“Tucked beside a northern Virginia suburb, an experiment is underway to see if one of the oldest building materials on the planet can help Microsoft meet its ambitious climate goals. Microsoft is building its first datacenters made with superstrong ultra-lightweight wood in a bid to slash the use of steel and concrete, which are among the most significant sources of carbon emissions,” the company explains:
A wood datacenter may sound strangely old-fashioned, if not improbable. But Microsoft engineers have developed a hybrid approach using cross-laminated timber, or CLT, a fire-resistant prefabricated wood material that will enable the company to reduce the use of steel and concrete. The hybrid mass timber, steel and concrete construction model is estimated to significantly reduce the embodied carbon footprint of two new datacenters by 35 percent compared to conventional steel construction, and 65 percent compared to typical precast concrete.
Microsoft’s hybrid datacenters are the latest examples of how it is working to decarbonize its datacenter and construction operations. In 2020, Microsoft unveiled ambitious sustainability goals: By 2030, it would be “carbon negative” – meaning it would take more carbon out of the atmosphere than it emits. And by 2050 it would remove from the atmosphere the equivalent of all the carbon the company has emitted since its founding in 1975.
Four years later, there has been meaningful progress. In May, Microsoft announced it had achieved a 6.3 percent reduction in direct emissions over three years. But indirect emissions increased 30.9 percent, driven by the growth of datacenters and the hardware housed inside. Indirect emissions are particularly difficult to manage since they include carbon emitted during extraction, processing, manufacturing and even transportation of materials, and so are outside Microsoft’s direct control.
Northern Virginia has lots of data centers, which can put a strain on the power grid through all the energy they use. As the Bacon’s Rebellion blog explains:
Data centers account for tens of billions of dollars of investment in Virginia and comprise one of the Commonwealth’s few economic-development success stories. They generate more than $1 billion in state and local tax revenues yearly, and, though they require few employees to operate, they support more than 12,000 jobs that pay significantly higher than the state average.
But server farms suck up huge volumes of electricity, and because of their geographic concentration in Northern Virginia, they require significant upgrades to Dominion Energy’s transmission grid. And nobody but nobody likes living near high-voltage electric lines, especially in the bucolic northern Virginia piedmont where property values vary in direct proportion to the quality of the scenic views…..While Dominion continues to build more solar- and wind-generating power, renewable energy output fluctuates, and electricity output cannot be relied upon to match demand fluctuations from power centers. Electricity shortfalls can lead to overheating, damage to servers, and interruption of service. Consequently, Dominion says it will need to maintain natural gas-generating capacity to accommodate variability in demand….As the Artificial Intelligence revolution takes off, electricity consumption will surge. AI requires massive data-processing power; data-processing power requires data centers; and data centers require electricity. It really is that simple.
If data centers can’t obtain enough energy in Virginia, they will be built in another state, and displace electricity demand to a state willing to supply it. That won’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions nationally, but it will increase unemployment in Virginia.
That’s because Virginia has become a high-tax state that has more difficulty attracting jobs or growing its economy than it used to. Due to spending increases and tax hikes under governors like Ralph Northam (D), Mark Warner (D), and Bob McDonnell (R), Virginia stopped being a low-tax state. It is now one of the ten-highest tax states nationally. While Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has called for tax cuts, Democrats in the legislature resisted any meaningful tax cuts. As a result, the only substantial tax cuts Youngkin delivered were a grocery tax cut and a temporary increase in the standard deduction. Youngkin now faces a Democratic-controlled legislature that has pushed for large spending increases. The Democratic-controlled legislature passed a bill to allow counties to raise sales tax rates, which Governor Youngkin vetoed, preventing it from becoming law.
