Alright, I'll drink the Kool-Aid. I think this is an excellent strategic investment for Microsoft that also aligns with timely ethical priorities. I didn't read the post and think "this is corporate glossy bullshit," I read it and thought "this is an actual strategic initiative that is driving broad organizational alignment, which has measurable success criteria, and which makes sense."
I am genuinely surprised by the sincerity, cogency, and aspirational nature of this initiative and its associated PR glossies.
I am measurably more likely to work at and invest in Microsoft after reading this.
Should I be satisfied if you're doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? I'm always unsure about this. If a politician is making all the right noises, but clearly doesn't care about the topic, should I be satisfied? I really don't know. That's how I feel about this, it's clearly a PR move, but I think I'm happy about that?
It's a fancy blog post designed to hide the somewhat milquetoast announcement:
> By 2025, we will shift to 100 percent supply of renewable energy, meaning that we will have power purchase agreements for green energy contracted for 100 percent of carbon emitting electricity consumed by all our data centers, buildings, and campuses.
> We will electrify our global campus operations vehicle fleet by 2030.
> We will pursue International Living Future Institute Zero Carbon certification and LEED Platinum certification for our Silicon Valley Campus and Puget Sound Campus Modernization projects.
They're going to sign some contracts, buy some electric vehicles, and outfit their buildings with LED lights and recycled toilet paper.
If they truly wanted to make an impact, they'd lobby the government for proper environmental regulations instead of pursuing these vane corporate projects.
The bigger, of course also more distant and vague, announcement is that "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."
Begs the question does this include the inefficiencies in its products over the years, which due to their breadth of their adoption, effected hundreds of millions of computers?
I'm thinking the carbon footprint of Windows update's endless (seemingly needless?) grinding and rebooting alone ends up being more than they ever emitted manufacturing and building software.
Something I notice regularly on large companies and universities, literally any organization which is bigger then a single building: The vast amount of energy waste.
This starts at heating rooms like crazy (because it is unmanaged), having unneccessary equipment, computers and lights running all night (because they are unmanaged) and goes up to transportation. It's so simple things like truck drivers who prefer to keep their diesel running during loading/unloading. I guess they do so because either they were told by incompetent managament, have the wrong belief that their batteries could not power the lights, or some other disbelief.
Saving energy starts in the small, also if started by something big. Having said that, I guess a company of the size of Microsoft will have a huge potential to save energy.
The most ostentatious waste that I've seen has been in Las Vegas, where they had gigantic pools of water and gigantic fountains running all day, in 120 degree heat.
All that water evaporating for nothing in the desert, where every drop of water is (or should be) precious, just seemed like such a gigantic waste.
Indeed, also at every tech office I've worked at, late at night I'd see all the lights in the entire building on until 11pm on the chance the cleaning crew might still be emptying a wastebasket.
Not to mention the nightly vacuuming of entire floors. A waste of energy and time, that also made it really hard to get work done without noise cancelling equipment.
> It's so simple things like truck drivers who prefer to keep their diesel running during loading/unloading
Well, one reason is that it might not turn on again. A lot of mechanical faults happen at startup (or shutdown).
In the US Air Force, C-5s are notorious for not turning back on again once you power them off. Hence, if you just landed in a remote area, you better keep those engines going, because if you power everything off to save energy you might be stranded until a repair crew can fly out.
What's worse, is the lack of control the actual tenants have over their building. My old professors office got so hot he had to open the window all winter. The thermostat on his wall didn't do anything, by design.
There was a women in an unknown and unadvertised location on campus who controlled all the climate controls in every building on campus directly. A supremely powerful position, almost like being the wizard of Oz. However, due to everyone emailing her constantly complaining about it being boiling hot or freezing cold every day, she opted to go dark and not answer any emails. So now nothing gets done.
Most cities these days have regulations limiting the amount of time you can idle (and rental trucks shut the engine down after a certain amount of idling). This of course become annoying if you don't want to drain the battery when using the liftgate...
