A mass timber data center swaps some steel and concrete for engineered wood. Microsoft and Meta are both trying it, and most of the results so far are estimates.
Microsoft in Virginia
Microsoft is building two data centers in northern Virginia with a hybrid of cross laminated timber, steel and concrete, designed with Gensler and Thornton Tomasetti. It estimates embodied carbon is 35 percent lower than conventional steel construction and 65 percent lower than typical precast concrete. These are design stage estimates, not measured results.
Meta’s pilot
In August 2025 Meta announced a mass timber pilot. The first building is an administrative building at its Aiken, South Carolina campus. Cheyenne, Wyoming and Montgomery, Alabama followed in the plan. Meta says mass timber cuts embodied carbon of the replaced materials by about 41 percent, and that prefabrication may save several weeks.
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What is not proven
These are admin buildings, not data halls. Meta says it plans to extend to critical data halls later. I could not verify fire code or long term performance data for timber in data halls, and the fire resistance claims are Meta’s own.
A note on credits
Meta has also bought carbon removal credits tied to forests. Credits are offsets, and they do not lower a building’s own embodied carbon.
What this means for design teams
Timber suits some parts of a campus better than others. Offices, support buildings and some halls are good candidates, while fire code, insurer comfort and local supply of mass timber all need early talks.
Teams that bring the fire engineer and the insurer in at the start usually save months later.
The takeaway
Wood is a promising material for the parts of a campus that suit it. Watch for measured results from the first completed buildings.
Every figure in this article comes from the sources listed below, and where a number is company reported we say so. Our Eco Tools page has calculators for water, PUE, carbon and efficiency payback if you want to test the ideas yourself. If you spot a mistake, tell us and we will fix it.
Tell us what you are building and what changed. Our newsroom reads every submission.
Submit your companySources: Microsoft on wood datacenters; DatacenterDynamics on Meta mass timber. Figures marked as company reported come from the company itself.
