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Sabey Data Centers has started a pilot using hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) as a diesel replacement in backup generators at its Austin campus. The company is testing the renewable fuel as the primary fuel source for those generators, according to S
Featured: Wide exterior photograph of Sabey Data Centers' SDC Austin facility in Round Rock, Texas.abey's announcement. Sabey says the pilot will determine whether HVO can be used more widely across its data center portfolio.
The pilot runs at the SDC Austin campus in Round Rock, Texas, north of Austin. HVO is renewable diesel made by hydrotreating vegetable oils and waste fats, including used cooking oil. The fuel can run in existing diesel generators without engine modifications, Sabey says.
Sabey frames backup generation as one of the harder sources of Scope 1 emissions. Those are the greenhouse gases released directly from sources a company owns or controls.
A 2022 peer-reviewed study by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory examined the fuel's lifecycle emissions. The study found that renewable diesel made from waste-based feedstocks cuts lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by 79% to 86% compared with petroleum diesel. Crop-based feedstocks deliver reductions of 40% to 69%. Sabey says the pilot will track the feedstock behind the HVO it burns because fuel origin determines the climate benefit.
"We need reliable backup power, but we also want to explore how we can reduce its environmental impact for the surrounding community," said Casey Mason, Director of Energy & Sustainability at Sabey Data Centers. "This pilot is one step toward understanding how we can do both."
Sabey first announced the Austin campus in early 2022. The company redeveloped the former Sears call center at 1300 Louis Henna Boulevard. Sabey completed the first 213,000-square-foot building in fall 2024, according to the City of Round Rock.
The second building broke ground in 2025, and the campus is planned for 84MW and 430,000 square feet. The site hosts Horizon, the National Science Foundation's largest academic supercomputer for open-science research, deployed by the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Design firm Corgan says the buildings support liquid cooling at up to 200 kilowatts per cabinet.
Other operators have moved on HVO as well. Bridge DC and renewable fuels firm EcoCeres completed an HVO pilot across Bridge's Asia-Pacific campuses in May. AWS in Sweden, Vantage Data Centers in Wales, and Stack Infrastructure in Norway have also adopted the fuel for backup generators, Data Center Dynamics reported.
Baxtel lists 100 data center facilities across 37 providers in the Austin market, where 28 sites are under construction. If the pilot results support a transition to HVO, Sabey intends to expand testing at additional data center sites.
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