Tech giant Microsoft, at its “Inspire” conference this week, announced a new series of climate-focused commitments and initiatives, including new targets to ramp the company’s use of clean energy, and the launch of a cloud offering aimed at enabling customers to track, reduce and report their own emissions.
At the conference, Microsoft introduced its new “100/100/0” vision, committing to have 100% of its electricity consumption, 100% percent of the time, matched by purchases from zero carbon energy sources.
The new initiative adds to Microsoft’s prior commitment to use 100% renewable energy in its buildings and datacenters globally by 2025, forming part of the company’s sustainability strategy, including its “moonshot” target to achieve carbon negative status by 2030.
According to Microsoft, in addition to helping the company meet its own sustainability goals, the new commitment aims to help influence the development of an energy system better suited to the needs of a low carbon-focused world. To that end, Microsoft also stated that moving forward, it will be innovating its energy purchasing contracting to help bring more zero carbon energy onto the grid and move more high carbon intensity energy off the grid. The company is already one of the largest corporate purchasers of renewable energy in the world, with 7.8 GW of renewable energy projects operated and contracted.
In a blog post announcing the new commitment, Lucas Joppa, Microsoft Chief EnvironmentalEnvironmental criteria consider how a company performs as a steward of nature. More Officer and Noelle Walsh, CVP, Cloud Operations + Innovation, said:
“We know that our actions alone won’t decarbonize the grid, but we are committed to doing our part to help drive important market demand signals that influence the speed and scale at which the grid decarbonizes.”
Microsoft also announced the launch of the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, a new offering aimed at enabling companies to more easily and effectively to record, report, reduce and replace their emissions. The new offering includes Software as a Service (SaaS) tools that connect to real-time data sources, in order to provide accurate carbon accounting, enable performance measurement against goals, and offer insights for more effective action.
In a statement introducing the new offering, Judson Althoff, Microsoft Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, said:
“We are committed to accelerating the sustainability journey of organizations everywhere.
“That is where Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability comes in. Drawing on the depth and breadth of the entire Microsoft cloud, this new cloud offering is designed to help companies take control of their environmentalEnvironmental criteria consider how a company performs as a steward of nature. More initiatives, offering a set of comprehensive, integrated and automated insights for organizations to accelerate each stage of their sustainability journey.”
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