Microsoft Doubles Down on Sustainability, Announces New Steps

Today, to address the sustainability challenges around the globe, Microsoft announced that it will nearly double its internal carbon fee to $15 per metric ton on all carbon emissions. The funds from this higher fee will both maintain Microsoft’s carbon neutrality and help it take a tech-first approach that will put sustainability at the core of every part of its business and technology to work for sustainable outcomes.

Speaking on this development, Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer, said the company is taking new steps in four areas towards this goal. These four steps are:

Building sustainable campuses and data centers

Accelerating research through data science

Helping our customers build sustainable solutions

Advocating for environmental policy change

Since 2009, Microsoft has made and met a series of commitments to reduce the company’s carbon footprint. While we’ve made progress toward our goal of cutting our operational carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030, the magnitude and speed of the world’s environmental changes have made it increasingly clear that we must do more. And we are taking new steps to do just that.

Today’s announcements which the company brands as ‘Internal Microsoft tax’, was actually established in 2012 to hold our business divisions financially responsible for reducing their carbon emissions. The funds from this higher fee will both maintain Microsoft’s carbon neutrality and help us take a tech-first approach that will put sustainability at the core of every part of our business and technology to work for sustainable outcomes. In practice, this means we’ll continue to keep our house in order and improve it, while increasingly addressing sustainability challenges around the globe by engaging our strongest assets as a company – our employees and our technologies.

The company will continue to build, renovate and operate our campuses in a manner that reduces our impact on the environment. At our headquarters in Redmond, Washington, they have started work to construct 17 new buildings totaling 2.5 million square feet. They will remove fossil fuels from these new buildings and run this new addition, as well as the rest of its campus, on 100 percent carbon-free electricity. The company is also reducing the amount of carbon associated with the construction materials of its new buildings by at least 15 percent, with a goal of reaching 30 percent, through a new online tool. Combined with its smart building technology, Microsoft will be the first large corporate campus to reach zero-carbon and zero-waste goals.