Video : Microsoft reveals findings from Project Natick
TAWFIK ON MICROSOFT ’ S SUSTAINABILITY EFFORTS
“ In 2020 , we announced our bold ambitions to be carbon negative across all scopes of emissions by 2030 , to be water positive , and produce zero waste .
We will leverage our carbon negative status by 2030 to achieve another milestone by 2050 , which is to erase all of our historical emissions since our inception as a company . So that ’ s a very steep commitment .
I think it ’ s pretty important that we focus on our own operations , being a hyperscaler as well as a company that actually sells products like Xbox and Surface and other devices . So , I think there is a very crisp focus on reducing our direct emissions in scope 1 and scope 2 , as well as reducing our value chain emissions for scope 3 .
We are also heavily investing in renewable energy . We have what we refer to as the 100 / 100 / 0 programme , which is for 100 % of our electricity consumption to be matched by zero carbon energy purchases 100 % of the time by 2030 .
We ’ re one of the largest corporate purchasers of renewable energy power purchase agreements . Last year , we purchased 13.5GW of carbon-free energy and were also one of the largest purchasers for carbon removal offsets .
We innovate how we operate our data centres , like Project Natick where we basically submerse a whole data centre underwater to leverage ocean cooling .
With the commitment that we put upon ourselves , we have to innovate for us to operate in a much more efficient way – leveraging renewable energy , decarbonising our operations end to end , even how we design , manufacture , package , and distribute our products is something that we focus on , because it impacts our scope 3 emissions .” businesschief . com 95