Tech Giants Turn to Low-Carbon Concrete to Curb Data Centers' Hidden Emissions
January 29, 2026
As the global boom in artificial intelligence fuels an unprecedented surge in data center construction, a significant and often overlooked environmental challenge is coming to the fore: the massive carbon footprint of the concrete used to build these facilities. While operational energy use remains a primary concern, the embodied carbon from construction materials represents a substantial, upfront emissions load that tech companies are now urgently seeking to address.
The scale of the issue is considerable. According to analysis by the environmental nonprofit RMI, data center expansion through 2030 is projected to require approximately 2 million metric tons of cement, the key ingredient in concrete. If this demand is met with traditional, carbon-intensive concrete, it could generate an estimated 1.9 million metric tons of CO2 emissions—equivalent to the annual emissions from 415,000 gasoline-powered cars. "The boom in data centers is providing an opportunity to evaluate, address and move on the carbon impacts of concrete," said Katherine Vaz Gomes, a decarbonization engineer at climate advisory firm Carbon Direct. "As AI infrastructure explodes, data center construction is accelerating and bringing concrete demand with it."
In response, major technology firms are becoming pivotal early buyers in the emerging market for low-carbon concrete. Microsoft Corp. took a significant step last year, securing a deal with startup Sublime Systems to purchase up to 622,500 metric tons of its low-carbon cement over six to nine years. Melanie Nakagawa, Microsoft’s chief sustainability officer, stated, "As demand for AI and cloud services grows, we are advancing how we design, build, and operate our datacenters and campuses. Decarbonizing the built environment is a crucial element in this process."
Amazon.com Inc. has pursued a similar strategy, striking a deal with startup Brimstone in August and investing in other innovators like CarbonCure. The company has begun using low-carbon concrete in data centers under construction in Virginia and Oregon and has implemented carbon intensity standards for all concrete it procures. To amplify their impact, Amazon, along with Meta Platforms Inc. and Prologis Inc., co-founded the Sustainable Concrete Buyers Alliance in September. Facilitated by RMI and the Center for Green Market Activation, this alliance aims to send clear, aggregated demand signals to producers, assuring a market for greener products.
Despite this corporate momentum, scaling the green cement industry faces hurdles. Christina Theodoridi, policy director for industry at the Natural Resources Defense Council, notes that while the technology exists, significant capital is required for scaling. "Having an offtake agreement with a large data center is a very clear demand signal," she said. "That’s a really critical mechanism to scale up those technologies." However, the withdrawal of an estimated $1.6 billion in U.S. federal support previously allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act has stalled progress. Theodoridi lamented, "That was going to breathe real momentum into the industry. The data centers present an opportunity for which we would have been much better prepared for had we continued those investments in heavy industry." The funding cut has had tangible consequences, with Sublime Systems citing the loss of $87 million in government funding when it laid off 10% of its staff and paused construction on a flagship factory in December.
For the tech sector, tackling embodied carbon from concrete is not just an environmental imperative but a corporate one. Unlike operational emissions, which can be reduced over time through efficiency gains and renewable energy, the carbon locked into building materials is permanent upon construction. Therefore, using sustainable materials is the only way to mitigate this portion of a data center's lifetime emissions. "Quite a few of those large tech companies actually have quite aggressive and meaningful climate targets," said Chris Magwood, a manager on RMI’s carbon-free buildings team. "Internally, they obviously have identified that data centers and particularly the concrete use in those data centers is a key driver for them."
Source: latimes
