Meta has agreed to buy environmental attribute certificates (EACs) from clean iron startup Electra.

Under the purchase agreement, Meta will buy the first certificates generated by Electra’s first commercial facility.

The EACs are linked to reduced emissions from the clean iron and do not represent the delivery of the iron itself. The delivery timeline of the credits was not disclosed.

Iron refinement is an energy-intensive process and one of the primary drivers behind the high emissions of steel production.

Electra aims to provide a low-emission pathway to steel with its refinement method.

Through the agreement, Meta aims to ​“demonstrate a pathway for these innovative materials to scale,” John DeAngelis, Meta's head of clean technology innovation, said.

In addition to the EAC purchases, Electra also announced plans for its first demonstration facility in Jefferson County, Colorado. The plant, which is set to come online in the middle of next year, will span 130,000 sq ft (12,075 sqm) and produce up to 500 tons of iron per year.

The company produces iron by dissolving ores in an aqueous acidic solution to separate the desired metallic ions from impurities. It then blasts the solution with electricity to deposit those ions onto metal plates. According to the company, the result is a 99 percent pure iron product. Due to the product's purity, the iron can be used for more than just steel, with the company exploring the potential for magnets and lithium-iron-phosphate batteries that require concentrated, pure iron.

In addition to the deal with Meta, Electra also announced purchase agreements with major steel buyers Nucor and Toyota Tsusho.

“This facility lays the groundwork for a new era of low-carbon materials, and we’re proud to support Electra as they scale their innovative solutions,” Al Behr, Nucor’s executive vice president of raw materials, said in a statement.

Electra recently raised $186 million as part of a Series B funding round, which included a $50m commitment by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy. It also received an $8m tax credit from Colorado Governor Jared Polis.

“Electra is reimagining the fundamentals of ironmaking, enabling a scalable, cost-effective pathway to low-carbon steel,” Mario Fernandez, the head of Breakthrough Energy’s Catalyst program, said in a statement.

Meta follows Microsoft in backing the green steel sector, with the latter recently inking an EAC deal with Swedish green steel firm Stegra. According to Stegra, the EACs related to the steel are decoupled from the physical product, which is sold as conventional non-prime steel without a green premium.

Last November, Amazon Web Services also signed a deal with green steel company SSAB to pilot the use of green steel to construct the roof and wall structures at the AWS Västerås data center.

Microsoft, AWS, Google, and Meta are all part of the Sustainable Steel Buyers Platform (SSBP), a non-profit organization that aims to bring together ambitious corporations in sectors with high steel usage, such as technology, construction, and manufacturing, and facilitate low-emission steel procurement in North America.

Steel is a crucial material in the construction of data centers. In addition to its traditional role in the foundations and shell of the building, it is also used in the racking, service enclosures, cooling systems, piping, and power generation equipment.