Microsoft has announced their plan to bring their carbon footprint to zero by the year of 2030. They also hope to remove the equal amount of carbon to account for the direct emissions which the company has made by the year of 2050 since its founding.
This promise is among the latest made by several private companies after US President decided to pull out the US from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Chief executive of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, explains that the last decade has taught us that technology without good principles is more harmful than beneficial.
Nadella also said that they need to start preventing the disastrous impact of climate change now.
The Problem of Carbon Emissions Is Urgent
According to science, we’re currently in front of a major carbon issue.
The immense amounts of it in our atmosphere have created a gas blanket that collects heat and it causes changes in our world climate.
Already, the temperature of the planet has increased by a degree centigrade.
So, if something major isn’t done to reduce the emissions and the temperatures don’t stop increasing, the results can be catastrophic.
Until now, we’ve released more than 2 trillion metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1700s.
More than ¾ of this is carbon dioxide.
These amounts are higher than nature is able to absorb and every year, we pump additional 50 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases in the air.
When surplus carbon goes into the atmosphere, it can take up to thousands of years to dissipate.
Net Zero Emissions Is Crucial
Climate experts are unanimous for the need of urgent methods to reduce our carbon emissions. We need to reach zero emissions which means that we need to eliminate as much carbon as we emit yearly.
For this to happen, an aggressive approach is needed, as well as new tech which is still non-existent and innovative policies.
Even though it’s an ambitious and very challenging goal, according to science, it’s fundamental to our lives and that of the generations to come.
Microsoft Pledges to Zero Carbon Emissions by 2030
The company recognizes the need for action and so they’ve pledged to become carbon footprint free by 2030.
Also, by the year of 2050, they will eliminate all the carbon from the environment that they’ve emitted, directly or by electrical consumption, from their founding period that was in 1975.
Their plan is a detailed one and their program for emission reduction is aggressive. They want to lower carbon emissions by more than 50 percent, both the direct ones and the ones for the whole supply and value chain.
Part of this program will be funded through the expansion of their internal carbon fee which has been present since 2012 and was increased last year.
They will also launch the usage of Microsoft tech to help suppliers and customers worldwide lower their carbon footprints too.
Moreover, they directed $1 billion into a climate innovation fund to speed up the development of carbon removal, reduction, and capture methods.
Their progress in these areas can be tracked in their annual Environmental Sustainability Report.
Sources:
