How Can Data Centers Benefit From PCC?

Electricity demand from data centers is rising rapidly, and AI is making that growth even more urgent. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), data centers consumed around 415 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, equal to roughly 1.5% of global power demand. In the IEA’s base case, U.S. data center electricity demand alone is projected to increase by about 130% between 2024 and 2030. Power is therefore no longer just an operational input. It is becoming a strategic constraint that determines where data centers can be built, how fast they can come online, and whether they can support the next wave of AI-driven demand.

Access to reliable electricity has become one of the main challenges in data center development. Delays in grid expansion and long interconnection queues increase uncertainty. Renewables will remain essential to long-term decarbonization, but in many cases they cannot meet the speed, scale, and reliability requirements of hyperscale data centers on their own. This is why alternative solutions – including on-site power generation paired with carbon capture technology – are increasingly being considered in parallel.

On-site natural gas is one of the most practical bridge options, as it can provide dispatchable, high-availability power and can be combined with renewables and batteries in hybrid systems. From an operational perspective, it offers the speed, uptime, and certainty that mission-critical infrastructure requires. Despite these clear advantages, on-site natural gas has one problem: emissions. Once power is generated on site, CO₂ emissions become direct facility-level Scope 1 emissions. To mitigate tensions between speed-to-power and sustainability, carbon capture technology comes into play.

Modern combined-cycle gas turbines are highly efficient, but they still produce substantial CO₂ emissions. State-of-the-art CCGTs typically emit approximately 334 kg of CO₂ per megawatt-hour of electricity generated. This figure does not include upstream emissions from natural gas production and transport, nor does it capture other environmental externalities.

For data centers, this creates a difficult trade-off. Gas-fired generation can provide the reliability and speed that operators need, but its carbon intensity is increasingly difficult to reconcile with long-term sustainability commitments. This is precisely where carbon capture innovation becomes strategically relevant.

Post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) offers a direct way to address this challenge. By capturing CO₂ from flue gas after combustion, PCC can significantly reduce the climate impact of on-site natural gas power generation.

Post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) is a form of carbon capture technology that removes CO₂ from flue gas after fossil fuels such as natural gas have been burned. In the context of data centers, this means that emissions from on-site gas-fired power generation can be captured directly at the source before they are released into the atmosphere. Unlike Direct Air Capture (DAC), which removes CO₂ from ambient air, PCC is designed for point-source emissions.

The main factor holding back wider adoption of PCC in data centers is post-combustion carbon capture cost. A major driver of that cost is the challenge of low-concentration CO2 capture: the flue gas stream from natural gas combustion typically contains only 3–5% CO₂. Under these dilute conditions, incumbent PCC technologies face the problem of high post-combustion carbon capture energy consumption because far more energy is required to separate CO₂ from a dilute gas mixture than from a concentrated one. This makes conventional liquid solvent-based systems economically unviable for most data center operators.

Emerging approaches, including solid state carbon capture based on nano-engineered reticular materials, have the potential to solve both the cost and energy consumption challenges associated with low-concentration CO2 capture. By reducing post-combustion carbon capture energy consumption and therefore lowering the overall post-combustion carbon capture cost, next-generation carbon capture innovation could make PCC a genuinely practical solution for the data center sector.

The core challenge for any carbon capture technology deployed at a data center is whether it can perform reliably under real operating conditions and at acceptable cost. Conventional PCC systems have historically failed this test, because high costs for low-concentration CO2 capture from natural gas flue gas, where CO₂ levels sit at just 3–5%.

Atoco’s PCC technology, based on Nobel Prize-winning science by our Founder and Chief Science Officer Prof. Omar Yaghi, addresses this through carbon capture innovation centered on nano-engineered reticular materials — solid-state carbon capture materials engineered with high surface area and tunable pore structures that selectively adsorb CO₂ even at low CO₂ concentrations:

• No heating / ultra-low regeneration temperature (~40°C), enabling the use of waste heat or ambient energy and significantly reducing post-combustion carbon capture energy consumption and therefore operating costs. This stems from optimized binding energy of CO₂ within reticular materials—strong enough for capture, yet weak enough to allow release with minimal energy input.

• High stability and high durability, supported by the structural stability of reticular carbon capture materials designed to withstand thousands of adsorption/desorption cycles without degradation, ensuring long-term operational reliability limited operational intervention.

• Scalable modular design, enabled by the versatility and manufacturability of reticular materials, allowing standardized solid state carbon capture modules to be replicated from pilot to hyperscale deployments without changing the underlying technology.

For data center operators navigating the tension between speed-to-power and decarbonization, Atoco’s carbon capture technology offers a path that does not require choosing between the two.