Rather than using the traditional materials of steel and concrete for the entire build, Microsoft is using cross-laminated timber (CLT) for a new data center in Northern Virginia. The experiment is part of the company’s drive to become carbon negative by 2030 and offset all its emissions since its founding (in 1975) by 2050.

    • chaosCruiser@futurology.today
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      17 days ago

      What they really care about is investors, some of which happen to care about ESG. The E stands for environment, so this way Microsoft can write many pages of greenwashing nonsense on their ESG report in order to attract investors without actually hurting their bottom line that much. Microsoft looks green, investors are happy, it’s a win-win… Oh but the energy consumption is still through the roof, but we don’t talk about that.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    16 days ago

    What happens when someone hits it with a truck, plane or explosive?

    Concrete and steel can take a beating. Maybe they should just look at low emitting concrete

    • trolololol@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      It blows up, but the redundancy kicks in and the services start running from a different data center.

      They’re not supposed to be fail proof.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        16 days ago

        But they should be secure from attack. We are talking about a data center housing lots of important data.

        I’m sure MS has figured that part out but I wonder how.

        • trolololol@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          What makes you think that a big corporation, this one in particular, wants to do due diligence?