With climate change becoming an increasingly pressing issue for many people around the world, Microsoft is assessing its responsibility as a tech leader and recently announced that it plans to make its carbon emissions negative by the year 2030. Chief Microsoft Executive Satya Nadella made a recent statement that by the year 2050 the company plans to completely reverse all of the greenhouse gas emissions that the company has sent into the earth’s atmosphere over the lifetime span of the company.
In a press conference Nadella said the following: “Today we are making the commitment that by 2030, Microsoft will become carbon negative.” This is a big step forward considering the company went carbon neutral in 2012 however the company is trying to improve on its efforts by broadening the range of its carbon emission valuations which will include emissions created by the energy the company uses in addition to all of the emissions that it’s suppliers release.
To take things a step further, the company is also investing $1 Billion dollars into a climate innovation fund. This fund is designed to reduce the amount of carbon emissions globally, there has been a lot of social pressure on large tech companies recently to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Because of this, many people have speculated that Microsoft is taking the initiative to be on the frontlines of the carbon emissions reduction movement.
With the recent wildfires in Australia, many scientists are calling for global action to be taken on what they consider a “climate emergency.” Scientists have said that if carbon emissions aren’t curbed soon, it can lead to devastating results in the world overall. The primary method Microsoft is planning to use for carbon emissions reduction is capturing carbon in plants and soil.
The company is also planning to capture carbon directly from the air in addition to using a bioenergy process such as ethanol production. Microsoft is also re-configuring it’s approach to how it measures its carbon footprint by using a more conservative assessment which includes indirect measures, this even includes the amount of energy consumption that happens when you run Microsoft Windows on your computer.
As the world evolves and more eco-friendly energy solutions are being developed, we’ll have to sit back and see how effective Microsoft’s strategy is for reducing the carbon dioxide emissions that have already been released by the company.