Microsoft announced it will be opening a new data centre in Cheyanne, Wyoming, but that’s not the whole story.
The data centre will be called Data Plant and will be the software giant’s first zero carbon data centre. The Data Plant will have an off the grid strategy and will rely on human and animal waste bi-products to power cloud services Microsoft intends to offer the marketplace.
Sean James, Microsoft’s senior research program manager for data centre advanced development, said in a blog post that the company has been committed to developing more efficient and sustainable data centre infrastructures that support customers’ demand for online services since 1994. With this Data Plant pilot project, Microsoft is taking another step in that journey, while also working to address some of the global challenges facing us all regarding energy, waste, and water resources today.
Microsoft is not a company to let anything go to waste, as it proved this week by unveiling a project to build a data center in Wyoming that runs, well, on waste. The new plant will be operated out of the Dry Creek Water Reclamation Facility in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and officials behind the pilot project promise that it will be carbon-neutral and ‘off the grid’ by running on biogas extracted from wastewater treatment plants, farms and landfills. ‘By capturing and reusing biogas on premise with our data centers, we will be able to significantly reduce their carbon emissions while producing beneficial uses at the same time,’ Sean James