The Globe and Mail reports in its Monday, Jan. 6, edition that Canada aims to be a leader in artificial intelligence and digital innovation, with 336 data centres and a market growth of 9 per cent annually projected through 2030. The Globe's guest columnist Madison Savilow writes that the environmental impact of AI can be cut by leveraging our clean-tech expertise to address the carbon costs of construction, particularly from materials like concrete. Data centres are essential for powering AI, cloud computing and other critical technologies. Global data centre construction is projected to surpass $369-billion (U.S.) by 2030, but it comes with significant environmental impacts. Concrete, used for foundations and walls, accounts for up to 80 per cent of the embodied carbon emissions in these projects. Concrete's carbon footprint is a challenge that needs addressing. Cement contributes nearly one tonne of CO2 per tonne produced. Canada is well placed to tackle Scope 3 emissions by addressing embodied carbon in data centre construction. Major companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon are building large hyperscale data centres, but even they struggle to reduce embodied carbon effectively.