Member Spotlight: Microsoft Going Carbon Negative

The scientific consensus is clear. The world confronts an urgent carbon problem. While the world will need to reach net zero carbon, those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so. That was the message Microsoft President Brad Smith delivered this month in announcing the company’s ambitious goal become carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975.

Said Smith, “we recognize that progress requires not just a bold goal but a detailed plan.” As described in the announcement, Microsoft has already launched an aggressive program to cut its carbon emissions by more than half by 2030, both for direct emissions and for its entire supply and value chain. The company will fund this in part by expanding its internal carbon fee, in place since 2012 and increased last year, to start charging not only direct emissions, but those from its supply and value chains.

Microsoft is also launching an initiative to use its own technology to help suppliers and customers around the world reduce their own carbon footprints and creating a new $1 billion climate innovation fund to accelerate the global development of carbon reduction, capture, and removal technologies. Beginning next year, Microsoft will also make carbon reduction an explicit aspect of its procurement processes for our supply chain. The company will report on its progress on all of these fronts in a new annual Environmental Sustainability Report that will detail its carbon impact and reduction journey. And lastly, all this work will be supported by Microsoft’s voice and advocacy supporting public policy that will accelerate carbon reduction and removal opportunities.

You can read more about Microsoft’s new plan in a blog by Microsoft President Brad Smith here and find additional background here.