Technology @lemmy.world Joker @sh.itjust.works 2d ago

Microsoft builds first datacenters with wood to slash carbon emissions

news.microsoft.com Microsoft builds first datacenters with wood to slash carbon emissions

Microsoft is building datacenters made with CLT to slash the use of steel and concrete and significantly reduce the embodied carbon footprint.

Published: October 31, 2024

38 comments

Ah yes, greenwashing. Thanks Microsoft.
- Wood on concrete 🥳!
  
  Should have been wood on used tires!
  
  Wood colored concrete 🤔!
Wood? You mean Fire's Favourite Food?
- Fire suppression systems, and fire prevention mechanisms, are no joke in a data center.
  
  Plenty of systems that displace oxygen in the room to prevent combustion.
  
  Many places won't let you even bring combustable materials into the data center spaces. Receiving department unboxes and puts cardboard right into the baler. Wanna store stuff in your cage? Better be in a tote.
  
  Also, humidity is strictly controlled to prevent static buildup.
  
  The most likely place for a fire to break out in a data center would be from battery backup systems. But at the scale that most large facilities have, there is a dedicated battery room, or they use something else for instantaneous load transfer, like flywheels.
This is a puff peice to distract. Microsoft has made no effort to lessen their carbon footprint.
- Technically it just makes their carbon footprint even larger
- I recently had a tour of the Redmond campus. They have multiple geothermal wells for power as well as an air conditioning system that uses almost no energy, it was pretty neat.
  
  Too bad all that cool stuff is negligible compared to what actually makes a difference
Talk about putting lipstick on a pig…
- No no. Those trees died of natural causes. /s
What does a datacenter need a huge glass front for? Slashing carbon emissions? Yeah right.
- Clients looking to rent data center space still like to see pretty spaces in their giant concrete boxes. So on a campus there is usually one of the builds that has something prettier for the front admin section.
  
  But square footage is money, so it's much smaller.
  
  They actually go for LEED certification for their spaces a lot of times. So they get an energy efficiency badge for a building that uses the total power of a ~3500 homes (in the builds I have seen) 24/7/365.
- Maybe it's meant to let the sun in and save on the heating... in... a buildind that has significant excess of... nevermind.
If they really cared about carbon emissions, they would shut down all of their AI crap.
- Shut down themselves even better.
Slash emissions by using the dead bodies of the source that removes carbon?
- I mean, that's the mechanism by which carbon is removed. It goes into tree, tree dies or gets cut down taking all the solidified carbon with it, new tree gets planted in its place to repeat the cycle. In fact, the fastest way to scrub carbon with the practice is to farm trees, assuming you do it sustainably.
  
  You mean sequestered, not removed. It's one fire away from being back in circulation.
  
  So the best thing you can do with a tree, is to cut it down and use it as materials, if we want to release as little CO2 as possible?
  
  And ofc this depends on new trees being planted in its stead.
- Trees are carbon neutral. They pull the carbon out and sequester it in themselves. When they rot or burn, the carbon is returned.
So lots of heat plus combustible material.. That sounds like a winning idea to me.
- If memory serves right, one of Germany's datacenters went up in flames a few years ago because they had wooden flooring and no adequate fire suppression systems.
  
  EDIT: it was in France, and Europe's biggest datacenter.
  
  It was OVH in France
I've also put wood panels on my car to save the environment. It's pretty useful.
LOL they are trying to trick us. Microsoft we see you.
Woot! Heavy timber construction!

38 comments