Amazon set to pilot carbon removal tech at its data centers

Following concerns about rising emissions from AI-related infrastructure, Amazon is reportedly planning to deploy a new material capable of removing carbon at its data centers as part of initiatives to achieve net zero by 2040.

The development comes as AI firms are seized with strategies to improve energy efficiency after studies have shown that data centers’ energy consumption is too high to remain sustainable.

Amazon is already seeing the benefits of the new technology

Now Amazon is among the tech giants that are coming up with ways of improving the energy efficiency of their AI systems. The e-commerce giant is reportedly piloting a system it termed as “breaking new ground in carbon removal efficiency” after the material was designed and improved upon by AI itself.

Describing the system, Jonathan Godwin, chief executive of climate technology startup Orbital Materials, which developed the material, said: “Each cavity in that sponge has a specific size opening that interacts well with CO2, that does not interact with other things.”

“The carbon filtering substance is like a sponge at the atomic level.”

Godwin.

As part of a three-year partnership with Orbital, Amazon’s Web services unit, AWS, will deploy the novel material in one data center to start in 2025. Orbital uses an open-source AI model to simulate advanced materials.

“Developing new advanced materials has traditionally been a slow process of trial and error in the lab,” said Amazon in a statement.

“Orbital replaces this with generative AI design, radically improving the speed and efficacy of materials discovery and new technology commercialization.”

Amazon.

Since beginning the work of the sponge in the first quarter of 2024, Orbital has improved 10 times using AI the carbon sponge which utilizes proprietary active material.

Amazon added that the carbon sponge is an order of magnitude faster than traditional development.

The carbon sponge presents cost benefits for Amazon

With data centers needing vast amounts of water to keep them cool, and increased energy needs to sustain the development of AI, it is becoming a huge problem for companies like Amazon that have vowed to achieve net zero carbon emissions zones by 2040.

With an estimated add-up of 10% of the hourly charge to rent a GPU chip for training powerful AI, the new carbon sponge is presenting some cost benefits for Amazon and Goodwin asserted that this is only a fraction of the price of purchasing carbon offsets.

No details of the financial agreements were provided by both Amazon and Orbital. However, Amazon said the deal would include providing AWS customers working on advanced materials and technologies, like semiconductors, batteries, and electronics access to Orbital’s AI model.

According to Amazon, for designing, synthesizing, and testing new technologies and advanced materials for data center integrated carbon removal, chip cooling, and water utilization, AWS will also work with Orbital.

This development comes amid a report by The Guardian which said big tech’s data centers have been accused of generating 662% more emissions than they have admitted to, as AI’s growth sees energy demand across the sector soar.

According to the UK news site’s analysis, from 2020 to 2022 the real emissions from the in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple were likely to be about 7.62 times higher than was officially reported, the report continued.

Amazon was listed as the biggest emitter of the big five tech companies by a mile, with Apple the second biggest emitter less than half of Amazon’s in 2022.

The company therefore seeks to correct these anomalies through the new carbon sponge technology being pioneered by Orbital.

However Amazon in July said that it met its goal seven years early and that it had implemented a gross emissions cut of 3% meaning the company will seek to see even more better results with the carbon sponge from Orbital.

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