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AI’ssurging power demandhas put several Big Tech firms at risk of blowing through their climate commitments . But Amazon has partnered with Orbital , an AI startup , to test a new material that remove carbon dioxide from the air — and they ’re using an AWS data center as a first situation .
One ofcarbon capture ’s big costs is generate enough flow of air so that the sorbent material can recall a meaningful amount of carbon dioxide . Data centers seem an obvious place to deploy such a engineering since their cool down systems move massive amount of money of aviation to keep M of servers running at optimal temperatures .
Orbital Materials ’ business deal with AWS will reportedly place its material at a yet - unnamed data center , accordingto Reuters . The apparatus should remove more carbon paper dioxide than the electricity used by the data point center would produce , and the surplus cost of the material should be far less than the terms of a carbon offset .
The inauguration specializes in using AI to contrive advanced material ; Orbital ’s mannequin can generatea range of possible materials , including for batteries , semiconducting material , and other electronics . But for now , it ’s specializing in carbon capture . The material that ’s extend to be used by AWS was designed specifically to work with the spicy breeze coming out of datum essence . The company refuse to disclose further details about the proprietary compound .
Orbital is n’t the first to pair carbon capture with data point centers . Both Alphabet and Meta hold patents have-to doe with to the engineering , and startup 280 Earth is work on on the trouble as well .
So why are n’t all new datum centers outfit to captivate carbon ? For one , it ’s not free . There ’s the material cost , of course , and any filtration scheme will increase the resistance within the cooling system of rules , increasing the amount of energy it require to run . Then company require to figure out what to do with the atomic number 6 they catch . All of that needs to cost less than atomic number 6 offsets that companies can buy on the candid market .
But if the cost is down enough , on - site atomic number 6 seizure is appealing for several reason . For one , there ’s no middleman to take a cut , as is often the example in carbon markets . Plus , the amount of beguile carbon is much soft to verify . And if data centre do finish up capturing more carbon dioxide than they generate , Amazon and other company can trade the credits themselves , turning the system into a net income center .
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From the Storyline:AWS re:Invent 2024: Live updates from Amazon’s biggest event
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