Can Data Centers Ditch Concrete – or Just Use Less of It?. 6 Min Read. High density compute drives heavier floor loads and stricter fire ratings, keeping concrete central to core construction.Getty. Data center developers are being squeezed from two directions at once. Surging demand for AI infrastructure has compressed construction timelines that once spanned years into sprints measured in months. At the same time, scrutiny of the embodied carbon in new builds is intensifying.. Concrete sits at the center of both pressures. It dominates foundations, structural slabs, and equipment pads – and it carries a significant embodied-carbon cost. The industry’s reliance on concrete is not incidental: load requirements, vibration control, fire ratings, and code compliance have long made conventional concrete the default for mission-critical construction.. That raises a question the sector has been slow to confront directly: Can data centers meaningfully reduce their dependence on conventional concrete, or is the material too structurally embedded to displace?. For some operators, the starting point is rejecting the assumption that any component is off-limits by definition. “No part of a data center is inherently off-limits to alternative materials,” Andrew Higgins, senior director of global master planning at Equinix, told Data Center Knowledge. “What matters is that every component, whether foundations or façades, meets strict performance requirements for structural integrity, safety, and reliability.”. Related:Eco-Friendly Innovations: A Guide to Green Materials in Data Centers. Why Core Structures Still Rely on Concrete. Foundations, structural slabs, and equipment pads are where concrete alternatives are hardest to justify. The structural demands underpinning those decisions are not static, and in key respects, they are getting harder to meet.. The industry’s shift to liquid cooling for AI is adding requirements rather than relieving them. “The shift to liquid cooling is actually making this more acute: AI workloads require heavier thermal storage systems and welded stainless steel secondary loops, which demand stronger structural designs,” Jenny Gerson, senior director of sustainability at DataBank, told Data Center Knowledge.. Compute density makes the case plain. Modern GPU clusters can draw from 50 to 150 kW per rack, several times more than many facilities were designed to handle, noted Billy Krassakopoulos, president of data centers at WhiteFiber. At those densities, conventional concrete remains the most reliable way to meet load and fire-rating requirements.. That leaves little room for material experimentation in the core.. “Areas housing high-density compute, cooling infrastructure, and power distribution are not candidate sites for material experimentation right now, and that is not conservatism for its own sake,” Krassakopoulos said. “The consequences of a structural failure in a mission-critical environment are severe enough that the burden of proof on any alternative remains extremely high, and no developer building at the pace the market currently demands is going to take that risk on the structural layer.”. Related:Water Is the New Constraint for AI Data Centers. What’s Working Now: Low-Carbon Mixes, Timber, Retrofits. Progress is most visible in non-critical portions of campus buildings. Equinix has incorporated mass timber in an administrative building in Frankfurt and used low-carbon concrete on its LD14 project. DataBank has deployed low-carbon concrete mixes in Dallas and New York. WhiteFiber’s NC-1 project in Madison, N.C., took a different approach, converting an existing industrial building into a data center and letting the original structure guide material decisions.. That retrofit discipline tends to yield better material choices than greenfield development. “When you are converting an existing industrial building into a data center … you are working with whatever the original structure gives you and making targeted decisions about where new concrete is genuinely required versus where existing structure can carry the load,” Krassakopoulos said.. Related:Riding the Wave: The Rise of Floating Data Centers. Low-carbon concrete mixes – most commonly using supplementary cementitious materials such as fly ash and ground granulated blast-furnace slag – offer the most immediate path forward. They do not require changes to structural calculations or procurement pipelines. Gerson noted the cost premium for these mixes has narrowed considerably, removing a barrier that previously stalled adoption.. Mass timber is also gaining traction in superstructures, including in recent builds by major technology companies like Microsoft, said Josh Taylor, vice president of structural engineering at Bentley Systems. Taylor argues that digital modeling tools are reducing the engineering risk by allowing design teams to validate alternative materials against code requirements before committing to a specification.. Meta is constructing the administration building for its data center in Aiken County, S.C., primarily from wood. (Image: Meta Platforms). Why Adoption Lags. Engineering conservatism and code approval are familiar friction points. But the more persistent problem, according to the operators closest to procurement, is timing.. “The more persistent problem is that low-carbon materials require longer lead times and earlier design decisions than the development timelines most projects are currently operating on,” Krassakopoulos said. With AI infrastructure compressing schedules, a facility that must come online in six months often defaults to conventional concrete on availability alone, he added.. The risk of rework compounds the timing challenge. “Mission-critical construction has essentially zero tolerance for rework, and specifying something unfamiliar on a project where a delay costs millions is a hard case to make,” Gerson said.. Supply chain adds further variability. In many markets, low-carbon materials are not as available or cost-effective as conventional options, said Balsam Nehme, group executive director for sustainability and implementation at Sidara. Embodied carbon targets are frequently deprioritized in favor of schedule, resilience, and capital expenditure unless sustainability objectives are built into project KPIs from the start.. Heavy equipment pads anchored on reinforced concrete continue to dominate in mission‑critical zones. (Alamy). The Realistic Path Forward. Framing concrete elimination as the goal creates its own problem. “Eliminating concrete isn’t a realistic goal, and framing it that way sets the industry up to be criticized for not hitting a target that was not achievable in the first place,” Gerson said.. Higgins described Equinix’s approach as a three-step framework applied project by project:. Avoid material use altogether through efficient design and, where possible, reuse of existing structures.. Reduce impact by substituting lower-carbon alternatives where feasible, guided by whole-building lifecycle assessments.. Work with suppliers and contractors to scale new low-carbon solutions at the market level.. Embodied carbon in construction is only part of the picture, and not the largest part. “The industry should also be honest about proportionality,” Krassakopoulos said. “The energy and water story around AI infrastructure is orders of magnitude larger than the embodied carbon story around construction materials, and the focus should reflect that reality.”. In the long term, carbon capture at cement plants could alter the trajectory. The technology carries a cost premium today but is beginning to scale. “One thing we have seen in several European markets is the rise of carbon capture in cement works, which effectively decarbonizes the concrete mix,” Nehme said.. The path forward is reduction and decarbonization, not elimination. “Realistically, the industry’s path forward is to use less concrete where possible and decarbonize what remains essential, not eliminate it entirely,” Higgins said.. About the Author
