Whenever we take on a new and complex societal issue, we strive first to learn and then to define a principled approach to guide our efforts. And lastly, all this work will be supported by our voice and advocacy supporting public policy that will accelerate carbon reduction and removal opportunities. Our progress on all of these fronts will be published in a new annual Environmental Sustainability Report that will detail our carbon impact and reduction journey. Beginning next year, we will also make carbon reduction an explicit aspect of our procurement processes for our supply chain. We are also launching an initiative to use Microsoft technology to help our suppliers and customers around the world reduce their own carbon footprints and a new $1 billion climate innovation fund to accelerate the global development of carbon reduction, capture, and removal technologies. We will fund this in part by expanding our internal carbon fee, in place since 2012 and increased last year, to start charging not only our direct emissions, but those from our supply and value chains. As described below, we are launching today an aggressive program to cut our carbon emissions by more than half by 2030, both for our direct emissions and for our entire supply and value chain. We recognize that progress requires not just a bold goal but a detailed plan. That’s why today we are announcing an ambitious goal and a new plan to reduce and ultimately remove Microsoft’s carbon footprint.īy 2030 Microsoft will be carbon negative, and 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. While the world will need to reach net zero, those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so. It is an ambitious – even audacious – goal, but science tells us that it’s a goal of fundamental importance to every person alive today and for every generation to follow. This will take aggressive approaches, new technology that doesn’t exist today, and innovative public policy. Ultimately, we must reach “net zero” emissions, meaning that humanity must remove as much carbon as it emits each year. The world’s climate experts agree that the world must take urgent action to bring down emissions. Once excess carbon enters the atmosphere it can take thousands of years to dissipate. This isn’t a problem that lasts a few years or even a decade. This is more carbon than nature can re-absorb, and every year humanity pumps more than 50 billion metric tons of additional greenhouse gases into the air.

Over three-quarters of this is carbon dioxide, with most of this carbon emitted since the mid-1950s. If we don’t curb emissions, and temperatures continue to climb, science tells us that the results will be catastrophic.Īs the scientific community has concluded, human activity has released more than 2 trillion metric tons of greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere since the start of the First Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s.

Already, the planet’s temperature has risen by 1 degree centigrade. The carbon in our atmosphere has created a blanket of gas that traps heat and is changing the world’s climate. The world confronts an urgent carbon problem. Microsoft President Brad Smith, Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood and CEO Satya Nadella preparing to announce Microsoft’s plan to be carbon negative by 2030.

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