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In context: The Open Compute Project is a non-profit venture created to promote novel data center designs and industry best practices among its partners. The organization has over 50 members around the world, including major players in the data center business such as Arm, Meta, IBM, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and many others.
The latest project promoted by the OCP is a collaborative effort to test and develop new concrete materials for building data centers. The organization recently announced its idea to create "green concrete," although the actual construction work for the demonstration event took place earlier this month in Northbrook, Illinois.
The OCP is partnering with Amazon (AWS), Google, Meta, and Microsoft to increase the adoption of concrete with lower carbon concentrations, while a company called Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates (WJE) is leading the actual construction efforts. The organization's stated goal is to find the "magic formula" that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to data center plants to 50 percent per cubic yard or more.
Concrete is the foundation of many modern buildings, including data center facilities. The material increases carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in two different ways: first, concrete includes limestone, which releases carbon dioxide when it's heated; second, concrete production requires energy, which creates even more polluting emissions.
Several technological solutions have been developed to achieve low carbon concrete mixtures, but adoption is still lacking. In its latest cooperation effort, the OCP worked with WJE representatives to realize a series of slabs containing four different concrete solutions. The most advanced of these solutions would achieve a greater than 50 percent reduction in carbon impact when compared to today's "typical concrete," the OCP explained.
The project's implementation team developed a "comprehensive" test plan, which includes proper and extensive laboratory tests performed by industry experts. These experts will contribute their data to a final whitepaper focused on green concrete tech, a document the OCP will eventually make available to the public.
According to the OCP, a more environmentally friendly concrete will help data center corporations meet the goal of achieving "net zero" operations by 2030. Big Tech representatives are all busy pursuing this ambitious target, but AWS has been seemingly working to get there faster than anyone else. The company already built 36 data centers with lower-carbon concrete in 2023 alone.