Microsoft has committed to grow the amount of directly-sourced solar, wind and hydropower used in its global datacentres to 50 percent by 2018.
Already arguably one of the more sustainable tech corporations on the planet, Microsoft claims to have been 100 percent carbon neutral since 2014, achieved through worldwide internal carbon fees on company business units, investments in renewable energy projects and the purchase of renewable energy certificates or their global equivalent.
The company is seeking to address the imbalance between emissions savings from renewable energy certificates and directly-sourced electricity from renewable energy projects, such as Microsoft’s Keechi wind farm in Texas and the Pilot Hill wind farm in Illinois.
“Today, although 100 percent of the electricity used by our datacentres is renewable based on a mixture of direct projects and renewable energy certificates (or the equivalent), only about 44 percent of that power is generated by wind, solar and hydropower sources,” said Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer at Microsoft.
This leaves 56 percent of Microsoft’s global fleet of datacentres sourcing electricity from conventional energy and offsetting their emissions with the company’s portfolio of certificates.
For Microsoft, which prides its ranking as the second-largest user of green power in the U.S., and which this year was awarded a gong for its role in Climate Leadership by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a greater target was needed.
“We recognize that both the volume and percent of energy from these renewable sources needs to be higher,” Smith admitted.
While the company says it will continue to purchase renewable certificates to maintain its zero carbon status, Smith has set a goal to grow the percent of wind, solar, and hydropower energy Microsoft buys directly and through the grid to 50 percent by 2018, growing to 60 percent early in the next decade.
Moreover, the company says as new solar, wind and hydropower capacity comes online, it will not offload its renewable certificates or other “green attributes” for others to claim. It uses the example of the public-private partnership with utility Dominion Power and the State of Virginia to build a 20-MW solar power plant to supply additional clean energy to the grid in Virginia – which Microsoft helped fund to claim and retire the green attributes.
Microsoft recently joined the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA), which has set a goal of developing 60 GW of new renewable capacity by 2025.
