Microsoft’s new sustainability report, launched late final week, exhibits how a carbon-heavy economic system can weigh on an organization that wishes to be carbon gentle.
Since 2020, its carbon emissions are up 23.4%, principally a results of breakneck knowledge heart buildout to help its rising cloud and AI operations. Shopping for sufficient clear electrical energy is definitely the simple half — it’s the services themselves which might be laden with carbon-intensive supplies and merchandise, together with metal, concrete, and laptop chips.
“We replicate the challenges the world should overcome to develop and use greener concrete, metal, fuels, and chips,” a Microsoft spokesperson instructed TechCrunch by way of e mail. “These are the most important drivers of our Scope 3 challenges.”
Scope 3 emissions are these which might be outdoors an organization’s direct management, together with uncooked supplies, transportation, and bought items and providers. Emissions in Scope 3 characterize almost all of Microsoft’s carbon footprint, simply over 97% for fiscal 12 months 2024, which the 2025 sustainability report covers.
Microsoft’s Scope 3 profile is dominated by capital items and bought items and providers, with the 2 contributing about three-quarters of the corporate’s complete carbon emissions.
The development of knowledge facilities has been the primary driver behind Microsoft’s cussed Scope 3 emissions. The metal used within the buildings comes from a provide chain that depends on blast furnaces heated by fossil fuels, and concrete used within the basis is the product of a chemical response that’s each powered by and a producer of carbon dioxide. Some startups are working to decarbonize each metal and cement, and Microsoft is an investor within the area, however it’ll be years earlier than these bets could have a major impression.
Carbon emissions are embodied within the laptop chips inside the info heart, too. Semiconductor lithography depends on chemical substances which have extraordinarily excessive world warming potential. For instance, hexafluoroethane, which is used to etch options on chips, is a potent greenhouse gasoline, with 1 ton producing as a lot warming as 9,200 tons of carbon dioxide.
Even in inexperienced electrical energy, which is simpler to search out, hurdles have popped up as knowledge facilities aren’t at all times constructed close to ample clear power sources. Due to that, Microsoft has had a tough time discovering close by sources of zero-carbon electrical energy, forcing it to depend on purchases elsewhere. “Our electrical energy consumption has grown quicker than the grids the place we function have decarbonized,” the spokesperson mentioned.
Total, Microsoft’s 2024 emissions had been down barely in contrast with 2023, suggesting that the corporate is getting higher at constructing knowledge facilities with decrease local weather impacts. Nonetheless, it has an extended method to go to satisfy its 2030 objective of eradicating extra carbon air pollution that it generates. By its personal forecast, Microsoft should reduce its emissions by greater than half whereas additionally considerably ramping up its carbon removing efforts.
There are indicators that Microsoft is making some headway on each fronts. It has been one of many main buyers in and consumers of solar energy in current months, and its zero-carbon electrical energy portfolio now stands at 34 gigawatts of capability. Plus, it has lately signed some very giant offers that promise to take away hundreds of thousands of metric tons of carbon.
2030 is only a few years away, nevertheless, and the corporate’s push into AI and cloud could also be worthwhile — however it’s made reaching its sustainability targets that a lot tougher.