Greener Concrete for Digital Infrastructure: An Open Letter and Call to Action

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Apr 18, 2023, 11:00 ET

BEAVERTON, Ore., April 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Governing Body of the iMasons Climate Accord, a program of Infrastructure Masons, is pleased to release an open letter from several of our member organizations - AWS, Google, Meta, and Microsoft - as a call to action to use greener concrete in data center infrastructure and we encourage other companies to join them.

Concrete, steel, and aluminum are responsible for 23% of total global carbon emissions, while concrete alone makes up 11% of total global emissions (EIA Global Status Report 2018). The authors have started, and will continue to, reduce concrete at new sites and use greener concrete as it becomes available in scale. We call on our industry to use less concrete where possible, and to specify and deploy the lowest carbon concrete available while meeting structural, performance, and cost criteria.

The open letter calls for our industry to work together to:

Deliver a technology roadmap to decarbonize concrete;
Set standard baselines to measure against;
Drive transparency through Environment Product Declarations; and
Create a consistent method to calculate emissions in concrete.

Through collaboration we can collectively accelerate the decarbonization of data center building construction worldwide starting with adoption and scaling of greener concrete.

"As part of Amazon's commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, AWS is innovating and collaborating across the industry to identify and develop new solutions to decarbonize our data center infrastructure. We look forward to working with iMasons Climate Accord, its members, and the broader industry to help accelerate and expand the availability of low-carbon concrete.." Eric Wilcox, Vice President, Data Center Design Engineering, AWS

"Collaboration within an open ecosystem is fundamental to solve the data center industry's (and some of our world's) toughest problems," said Partha Ranganathan, Vice President and Engineering Fellow at Google. "Google is excited to help pave an accelerated path to scaling green concrete as a step in our own journey toward achieving net-zero emissions across our operations and value chain by 2030."

"Curbing Climate change is important to us all, this agreement shows the commitment of major industry players coming together as one voice to accelerate development of technologies for a carbon free future." Christian Belady, Vice President and Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft

"We recognize the urgency to reduce the embodied carbon of our data centers. One of the best opportunities we have is to deliver greener concrete faster through robust action across the data center industry. We invite our supply chain partners, industry innovators, and industry groups to collaborate with us to meet our ambitious sustainability goals." Chris Malone and Doug Mouton, Meta

"The iMasons Climate Accord is proud to host the Greener Concrete for Data Centers open letter as it is perfectly aligned with our collective mission." said Dean Nelson, Founder of Infrastructure Masons and member of the Climate Accord Governing Body. "Our intent is to showcase the commitment of industry leaders to help broaden the reach and accelerate the pace of adoption."

In accordance with our broader sustainability goals, we recognize the urgency to reduce the embodied carbon of our building materials, specifically through the use of greener concrete. We can meet this ambitious goal through robust action across the data center industry and we are calling on other companies in the iMasons Climate Accord to join AWS, Google, Meta and Microsoft in signing onto this letter.

Sign the Letter

About the iMasons Climate Accord
The iMasons Climate Accord is a coalition united on carbon reduction in digital infrastructure. Launched by the Infrastructure Masons in 2022, the organization has mobilized a community of 200+ members spanning data centers, networks, cloud computing, energy, and cybersecurity. The Climate Accord Governing Body includes AWS, Digital Realty, Google, iMasons, Meta, Microsoft, and Schneider Electric. Members are working toward industry-wide adoption of an open standard to report carbon power, materials, and equipment to create a common maturity model to report progress. For more information, visit climateaccord.org or LinkedIn.

SOURCE Infrastructure Masons