The Infrastructure Masons Program, the governing body of the iMasons Climate Agreement, is calling on all suppliers serving data centers to support greater transparency on Scope 3 emissions as part of broader efforts to reduce the industry's carbon footprint.
Together with AWS, Digital Realty, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Schneider Electric, the governing body issued an open letter that explains the importance of widespread adoption of environmental product declarations, which are standardized, third-party-verified documents that report tangible emissions. a product. EPDs outline greenhouse gas emissions through the product's entire lifecycle, from raw materials to products (eg, how they are extracted, transported, and processed), manufacturing, transportation, product use, and product end-of-life. (eg, landfill, recycling, remanufacturing, etc.).
While EPDs are common in some business sectors, EPDs have not been widely adopted in the data center industry. The open letter shows a significant push from the world's largest hyperscalers and digital infrastructure companies, working in partnership with their trusted suppliers, to drive meaningful change across the industry.
It is essential to continue to ensure that the digital infrastructure industry continues to decarbonize as it grows. Signatories of the iMasons governing body's open letter have made net-zero carbon emissions commitments to address their responsibilities in reducing data center carbon emissions (a timeframe of 2025 to 2040, which is at least 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement). , and this letter marks another milestone toward decarbonizing operations.
Hyperscalers have implemented strategies to reduce and/or mitigate Scope 1 and 2 emissions. As they seek to reach net-zero carbon emissions in the coming years, solving another piece of the sustainability puzzle is reducing Scope 3 emissions, which can represent up to 38-69 percent of data centers' total carbon footprint. Scope 3 emissions are not produced by the company itself; Instead, they include indirect emissions throughout the value chain.
Access to critical information in EPD empowers data center owners, operators, and end-users to effectively calculate their environmental impact and to better align products (servers, cooling systems, uninterruptible power supplies and services based on low Scope 3 emissions) with sustainability goals.
“EPDs are critical to making the future of digital infrastructure more resilient and climate positive. The adoption of EPDs within the global supply chain promotes sustainable and accountable outcomes. As standardized and verified data provides a layer of transparency, this initiative helps reduce our carbon emissions and environmental footprint. supports a collective approach,” said Miranda Gardiner, executive director of IMasons Climate Accord, an alliance of 250+ members representing $8 trillion. Combined market cap.
“At AWS, we are committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions in our operations by 2040 by investing in carbon-free energy, scaling solutions, and collaborating with partners to broaden our impact,” said Eric Wilcox, vice president of data center engineering. on AWS. “We support iMasons' call for suppliers to use environmental product declarations. Doing so will provide more transparency on scope 3 emissions contained in equipment and help accelerate overall industry efforts to reduce its carbon footprint.”
“As a leading data center company, we recognize the need to address Scope 3 emissions associated with the construction of new data centers,” said Lex Coors, chief data center technology and engineering officer for Digital Realty and Infrastructure Mason governing body member. “By advocating for the adoption of EPDs, we are not only committed to transparency; we are taking a decisive step towards empowering the entire industry to make informed, responsible choices that align with our collective sustainability ambitions. This initiative is important as we continue to meet the growing demands of our digital world.” We try to complete it.
“In line with our commitment to open standards and our company-wide goal of achieving net-zero emissions across all our operations and value chains, we support the industry-wide adoption of environmental product declarations as an important lever in Digital's low-carbon procurement. infrastructure,” said Joe Cava, vice president, Global Data Center, Google. “As a member of the Governing Board of the iMasons Climate Accord, Google is excited to help accelerate solutions that advance toward a more sustainable, transparent data center industry.”
“Reducing our emissions is a top priority for Meta to reach net-zero emissions across our value chain by 2030. We join our peers in calling for greater transparency in the data center supply chain to better understand the embodied carbon of the infrastructure that underpins our operations. will play an important role in accelerating decarbonization efforts for the centers,” said Rachel Peterson, VP, Infrastructure Data Centers at Meta.
“Microsoft is committed to becoming carbon negative by 2030 and eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions produced since our founding by 2050. By joining our peers to promote sustainability and advance progress using digital innovation, Microsoft is helping to create a more sustainable future for everyone,” said Shirin O'Connor, CVP, Datacenter Engineering, Procurement and Manufacturing, Microsoft.
“To enable the digital infrastructure industry to align with net-zero emissions targets, carbon emissions must be a fundamental consideration in procurement decisions,” said iMasons governing body member Anna Timme, who is also head of sustainability for secure power and data centers. Schneider Electric. “Promoting industry-wide adoption of EPDs is an important step toward enabling carbon-informed decision-making. Schneider Electric has been dedicated to publishing EPDs since 2008, and we are excited about the significant impact industry adoption will have as we collectively progress toward net-zero.”
The open letter is the second issued by the ICA to call for action from suppliers to accelerate decarbonisation efforts. In April 2023, the ICA's governing body called on data center industry suppliers to use low-carbon concrete in data center infrastructure.
