Today, we’re sharing a new set of long-term purchase commitments spanning cement, steel, trucking, and recycled plastics. Through these commitments, we’re helping bring clean manufacturing to a commercial scale in the industries that build and supply our data centers.
Building the physical infrastructure that supports Meta technologies takes significant quantities of foundation materials: cement, steel, plastics, and the freight networks that move them.
Reducing the emissions associated with building infrastructure requires not only sourcing differently but bringing lower carbon materials and services into existence at commercial scale. Our multi-year commitments give suppliers the revenue certainty they need to build these solutions, and stepping in early helps demonstrate these technologies so the broader market can adopt them.
These agreements build on a track record of testing, validating, and scaling lower carbon infrastructure solutions across our data center footprint. That includes piloting mass timber architecture to replace traditional carbon-intensive materials, open-sourcing AI models to design faster-curing, lower carbon concrete formulations, and joining industry peers as a founding partner of the Data Center Innovation Initiative.
Lower Carbon Cement and Concrete
We’ve signed a multi-year agreement with Sublime Systems to support at least 180,000 tons of lower carbon cement production. Our support enables Sublime to build its first commercial-scale facility and gives us priority access to use Sublime Cement® in our data center construction pipeline.
We’ve also signed an agreement with lower carbon cement producer Fortera to support a new plant in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Both companies expect their early plants to add domestic capacity for lower carbon cement and create new American jobs.
These agreements build on earlier lower carbon concrete projects with partners like CarbonBuilt and CarbiCrete.
Clean Iron and Steel
Last year, we signed a multi-year agreement to support domestic clean iron from Electra’s first demonstration plant in Jefferson County, Colorado. We’re now taking that work from iron into steel: a new multi-year agreement with Sweden-based Stegra supports near-zero-emission primary steel, produced through a process that eliminates coal entirely from iron reduction.
Structural steel reaches our data centers through global supply chains. Supporting a first-of-its-kind facility through its production ramp helps validate technologies that can scale across the global steel industry.
Zero-Emission Freight Corridors
Building on initial zero-emission freight partnerships with NFI in Virginia and Nevoya (with the Center for Green Market Activation) in Texas, we’re expanding our work with Nevoya to now include a California and Arizona route along the I-10 interstate.
Electric trucks produce zero tailpipe emissions and run quieter than diesel. By supporting heavy-duty electric trucks and dedicated charging infrastructure along critical transport routes, we’re helping bring cleaner air and quieter streets along freight corridors in Virginia, Texas, California, and Arizona. The permanent, open access charging stations will support other commercial fleets along the corridor.
Recycled Plastics
Our long-term purchase agreement with MacroCycle Technologies is enabling the financing of their first commercial plant in the Southeastern US, which aims to divert hard-to-recycle plastic waste from landfills and local incinerators into 5,000 tons per year of high-value recycled PET.
Supporting American Industrial Leadership and Local Communities
Long-term commitments to future lower carbon production help build American industrial capacity. By focusing these efforts domestically, where we are actively expanding our data center footprint, we help anchor new projects where domestic supply of clean materials and services are limited today.
The benefits are tangible and local to the communities where our partners operate. Across planned and expanded US plants, this work is estimated to support hundreds of jobs across construction and long-term manufacturing.
How We Address Emissions in Our Value Chain
We use a range of tools to address emissions across our direct operations, energy footprint, and supply chain. Since 2020, we’ve matched 100% of our annual electricity use with clean and renewable energy, and we continuously work to reduce the emissions through efficient design, extending the life of hardware, reusing server equipment, and prioritizing recycled materials. While we work with our suppliers to use cleaner materials and services, we’re often limited by how deep into the supply chain our influence extends and what is available on the market.
These long-term purchase agreements are structured to deliver Environmental Attribute Certificates (EACs), which is one way we address emissions in the most challenging sectors. With an EAC, a supplier produces verified lower carbon materials or services, Meta pays for the environmental benefit, and the material or service is used in the local market. This enables us to support lower carbon production now, and where possible, secure priority access to use these materials directly in our future data centers as new factories come online and supply chains mature.
Building a Lower Carbon Ecosystem
These commitments do more than secure materials and services for Meta — deploying these technologies at commercial scale helps to make them available to the entire market. That’s the outcome we are working toward: supply chains where lower carbon cement, steel, recycled plastics, and electric freight are standard options for any builder.
We invite more buyers to build these markets with us. To learn more about our purchase agreements and other sustainability work, head to our sustainability website.
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