When the UN’s landmark local weather report was launched in 2018, calling for pressing and unprecedented adjustments, Microsoft executives have been informed to “remember it”, mentioned Elizabeth Willmott, who leads the corporate’s carbon program. “And so we did.”
The report warned the world should attain net-zero emissions by 2050 with a purpose to avert catastrophic local weather change. To realize this, not solely should the emissions launched by international locations and corporations be dramatically curtailed, however billions of tons of carbon dioxide have to be sucked out of the ambiance.
These findings immediately knowledgeable Microsoft’s local weather coverage, mentioned Willmott. In January 2020, the corporate introduced that it might be carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 it might have faraway from the ambiance all of the carbon it has emitted because it was based in 1975. By making this pledge, the corporate joined a small group of companies, together with Ikea and the software program firm Intuit, dedicated to going additional than net-zero.
Microsoft is commonly ranked as a number one enterprise on local weather motion. Its insurance policies – from making it simpler for individuals to repair their devices to launching software to assist firms measure and handle carbon emissions – have been praised for going past the corporate’s personal operations to the footprint of its suppliers and prospects.
“Being a big, well-known model, and placing a stake within the floor, speaking publicly for years concerning the significance of local weather change, is de facto crucial,” mentioned Simon Fischweicher, head of companies and provide chains for the environmental non-profit CDP North America.
Nevertheless, Microsoft has additionally been criticized for actions that seem to contradict its daring rhetoric on local weather, together with membership of commerce associations that foyer in opposition to local weather laws, contracts with oil and gasoline companies and donations to politicians who hinder local weather coverage.
These connections make it “complicit” in efforts to push in opposition to local weather motion, mentioned Invoice Weihl, a former sustainability govt at Google and Fb and the founding father of the advocacy group ClimateVoice.
Scaling up objectives
Microsoft has been working as a carbon-neutral firm for almost a decade, a feat it has achieved by shopping for carbon offsets in addition to securing renewable energy immediately from clear vitality firms and putting in onsite renewable vitality, equivalent to photo voltaic panels at its workplaces.
Since 2012, Microsoft has additionally carried out an inside carbon payment, presently set at $15 a metric ton, making enterprise items pay for emissions associated to their operations and electrical energy, in addition to from enterprise air journey.
“The cash will get collected and spent,” mentioned Willmott, whose carbon administration staff makes use of the cash to fund initiatives equivalent to shopping for clear vitality and carbon offsets. “I’ve to pinch myself repeatedly as a result of that was one thing we dreamed about and didn’t suppose was truly going to occur.”
It’s a “highly effective mechanism”, says Fischweicher, to push an organization to suppose extra deeply concerning the influence of its actions: “To pay a payment, you begin to consider: ‘What can I do to scale back that so I’ve more cash in my finances?’”
However the firm has acknowledged that rather more is required to sort out the local weather disaster and the plan to go carbon unfavourable was a giant step up in ambitions.
Microsoft has laid out milestones for reaching the goal. By 2025, it goals to scale back the emissions from its direct operations to “close to zero” by beneficial properties in vitality effectivity and utilizing 100% renewable vitality. By 2030, it has dedicated to lowering by no less than 50% its direct emissions and people from its provide chain.
The corporate’s provide chain – greater than 58,000 suppliers present every part from workplace furnishings to the metals and plastics utilized in its merchandise – makes up the majority of its emissions. Final yr, the corporate carried out a carbon reporting requirement for suppliers and it prolonged the inner carbon payment to cowl provide chain emissions.
However with a purpose to take away extra emissions than it produces, the corporate will rely closely on carbon removing initiatives. These embrace nature-based initiatives equivalent to funding reforestation initiatives, however the firm can also be pinning its hopes on expertise. Microsoft is investing $1bn to help rising expertise that may scale back, seize and take away carbon from the air.
As a part of this, the corporate has invested in and bought carbon removing from Climeworks, which operates the world’s largest direct air seize plant, in Iceland, eradicating CO2 from the air and trapping it in rock underground.
In 2020, Microsoft eliminated 1.3m metric tons of carbon by a spread of initiatives from nature based mostly applications to carbon seize expertise.
