Dive Brief:
- Meta is piloting the use of mass timber — a durable and renewable wood-based industrial substitute for concrete, steel and other building materials — to construct data centers with less embodied carbon emissions, the company announced Thursday.
- The social media and tech conglomerate said it has successfully used mass timber to construct an administrative building at a South Carolina data center campus this year. The pilot will continue with the construction of additional buildings at Wyoming and Alabama, according to a July 31 blog post.
- Meta is not the only tech giant turning to mass timber — including cross-laminated timber (CLT) — to build more sustainable data centers. Last year, Microsoft announced it would use CLT in a hybrid construction strategy to build a pair of lower emissions data centers, combining the durable wood with steel and concrete.
Dive Insight:
Meta — the parent company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — is adding mass timber to its lower-emissions construction strategy, part of its broader goal to reach net-zero emissions across its supply chain by 2030. Meta is also a member of the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Sustainable Steel Buyers platform and has previously piloted the use of low-carbon concrete in data centers.
The social media giant estimated that incorporating mass timber into its administrative buildings will decrease the embodied carbon emissions of those facilities by 41%, per the blog. Embodied emissions represent the greenhouse gas emissions over the lifecycle of building materials, spanning from extraction to construction to disposal, according to RMI. In addition to the wood having less lifecycle emissions than concrete or steel, the lower weight also reduces the amount of concrete necessary for the building’s foundation.
“The carbon emissions associated with sustainably harvesting timber, milling it and manufacturing it to create usable materials for industrial application is typically far less than the emissions associated with manufacturing steel and concrete.” Meta said in the blog. “Low carbon materials like mass timber are necessary as we look for alternatives in construction to reach a net-zero future.”
The first administrative building Meta completed with mass timber was constructed at the company’s Aiken County, South Carolina campus this year, the company said. Meta received the wood building materials from SmartLam, and DPR led the construction.
Meta will partner with Fortis Construction and Mercer Mass Timber to build additional mass timber buildings at its Cheyenne, Wyoming campus. Meanwhile, construction firm Hensel Phelps and mass timber company Binderholz will handle work at the tech giant’s Montgomery, Alabama site.
Meta said it plans to experiment with using mass timber in more administrative buildings, warehouses and data halls going forward.