30,000 employees drive their cars every morning to their suburban campus, conveniently located in unincorporated land between Redmond and Bellevue. Are they going to neutralize that CO2?
Do they have a plan to prevent employees from driving 20 miles each way every day? Their new campus renovation has tons of parking for cars. Any bike lanes? Bus stops?
Disclosure: I work at MSFT, but not on any campus. I do, however, live in the Seattle area.
A significant amount of employees take MSFT shuttles/busses from around the greater Redmond area, and I imagine part of their plan is going to include electrifying those vehicles:
> We will electrify our global campus operations vehicle fleet by 2030.
In addition, Sound Transit's East Link will literally have a stop on the MSFT campus, which will eventually help people from all over the area (Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond eventually) get to work in a significantly more carbon-neutral way, especially given electricity produced in the area is relatively clean.
The only unincorporated land in that area is Marymoor Park and Bridle Trails State Park.
The Link Light Rail will be opening a station next to the Microsoft campus in 2023, and Microsoft is paying to build a bike/pedestrian bridge over 520 at that location.
If we're going to start counting 2nd and 3rd degree connections, why not count people that are home playing video games on a Microsoft console instead of driving somewhere?
Microsoft is investing massive resources into the Sound Transit system. They just donated acres of land to the city (as well as a bunch of money) to add a train stop right next to their campus. Microsoft is one of the main reason the East Link Extension was funded (new train line connecting Seattle to Mercer Island to Bellevue to Redmond).
>There’s another aspect of carbon math that’s also essential. This is the difference between being “carbon neutral” and being “net zero.” While they sound similar, in fact they’re different.
>Given common usage, companies have typically said they’re “carbon neutral” if they offset their emissions with payments either to avoid a reduction in emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere. But these are two very different things. For example, one way to avoid a reduction in emissions is to pay someone not to cut down the trees on the land they own. This is a good thing, but in effect it pays someone not to do something that would have a negative impact. It doesn’t lead to planting more trees that would have a positive impact by removing carbon.
In contrast, “net zero” means that a company actually removes as much carbon as it emits. The reason the phrase is “net zero” and not just “zero” is because there are still carbon emissions, but these are equal to carbon removal. And “carbon negative” means that a company is removing more carbon than it emits each year.
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 organization 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 catalyze through our investments.
> Solving our planet’s carbon issues will require technology that does not exist today. That’s why a significant part of our endeavor involves putting Microsoft’s balance sheet to work to stimulate and accelerate the development of carbon removal technology. Our new Climate Innovation Fund will commit to invest $1 billion over the next four years into new technologies and expand access to capital around the world to people working to solve this problem. We understand that this is just a fraction of the investment needed, but our hope is that it spurs more governments and companies to invest in new ways as well.
This is one of the most exciting and potentially impactfull announcements. My biggest issue with companies that make a big deal about being "carbon neutral" and "carbon offsets" is that many times it is "voodoo accounting" in which they pay money to another company which claims to have prevented some carbon emission in an unaccountable developing country. Basically, these carbon fees just are another form of indulgences in which rich people pay money to be able continue their sins while feeling good about themselves.
However, "carbon removal" is a game changer. Based on human nature, I do not believe we will be able to change behavior enough to save ourselves. I think our only hope of preserving our civilization is with carbon removal technology.
That is why I am so glad that Microsoft is specifically focusing on this. If other large companies did this, I think there is a good chance that we could innovate our way out of the climate change crisis.
If they take every dollar Chevron is paying them to enhance oil recovery with deep learning and then put it in this climate innovation fund then maybe I'd believe them.
While I agree with the point you are making, it must be noted that garbage is not "dumped", like someone is throwing stuff across a wall. I am sure Poland is paid lots of money to take the garbage.
I have not seen anything in this letter than #2 Cloud provider in the world is going to be carbon-neutral in 10 years.
Just because I have not seen does not mean its not there. But the meat and potatoes are missing -- especially a company that is building massive data-centers around the world.
They said they are already carbon neutral. Now they are aiming for net zero or lower and also including their supply chain. They included quite a few concrete details about how they will do it, including an internal carbon “tax.”
