Meta signs long-term deals to pull lower-carbon cement, steel, plastics and freight into data center supply chains

Meta said it is locking in long-term purchase commitments across several parts of the materials and logistics chain that help build data centers, ranging from cement and steel to recycled plastics and heavy freight. In a statement published Tuesday, the company described the deals as a way to move low-carbon construction inputs from pilots into commercial supply, arguing that manufacturers need revenue certainty to build new plants and scale production.

Meta’s plan centers on multi-year commitments that, it said, will deliver Environmental Attribute Certificates, or EACs. An EAC is a verified proof that a supplier produced a lower-carbon material or service, and the buyer pays for the environmental benefit in addition to the underlying commodity. Meta said the structure lets it support cleaner production “now,” and in some cases secure priority access to use those materials in future data center projects as factories come online.

The company said it is underwriting early-stage capacity for lower-carbon cement through agreements with two suppliers. It reported a multi-year deal with Sublime Systems to support production of at least 180,000 tons of lower-carbon cement, with Meta describing priority access to Sublime Cement in its construction pipeline. Meta also said it signed an agreement with Fortera to support a new plant in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.

Beyond concrete, Meta said it is extending clean steel supply efforts. It cited a prior multi-year agreement supporting domestic clean iron from Electra’s first demonstration plant in Jefferson County, Colorado. Meta then said it added a new multi-year agreement with Sweden-based Stegra to support near-zero-emission primary steel, produced through a process that eliminates coal entirely from iron reduction.

For plastics, Meta said a long-term purchase agreement with MacroCycle Technologies is enabling financing for the company’s first commercial plant in the Southeastern United States. Meta said the facility is aimed at diverting hard-to-recycle plastic waste from landfills and local incinerators into 5,000 tons per year of high-value recycled PET, a type of plastic used in packaging and other applications.

Meta also said it is working on freight emissions through partnerships tied to routes that move goods for construction and operations. It referenced earlier zero-emission freight partnerships with NFI in Virginia and Nevoya, in connection with the Center for Green Market Activation, in Texas. Meta said it is expanding its work with Nevoya to include a California and Arizona route along the I-10 interstate, and it described electric trucks and permanent open-access charging stations that other fleets can use along those corridors.

The announcement framed these steps as an attempt to address a gap that often exists between sustainability testing and broad market availability. Meta said reducing emissions tied to data center infrastructure requires more than changing sourcing, and that “lower carbon materials and services” must be brought into existence at commercial scale. It argued that early multi-year commitments can speed adoption by demonstrating technologies and indicating demand to suppliers, while also supporting capacity additions in the locations where it is expanding data centers.

Meta said the effort builds on earlier clean-infrastructure work, including piloting mass timber architecture to replace more carbon-intensive materials and open-sourcing AI models intended to design faster-curing, lower-carbon concrete formulations. It also said it joined industry peers as a founding partner of the Data Center Innovation Initiative, and it referenced lower-carbon concrete projects with partners including CarbonBuilt and CarbiCrete.

The company did not provide deal values, contract durations beyond describing them as multi-year, or detailed emissions outcomes tied to each agreement. It also did not specify the timing of when each supplier’s capacity will be available at Meta’s construction sites, beyond describing early plants and production ramps. As a result, investors and industry observers will likely focus on whether these commitments translate into measurable scale in U.S. supply chains and whether other buyers adopt similar mechanisms, especially in sectors like cement and steel where capacity additions can take years.