Open Compute Project Foundation and iMasons Announce a New Collaboration

Towards a Sustainable and Scalable Digital Infrastructure for AI and HPC

LISBON, Portugal, April 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), the nonprofit organization bringing hyperscale innovations to all, and infrastructure Masons (iMasons), a nonprofit professional association of individuals connected and empowered to build a greater digital future for all, announce a new collaboration related to sustainability initiatives centered on the iMasons Climate Accord (ICA). By aligning the OCP Community's ability to impact the data center supply chain and iMasons reach with the end user community, they will address one of the industry's greatest challenges, creating sustainable and scalable digital infrastructure capable of meeting the requirements for AI and HPC from the data center to the edge. 

To start, this new alliance will focus on standardizing a taxonomy for supplier carbon disclosures related to data center materials and equipment, including a digital carbon label providing both calculated carbon levels and its corresponding methodology. This work effort is led by Google, Meta, Microsoft and Schneider Electric, and is critical for building a more sustainable industry as Scope 3 emissions comprise the vast majority of the carbon footprint of data centers. Almost all of those Scope 3 emissions are upstream and take the form of embodied carbon in the materials and equipment that go into building these facilities. In order to meet net-zero carbon goals, the industry needs to organize its supply chain to measure, report on, and draw down the embodied carbon of data centers.

"We are very pleased to build our relationship with iMasons, and the timing could not be better as the data center build-out to scale, driven by AI, is upon us. To better support the ecosystem and our community, it is clear to us at OCP that the current brute force method of building more and bigger data centers is not sustainable without behavior and technological shifts. Such shifts will start with proper standardized methods for measurement, allowing OCP's data center facilities, building and equipment vendor members to adjust their products and end-users to make sustainability part of their buying decision," said George Tchaparian, CEO at the Open Compute Project Foundation.