Is their carbon accounting public? Is anybody auditing it? Not really familiar with how this works. Quick googling didn't turn up anything. Could anyone point me in the right direction?
We still shouldn't let them off the hook for their invasive telemetry lately, but for such a large, energy hungry company to be carbon negative is legitimately a great thing.
That's all great, but it's not really enough. We're past the point of no return for global warming unless we remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
How come Microsoft or Bill Gates don't invest in better CO2 scrubber technology that might make that feasible? Or do they and I just haven't heard of it?
Then again, maybe such a thing could become a "weather weapon".
This article is talking about removing CO2 from the atmosphere, did you not read it before commenting?
> How come Microsoft or Bill Gates don't invest in better CO2 scrubber technology that might make that feasible? Or do they and I just haven't heard of it?
[+] [-] jknoepfler|6 years ago|reply
I am genuinely surprised by the sincerity, cogency, and aspirational nature of this initiative and its associated PR glossies.
I am measurably more likely to work at and invest in Microsoft after reading this.
I guess they've hacked my demographic?
[+] [-] nscalf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soperj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derptron|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] linuxftw|6 years ago|reply
Your demographic doesn't understand corporate propaganda.
[+] [-] jbob2000|6 years ago|reply
> By 2025, we will shift to 100 percent supply of renewable energy, meaning that we will have power purchase agreements for green energy contracted for 100 percent of carbon emitting electricity consumed by all our data centers, buildings, and campuses.
> We will electrify our global campus operations vehicle fleet by 2030.
> We will pursue International Living Future Institute Zero Carbon certification and LEED Platinum certification for our Silicon Valley Campus and Puget Sound Campus Modernization projects.
They're going to sign some contracts, buy some electric vehicles, and outfit their buildings with LED lights and recycled toilet paper.
If they truly wanted to make an impact, they'd lobby the government for proper environmental regulations instead of pursuing these vane corporate projects.
[+] [-] thomas11|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zantana|6 years ago|reply
I'm thinking the carbon footprint of Windows update's endless (seemingly needless?) grinding and rebooting alone ends up being more than they ever emitted manufacturing and building software.
[+] [-] ktpsns|6 years ago|reply
This starts at heating rooms like crazy (because it is unmanaged), having unneccessary equipment, computers and lights running all night (because they are unmanaged) and goes up to transportation. It's so simple things like truck drivers who prefer to keep their diesel running during loading/unloading. I guess they do so because either they were told by incompetent managament, have the wrong belief that their batteries could not power the lights, or some other disbelief.
Saving energy starts in the small, also if started by something big. Having said that, I guess a company of the size of Microsoft will have a huge potential to save energy.
[+] [-] pmoriarty|6 years ago|reply
All that water evaporating for nothing in the desert, where every drop of water is (or should be) precious, just seemed like such a gigantic waste.
[+] [-] minedwiz|6 years ago|reply
* Connector buses idle all of the time while waiting for passengers
* Certain cafeterias have gas ovens running 24/7 even if nothing is being cooked
* Dev boxes with huge Xeon chips being left on all night
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|6 years ago|reply
Not to mention the nightly vacuuming of entire floors. A waste of energy and time, that also made it really hard to get work done without noise cancelling equipment.
[+] [-] umvi|6 years ago|reply
Well, one reason is that it might not turn on again. A lot of mechanical faults happen at startup (or shutdown).
In the US Air Force, C-5s are notorious for not turning back on again once you power them off. Hence, if you just landed in a remote area, you better keep those engines going, because if you power everything off to save energy you might be stranded until a repair crew can fly out.
[+] [-] asdff|6 years ago|reply
There was a women in an unknown and unadvertised location on campus who controlled all the climate controls in every building on campus directly. A supremely powerful position, almost like being the wizard of Oz. However, due to everyone emailing her constantly complaining about it being boiling hot or freezing cold every day, she opted to go dark and not answer any emails. So now nothing gets done.
