An Amazon data center near New Albany will be the first to use electrical cables made from low-carbon aluminum, Prysmian and Rio Tinto announced Friday, Sept. 18.

The companies did not name the specific facility. Amazon Web Services (AWS) operates data centers across Franklin and Licking counties and is planning a five-building campus in New Albany, according to Data Center Dynamics. AWS opened its first data center outside New Albany in 2016.

The aluminum is produced by Elysis, a joint venture between Rio Tinto and Alcoa Corp. The Elysis process replaces traditional carbon anodes with proprietary inert materials during smelting. That eliminates direct greenhouse gas emissions and releases pure oxygen as a byproduct. Rio Tinto said all the aluminum for the cables was produced in Quebec, Canada, using hydropower.

Prysmian, whose North American operations are based in the Cincinnati metropolitan area, manufactures the cables at its Sedalia, Missouri, factory. Wesco handles delivery to the project site.

"Prysmian, Rio Tinto, and Wesco are showing that lower-carbon materials aren't a future concept – they're here and going into Amazon data centers," Joern Tinnemeyer, AWS vice president of data center engineering, said in the announcement Friday.

Srinivas Siripurapu, Prysmian's chief sustainability, R&D, and innovation officer, said the cables meet power-quality standards while lowering supply-chain emissions.

The deal marks the second low-carbon materials agreement between Amazon and Rio Tinto. In January, AWS signed a two-year contract for low-carbon copper produced at Rio Tinto's Johnson Camp mine in Arizona using its Nuton bioleaching technology.

AWS has pledged to invest more than $23 billion in Ohio by 2030, according to JobsOhio. The agency called it the second-largest planned investment by a single private company in state history. The area around New Albany has become one of the densest clusters of AI computing in the nation, according to Ohio Capital Journal reporting.

The announcement comes as state lawmakers debate data center tax incentives that New Albany relies on. Neither Prysmian nor Amazon disclosed a timeline for when the cables will be installed.