Microsoft Commits to Being Carbon Neutral

Microsoft has today announced that we plan to be carbon neutral across all our direct operations beginning on July 1st 2012 – the beginning of our next financial year.

Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist at Microsoft commented on the software enabled earth blog:

Today, we are announcing that we are making the commitment to become carbon neutral beginning with our Fiscal Year 2013 (which begins July 1^st). This commitment will apply to our internal operations across more than 100 countries associated with our data centers, software development labs, offices and air travel. Our strategy is based on driving company-wide accountability resulting in greater efficiencies, increasing our purchase of renewable energy, improving data collection with IT, and a continued acceleration of our R&D and datacenter operations efficiency investments.

The model of accountability is based on an internal carbon fee administered through our corporate finance department and cascaded globally to our business groups. This charge-back model will place a price on carbon and make the company’s business divisions responsible for the cost of offsetting the carbon emissions associated with their electricity use and air travel.

• You can read Rob’s full post here.
• Also take a look at Microsoft COO Kevin Turner’s post: Making Carbon Neutrality Everyone’s Responsibility at Microsoft
• You can also read the whitepaper on the announcement: “Becoming Carbon Neutral: How Microsoft is Becoming Lean, Green, and Accountable”.