21st October 2025
Embodied Carbon: Data Centres’ Problem Child
Every search, streamed movie, or AI query passes through a data centre somewhere in the world. These facilities are becoming the beating heart of our digital economy and can be seen as icons of progress. But while the world focuses on decarbonising their operational emissions — the electricity, cooling water, and power use — another, largely invisible footprint is growing unchecked: embodied carbon.
As grids decarbonise and renewable energy becomes the norm, the embodied carbon locked into the structure, servers, and supporting infrastructure of data centres is emerging as the dominant source of emissions, and the hardest part to decarbonise.
Two Carbons, One Problem: Operational vs. Embodied
In sustainability circles, operational carbon is familiar territory. It’s the carbon released during a facility’s operation — from electricity, cooling, and water consumption. That’s why so much innovation has gone into making data centres energy efficient, from advanced cooling systems to renewable power purchase agreements.
But embodied carbon — the emissions from producing, transporting, and assembling the materials and equipment that make up the facility — remains largely unmeasured and unregulated.
It includes everything from the steel and concrete of the building, to the servers, chillers, batteries, and kilometres of copper cabling inside. Once the facility is built, those emissions are locked in for decades.
According to the One Click LCA framework, embodied carbon can account for 50–80% of a building’s total lifecycle emissions when powered by clean electricity. And as this Arup report shows, in fully renewable energy scenarios, embodied emissions can surpass operational ones altogether.
Hardware Has a Carbon Heartbeat
A single hyperscale data centre can contain hundreds of kilometres of piping and cabling, massive air-handling units, and high-density racks packed with hardware replaced every few years. These elements — the hardware and structure of the digital world — carry enormous embodied emissions, particularly from steel, copper, and aluminium production.
Even server racks — often replaced every three years — can have a whole-life carbon footprint greater than the building’s entire Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) system. This creates a feedback loop where faster tech cycles erase gains from cleaner energy.
Recent years have seen a wave of innovation in low-carbon materials, from carbon-neutral concrete mixes to recycled metals and mass timber construction. Microsoft, for example, has begun building data centres using engineered wood to replace traditional concrete slabs — a move that can dramatically cut embodied emissions.
However, the supply and demand ecosystem for these sustainable materials remains underdeveloped. Access to responsibly sourced timber, low-carbon cement, or recycled metals is still limited by regional supply chains and cost constraints. Until market demand reaches scale — supported by policy, investment, and transparent data — these innovations will remain the exception, not the norm.
You Can’t Cut What You Don’t Count
Embodied emissions are unique in one crucial way: they occur before operations even begin. Once the concrete is poured and the hardware installed, the carbon cost is already sunk. Without early measurement and assessment during the design and procurement stages, they become nearly impossible to account for later.
Yet, as RICS points out, most data centre reporting frameworks and efficiency standards still ignore these emissions entirely. Many assessments also exclude Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) systems — even though, according to Arup’s analysis, MEP can represent up to 70% of upfront embodied carbon and as much as 88% of whole-life embodied carbon.
This blind spot risks locking the industry into a high-carbon future just as it’s working hardest to decarbonise.
The AI Efficiency Paradox
Much of the conversation around data centre sustainability today focuses on how artificial intelligence will make operations more efficient. Smarter energy management, dynamic cooling algorithms, and predictive maintenance all promise to reduce operational energy use and carbon footprints.
And while these innovations are welcome — and in many cases, necessary — they overlook one critical fact: AI can’t erase emissions that are already baked in. The construction, fit-out, and equipment manufacturing phases of a data centre represent enormous upfront carbon costs. These embodied emissions are emitted long before the first AI algorithm begins optimising performance.
In other words, even the most efficient future operations can’t undo the carbon debt incurred today. Moreover, as Arup and RICS have both highlighted, the AI boom is accelerating the build-out of new, hardware-intensive facilities — increasing the embodied footprint of the global data centre fleet before the benefits of smarter operations even materialise.
To align AI-driven efficiency with genuine climate progress, the industry must adopt a dual focus:
Operational optimisation, through automation and renewable energy, and
Upfront carbon reduction, by integrating low-carbon materials, reuse strategies, and whole-life carbon assessments at the design stage.
Without both, AI risks becoming a sustainability paradox — improving performance while perpetuating hidden emissions.
Neutralising Embodied Carbon Before It Locks In
Even with ambitious circularity and material innovation, embodied emissions from data centres will persist for years to come. Steel, cement, aluminium, and semiconductor manufacturing are among the hardest sectors to decarbonise — and many data centres built today will lock in those emissions for decades. This is where early investment in carbon removal becomes a powerful tool.
Durable carbon removal — such as direct air capture (DAC), biochar, or enhanced mineralisation — physically draws carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When applied early, these removals can neutralise the embodied emissions of construction and manufacturing that cannot yet be avoided. According to the IPCC and the Energy Transitions Commission, durable carbon removal will be essential to reach net-zero, compensating for “residual” industrial emissions that cannot be abated before 2050.
For data centres, acting early matters. Embodied emissions occur upfront, meaning they contribute to atmospheric CO₂ concentrations immediately. Early removal deployment — even at small scale — can help balance that one-time pulse before it accumulates over decades. Integrating removals into whole-life carbon strategies — alongside material reuse, efficient design, and renewable operations — allows data centre developers to take responsibility for their total impact.
From Accounting to Accountability
The data centre sector stands at a critical juncture. Energy decarbonisation is well underway, but embodied carbon remains the missing piece of the net-zero puzzle. Mandating whole-life carbon assessments, expanding Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), and requiring early lifecycle reporting can bring consistency to how embodied emissions are measured and managed. Alongside this accountability, demand for the technologies, which already exist, is desperately needed to scale the supply.
If you’d like to learn more about scaling climate solutions, building AI infrastructure as climate infrastructure, or carbon removal, please contact rachael@opna.earth
