Microsoft one-ups Amazon with its bold carbon-negative pledge
Hold my beer... That's Microsoft to tech rival Amazon. Microsoft's direct business has been carbon-neutral since 2012, but its supply chain hasn't. Now, the software giant's pledging for itself and all related factories and facilities to become carbon-negative by 2030. That means not only reducing emissions, but actively removing more carbon from the environment than it's emitting. Microsoft's environmental one-upsmanship in perspective:
- 87 Companies worth a total $2.3T made a UN pledge to become carbon-neutral (aka, not adding any net carbon to the atmosphere) by 2050.
- Amazon pledged to do it 10 years faster — carbon-neutral by 2040. Jeff Bezos said they'll get there with 100K electric delivery vans and investing in forest restoration.
- Carbon Debt: Microsoft pledged not only to become carbon-negative by 2030, but to continue doing so until it paid back (i.e. removed) all the carbon it has ever emitted since 1975 (it hopes to do that by 2050). Mic (rosoft) drop.
America's Next Top Climate Model is... Consumers and investors have been rewarding environmentally-friendly companies. BlackRock, the world's largest investment manager (with $7T in hand), just said it'll focus on creating funds that invest in climate-friendly companies. While the products companies make are important, sometimes the way companies operate matters more.
Not just hot air (pun intended)... While these sustainability pledges are PR-boosters, it's not all talk. American companies' enviro-pledges require the purchase of tons of renewable energy — tech companies' data centers are huge electricity hogs. And that clean energy demand is why half of all corporate-sponsored wind and solar projects in the EU were built. Google-parent Alphabet bought enough wind and solar energy in 2019 to power about 500M European homes.