Along a dusty country road leading to ATL4, a massive new data center under construction east of Atlanta, the sight of dozens of cars and pickups parked haphazardly on narrow dirt shoulders is common. The out-of-state license plates are a clear sign of the skilled tradespeople from across the country who have descended on the site for one of the largest construction projects in the area. With the global battle for artificial intelligence (AI) dominance driving tech companies, utilities, and governments to invest upwards of US $1 trillion into capital expansion, data centers have become the critical infrastructure underpinning this competition. In this new era, data centers serve as the bunkers, factories, and laboratories of AI, powered by a seemingly insatiable need for concrete and electricity.
At first glance, the data industry might appear to be intangible, with its products existing as weightless bits and bytes. But standing next to the bustling construction site for DataBank’s ATL4, the enormity of the physical labor and materials involved is striking. The most prominent material in sight? Concrete—poured, pre-fabricated, and stacked in vast quantities. Big data is, quite literally, big concrete. And this poses a major challenge: concrete’s heavy environmental toll.
Continue reading… “Concrete’s Carbon Dilemma: Building the Future of Data Centers While Tackling Climate Change”