Microsoft launches its new West US 3 data center region with enhanced sustainability features.

Microsoft Corp. announced the launch of West US 3, a new data center region located in El Mirage and Goodyear, Arizona, designed to be 100% carbon negative. The company selected Arizona for its abundance of solar power, proximity to major customers, skilled workforce, and availability of land. The facility aligns with Microsoft's stated ambition to become entirely carbon-negative by 2030. According to Noelle Walsh, Microsoft's corporate vice president of cloud operations and innovation, the company has secured power purchase agreements for green energy that account for 100% of the carbon-emitting electricity the new facility uses.

To support the region's renewable energy requirements, Microsoft collaborated with Longroad Energy on their 150-megawatt Sun Streams 2 photovoltaic solar power plant located in Maricopa County, Arizona. "Renewable energy from Sun Streams 2, using First Solar technology, will offset the energy use of the new campus with Renewable Energy Certificates from the project," Walsh said. The company implemented advanced cooling technologies to minimize water usage, employing adiabatic cooling that relies on outside air when temperatures fall below 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and an evaporative cooling system similar to swamp coolers for higher temperatures. "This system is highly efficient, using less electricity and a fraction of water used by other water-based cooling systems, such as cooling towers," Walsh explained.

Microsoft is pursuing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification for the facility and has committed to zero-waste certified operations. "We are committed to zero-waste certified operations for this new regions, which means a minimum of 90% of waste will be diverted away from landfills through reduction, reuse and recycling efforts," Walsh said. The Azure West US 3 region will support Azure cloud services including computing, networking, databases, analytics, artificial intelligence, and internet of things, with three Azure Availability Zones providing customers with greater resiliency through separate physical locations with independent power, network, and cooling systems. The State of Arizona became one of the first customers, using the facility to power applications including its online Motor Vehicle Department services and child safety case management system. Arizona Chief Information Officer J.R. Sloan stated, "The new Microsoft data center region in Arizona enables us to continue this important work with computing resources right here in our state."

Microsoft has announced plans for a similar sustainable data center region in Sweden later this year and continues exploring alternative cooling technologies, including a two-phase immersion cooling technology revealed in April that uses a specialized liquid boiling at extremely low temperatures to keep data centers cool.