Microsoft Announces Aggressive Initiative to Tackle Climate Change
Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) pledged to abide by a host of new environmental guidelines in an effort to fight against the catastrophic effects of global warming on January 16. The move makes the corporation a frontrunner in the fight against climate change.
In an official blog post, Microsoft president Brad Smith rolled out the technology corporation’s vision to be “carbon negative by 2030,” while ensuring that by 2050, “Microsoft will remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption” since beginning operations in 1975, according to the Official Microsoft Blog.
The detailed plan includes shifting to “100 percent supply of renewable energy” by 2025, making all campus operations vehicles electric by 2030, and creating a $1 billion climate innovation fund over four years to accelerate the development of carbon removal technology, according to Microsoft.
Additionally, the approach entails expanding their internal carbon fee, which has been in place since 2012, to charge emissions produced by the company’s supply and value chains. Although Microsoft has worked to be carbon neutral since 2012 by investing in emissions offsets, Smith claims that “neutral is not enough to address the world’s needs,” advocating instead for the removal of carbon from the atmosphere.
Senators Chris Coon (D-DE), and Mike Braun (R-IN)praised Microsoft for its proposal, calling it the “kind of bold action we need from the business community,” according to Reuters.
This change from Microsoft comes amid a growing movement in the business world to rein in the damage of climate change. Earlier this year, Laurence Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, an investment management company, posted an annual letter to CEOs across the world to address the role of environmental sustainability in investment banking. The letter stated that it is imperative for every government, company, and shareholder to “confront climate change.”
At Davos this week, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced that over 300 companies have agreed to plant 1 trillion trees by the end of the decade. Even Royal Dutch Shell, which has released nearly 32 billion tons of carbon dioxide since 1965, has recently pivoted to embrace a sustainable model of business. The company wrote a New York Times article about their vision for a net zero emissions world by 2070.
Regardless of whether these changes by global corporations stem from apparent shifts in public perception — as evidenced by a CBS News poll reporting that 64 percent of Americans consider climate change a crisis or serious problem — measurable, aggressive, and time-based plans like Microsoft’s stand as evidence of environmental changes that corporations are taking.