Senior executives from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Meta – the owner of Facebook – and Microsoft began the project to develop the Infrastructure Masons (iMasons) Climate Accord, but since then it has been backed by many more companies from across the industry.
“We had 70 sign up in less than six weeks and another dozen are in the process,” said Microsoft’s Christian Belady (pictured), speaking last night at the Datacloud Awards in Monaco.
“This accord means the community has to shorten the time to carbon neutrality,” said Belady. “We asked people what is the one thing they can do to accelerate carbon neutrality.”
He said in Monaco that the iMasons Climate Accord “is an open standard to report carbon in materials and power and to report embodied carbon in data centre buildings.” The accord “will take account of all products in a data centre through its life, including the carbon intensity of its power consumption.”
The people developing the project nicknamed the plan Chez Belady, as much of the work took place at Belady’s house.
Meanwhile he announced that Pure Data Centres has purchased carbon offsets for all 500 people attending last night’s awards ceremony, covering all flights and other travel and meals.
Apart from the four hyperscalers, other companies that have agreed to the iMasons Climate Accord include Digital Realty, Equinix, Kao Data, NTT and Vantage from the colocation sector; as well as CBRE, Huawei and Vertiv.
“Now we’re working in climate change,” there’s so much to do,” said Belady. He noted that “individuals can sign up to the accord”, as well as companies. Six individuals had signed up by this morning.
