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The increasing energy demand of artificial intelligence has put many major technology companies at risk of breaching their climate commitments. But Amazon has partnered with Orbital, an AI startup, to test a new material that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — and they’re using an AWS data center as the first location.
One of the biggest costs of carbon capture is generating enough airflow so that the absorbent material can pull in a significant amount of carbon dioxide. Data centers seem like an obvious place to deploy such technology since their cooling systems move huge amounts of air to keep thousands of servers running at ideal temperatures.
Orbital materialsThe deal with AWS will place its materials in a yet-to-be-named data center. This setup must remove more carbon dioxide than the electricity used by the data center produces, and the additional cost of the material must be much less than the price of carbon offsets.
The startup specializes in using artificial intelligence to design advanced materials; Orbital’s models can generate a range of possible materials, including batteries, semiconductors, and other electronic devices. But for now, it specializes in carbon capture. The materials AWS will use are specifically designed to work with the hot air coming out of data centers. The company refused to reveal further details about the complex it owns.
Orbital isn’t the first to pair carbon capture with data centers. Alphabet and Meta both have patents on the technology, and startup 280 Earth is working on the problem as well.
So why aren’t all new data centers equipped to capture carbon? First, it’s not free. There is the cost of materials, of course, and any filtration system will increase resistance within the cooling system, increasing the amount of energy it needs to operate. Then companies need to know what to do with the carbon they capture. And all of this should be less expensive than carbon offsets that companies can buy on the open market.
But if the cost is low enough, on-site carbon capture is attractive for several reasons. First, there is no middleman to take a share, as is often the case in carbon markets. In addition, it is much easier to check the amount of carbon captured. If data centers end up capturing more carbon dioxide than they produce, Amazon and other companies could sell the credits themselves, turning the system into a profit center.
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