Nevertheless, these initiatives face obstacles. Counting on forests and soil to lure limitless quantities of carbon is more and more troublesome within the face of worsening wildfires, pests and adjustments in land use. And carbon removing expertise shouldn’t be anyplace close to the size wanted. There are 19 direct air capture (DAC) vegetation in operation globally, capturing simply over 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. The International Energy Agency has estimated that reaching internet zero by 2050 would require the world to scale up DAC to seize greater than 85m tons annually by 2030 and round 980m tons a yr by 2050.
It’s a problem that Microsoft is grappling with. The quantity and sort of initiatives presently obtainable is “far wanting what we’d like”, mentioned Willmott. By 2030, the corporate estimates, it might want to take away 5m to 6m tons of carbon. This implies the expertise will should be significantly scaled as much as meet Microsoft’s calls for alone, she mentioned, “and that’s to say nothing of the truth that there’s an actual spike in company demand”.
It’s not simply the quantity of viable carbon seize initiatives that’s missing, Willmot mentioned; there’s additionally a top quality subject. The trade doesn’t totally distinguish between prevented emissions and people which can be truly faraway from the ambiance, she mentioned. Extra strong high quality requirements would go an extended solution to ensuring “it’s not fairly a wild, wild west that it’s right this moment”, Willmot mentioned.
“[Microsoft is] opening up new conversations about historic emissions with out having all of the solutions,” mentioned Aoife Brophy, departmental analysis lecturer in innovation and enterprise on the College of Oxford’s Saïd Enterprise Faculty. “Leaders on local weather have to acknowledge the complexity of the issue and be clear about the truth that there are usually not at all times clear options.”
Microsoft’s concentrate on historic emissions may additionally assist spur a deeper dialog, she mentioned, about “accountability for the previous, and should result in significantly better methods to consider points like local weather justice that haven’t but been adequately addressed by firms”.
A wider affect
The fashionable company sustainability motion requires firms to additionally take into account their impacts on prospects, friends and society extra broadly. This shift in perspective, mentioned Fischweicher, “is a extremely crucial turning-point second … as a result of what you’re additionally speaking about is shifting what you are promoting mannequin general”.
To Microsoft’s critics, this implies the corporate ought to rethink its work with oil firms. The identical week that Microsoft made its carbon-negative announcement, it sponsored an oil convention in Saudi Arabia. A 2020 Greenpeace report digging into tech firms’ work with the oil and gasoline trade – equivalent to offering software program to help fossil gasoline extraction – discovered that its contract with ExxonMobil “may result in emissions larger than 20% of Microsoft’s annual carbon footprint”.
The corporate additionally spent about $200,000 in the course of the 2020 US election cycle supporting politicians with a historical past of local weather denial. And this October, Microsoft – together with different companies – was criticized by the watchdog group Accountable.US for its membership of commerce organizations with a historical past of preventing local weather disaster laws, together with the Enterprise Roundtable and the US Chamber of Commerce. Most lately, these teams have lobbied in opposition to local weather laws included underneath Joe Biden’s reconciliation invoice.
“I really feel actually strongly that we’d like to have the ability to work with everybody to make this transition to a low-carbon economic system sooner or later,” mentioned Willmott, responding to those criticisms. “I actually suppose it’s essential to not villainize any specific sector, or villainize any specific entities, however somewhat actually work exhausting from inside to form the journey.”
Weihl, whose group ClimateVoice is calling on Microsoft and others to commit one-fifth of their lobbying {dollars} to local weather coverage in 2021, stays skeptical. “Firms are placing their slim self-interest forward of truly addressing the local weather disaster at scale,” he mentioned. “Silence and unwillingness to publicly distance themselves [from these groups] shouldn’t be neutrality, it’s complicity.”
Whether or not it’s Microsoft’s prospects and affiliations or the kind of work it does, specialists agree the corporate’s measurement and political heft in addition to its place inside commerce teams give it immense energy – and it’s all about how the corporate chooses to make use of it.
“Tech firms form how we interact with the world, and the knowledge we see every day,” mentioned Brophy. “We have to consider influence past measuring emissions and take into account methods during which expertise can be utilized to create change throughout completely different programs.”
Microsoft’s local weather commitments are laudable, she mentioned, however finally success would require collective motion. “The largest problem is that Microsoft’s objectives can’t be achieved by Microsoft alone,” mentioned Brophy. “However that’s precisely what we have to see firms throughout industries doing extra of: popping out and being daring, recognizing that they should be programs leaders.”
