Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030
View(s):The scientific consensus is clear. The world confronts an urgent carbon problem. The carbon in our atmosphere has created a blanket of gas that traps heat and is changing the world’s climate, Microsoft said in a statement this week.
“Already, the planet’s temperature has risen by 1 degree centigrade. If we don’t curb emissions, and temperatures continue to climb, science tells us that the results will be catastrophic,” it said.
“While the world will need to reach net zero, those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so,” the global IT services manufacturer said explaining an ambitious goal and a new plan to reduce and ultimately remove Microsoft’s carbon footprint.
By 2030 Microsoft will be carbon negative, and by 2050 Microsoft will remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975.
“We recognize that progress requires not just a bold goal but a detailed plan. We are launching an aggressive programme to cut our carbon emissions by more than half by 2030, both for our direct emissions and for our entire supply and value chain. We will fund this in part by expanding our internal carbon fee, in place since 2012 and increased last year, to start charging not only our direct emissions, but those from our supply and value chains,” it said, adding: “We are also launching an initiative to use Microsoft technology to help our suppliers and customers around the world reduce their own carbon footprints and a new $1 billion climate innovation fund to accelerate the global development of carbon reduction, capture, and removal technologies.”
Beginning next year, the company will also make carbon reduction an explicit aspect of its procurement processes for its supply chain.
“While we at Microsoft have worked hard to be ‘carbon neutral’ since 2012, our recent work has led us to conclude that this is an area where we’re far better served by humility than pride. And we believe this is true not only for ourselves, but for every business and organisation on the planet.
Like most carbon-neutral companies, Microsoft has achieved carbon neutrality primarily by investing in offsets that primarily avoid emissions instead of removing carbon that has already been emitted. That’s why we’re shifting our focus. In short, neutral is not enough to address the world’s needs.
While it is imperative that we continue to avoid emissions, and these investments remain important, we see an acute need to begin removing carbon from the atmosphere, which we believe we can help catalyse through our investments,” it said.
“In addition, we’ve identified another shortcoming that we and many other companies need to overcome. Historically we’ve focused on Microsoft’s scope 1 and 2 emissions, but other than employee travel, we haven’t calculated as thoroughly our scope 3 emissions. That’s why we’re committing to becoming carbon negative for 2030 for all three scopes,” it added.
Starting in July, all Microsoft business divisions will also pay an internal carbon fee for all their scope 3 emissions. By July 2021, Microsoft will begin to implement new procurement processes and tools to enable and incentivise ‘our’ suppliers to reduce their scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.