[+] [-] selimthegrim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwmeaway2344|6 years ago|reply
Do they have a plan to prevent employees from driving 20 miles each way every day? Their new campus renovation has tons of parking for cars. Any bike lanes? Bus stops?
[+] [-] manacit|6 years ago|reply
A significant amount of employees take MSFT shuttles/busses from around the greater Redmond area, and I imagine part of their plan is going to include electrifying those vehicles:
> We will electrify our global campus operations vehicle fleet by 2030.
In addition, Sound Transit's East Link will literally have a stop on the MSFT campus, which will eventually help people from all over the area (Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond eventually) get to work in a significantly more carbon-neutral way, especially given electricity produced in the area is relatively clean.
[+] [-] VintageCool|6 years ago|reply
https://aqua.kingcounty.gov/gis/web/VMC/misc/KC_HwysCitiesHS...
The only unincorporated land in that area is Marymoor Park and Bridle Trails State Park.
The Link Light Rail will be opening a station next to the Microsoft campus in 2023, and Microsoft is paying to build a bike/pedestrian bridge over 520 at that location.
[+] [-] goobynight|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmed|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polyomino|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0zg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|6 years ago|reply
>Given common usage, companies have typically said they’re “carbon neutral” if they offset their emissions with payments either to avoid a reduction in emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere. But these are two very different things. For example, one way to avoid a reduction in emissions is to pay someone not to cut down the trees on the land they own. This is a good thing, but in effect it pays someone not to do something that would have a negative impact. It doesn’t lead to planting more trees that would have a positive impact by removing carbon. In contrast, “net zero” means that a company actually removes as much carbon as it emits. The reason the phrase is “net zero” and not just “zero” is because there are still carbon emissions, but these are equal to carbon removal. And “carbon negative” means that a company is removing more carbon than it emits each year. 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 organization 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 catalyze through our investments.
> Solving our planet’s carbon issues will require technology that does not exist today. That’s why a significant part of our endeavor involves putting Microsoft’s balance sheet to work to stimulate and accelerate the development of carbon removal technology. Our new Climate Innovation Fund will commit to invest $1 billion over the next four years into new technologies and expand access to capital around the world to people working to solve this problem. We understand that this is just a fraction of the investment needed, but our hope is that it spurs more governments and companies to invest in new ways as well.
This is one of the most exciting and potentially impactfull announcements. My biggest issue with companies that make a big deal about being "carbon neutral" and "carbon offsets" is that many times it is "voodoo accounting" in which they pay money to another company which claims to have prevented some carbon emission in an unaccountable developing country. Basically, these carbon fees just are another form of indulgences in which rich people pay money to be able continue their sins while feeling good about themselves.
However, "carbon removal" is a game changer. Based on human nature, I do not believe we will be able to change behavior enough to save ourselves. I think our only hope of preserving our civilization is with carbon removal technology.
That is why I am so glad that Microsoft is specifically focusing on this. If other large companies did this, I think there is a good chance that we could innovate our way out of the climate change crisis.
[+] [-] selimthegrim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitL|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harikb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perfunctory|6 years ago|reply
So, Microsoft emits as much carbon as the whole of Ireland? Or did I get it wrong?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...
(1 ton of carbon = 3.67 tons of carbon dioxide)
[+] [-] jdlshore|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makach|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sremani|6 years ago|reply
Just because I have not seen does not mean its not there. But the meat and potatoes are missing -- especially a company that is building massive data-centers around the world.
[+] [-] jdlshore|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perfunctory|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boyadjian|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tantalor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fierarul|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jammygit|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ravenstine|6 years ago|reply
How come Microsoft or Bill Gates don't invest in better CO2 scrubber technology that might make that feasible? Or do they and I just haven't heard of it?
Then again, maybe such a thing could become a "weather weapon".
[+] [-] sailingparrot|6 years ago|reply
> How come Microsoft or Bill Gates don't invest in better CO2 scrubber technology that might make that feasible? Or do they and I just haven't heard of it?
Bill Gates is doing just that: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/04/carbon-e...