Microsoft revealed its carbon reduction progress for FY2012, and its carbon reduction commitments for FY2013 in its Fiscal Year 2012 Citizenship Report, released recently.
Microsoft’s carbon reduction highlights from FY2012 include:
- Reducing carbon emissions per unit of revenue by 30% compared with 2007. The goal was met with a mix of energy-efficiency measures and investments in renewable energy and carbon reduction projects that were externally verified.
- Improving the company’s governance model to increase accountability to corporate environmental goals. Microsoft says that it is driving responsible business decisions by setting an internal price on carbon, measuring emissions, and charging a fee to teams responsible for those emissions.
- Enhancing the company’s global carbon footprint-tracking system to also track water usage and waste. A cloud-based application was adopted that collects data from smart meters, utilities, suppliers, waste processors, and internal business systems. Analyzing the data will help Microsoft enhance its reporting processes and improve its environmental performance.
In addition, Microsoft is committing to a company-wide carbon neutrality goal, which will begin with FY2013. The measures that will be taken to reach that goal include:
- Achieving carbon neutrality and net-zero emissions for Microsoft data centers, software development labs, offices, and employee air travel by increasing energy efficiency and purchasing renewable energy.
- Implementing an internal carbon fee that will place a price on carbon, based on current market pricing for renewable energy and carbon offsets, and making the company’s business divisions financially responsible for the cost of their carbon emissions.
- Sourcing more renewable power and continuing to implement the company’s more sustainable Generation 4 modular data center designs.
- Rolling out an energy-management program to decrease energy use in the buildings on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington state.
Click here for the report in PDF.
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