...AND CHEAPER...:

Every year for the foreseeable future, Microsoft expects to build 50-100 new data centers to keep up with customer demand. That's a challenge for a company that has a goal to soon be carbon negative--meaning it sequesters more carbon that it emits--and water positive, meaning that it returns more water to the environment than it uses. Right now, even though technology keeps getting more efficient, data centers still use huge amounts of energy and water (to keep the data centers cool); globally, the industry uses an estimated 200 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, or more than some countries.

Inside the company's datacenter "advanced development" team, researchers are exploring how future data centers can change, with solutions from the understandable--hydrogen fuel cell backup power--to the far-out, like building the centers out of algae bricks "We readily say the technology we need for five and ten years out doesn't largely exist yet," says JoAnn Garbin, director of innovation for the datacenter advanced development team. "We investigate what's needed. And then we create it."

The company is shifting to 100% renewable electricity by 2025 and continuing to shrink energy use, but to eliminate its carbon footprint, it also has to rethink how datacenter buildings are built to avoid the carbon footprint of materials like concrete and steel. It's testing, for example, structural tubes made from mycelium, the strong root-like threads that grow under mushrooms. Bricks that are grown from algae can be carbon negative, because the algae stores carbon as it grows.

Tweet   @brothersjudd