts the market for low carbon construction materials and sets out a use case for the wider construction industry. It has the potential to be a genuine game changer.

Both AWS and Microsoft use the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3), a free, open-access tool first imagined by Skanska and C Change Labs, and incubated by the Carbon Leadership Forum with over 50 industry partners, including Microsoft.

EC3 works by combining building material quantities from construction with a database of digital third-party verified Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). This enables any company starting out on a construction project to make a reasonable estimate of overall embodied carbon emissions, and informs subsequent decisions to be made about lower carbon options.

Amazon states that it is working with several suppliers to create more sustainable concrete mixes for datacentres. In 2022 the company completed the construction of 16 datacentres using lower carbon concrete, and 10 using lower carbon steel. According to Amazon's 2022 ESG report, one of the mixes reduced the emissions embodied in concrete for one project by 40%.

Amazon also invests in start-ups building emission reducing technology via its Climate Pledge Fund.

Bearing in mind the fact that the construction industry overall accounts for an absolutely staggering 39% of global carbon emissions, the pioneering and de-risking of the use of greener steel and concrete could result in a sustained reduction in overall global reductions as other industries follow.

Microsoft also says that it has begun to use EC3 on datacentre projects and also on the refurbishment of its Puget Sound campus. The company acknowledges that it is at the beginning of the journey to reducing embodied carbon, but is actively seeking to deploy the processes and tools it has developed for tracking and reducing embodied emissions.

Tomorrow, Computing will continue the discussion on reducing built emissions by publishing an interview with Carbon Re, an AI and climate tech company spun out of Cambridge University and UCL, which has built an AI platform for industrial decarbonisation.

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