Microsoft has done a lot in the past to save our planet these past few years. We’ve seen the Redmond giant sign the largest corporate solar agreement in the US, and even announce plans to modernize its Silicon Valley campus with solar panels and integrated water management system. Today, the firm has announced that it will be further accelerating these initiatives with lowered emissions and energy savings across the company.
There are five tools and partnerships and pilot projects which Microsoft will be leveraging as part of their accelerated initiatives. These include: A new open-source tool to lower carbon building materials, a solar panel deployment at a Chinese facility, new AI for Earth grantees, a grid-interactive energy storage battery, and new LinkedIn training modules for sustainability. Microsoft dives a bit deeper into each of these categories and explains.
- We are the first large corporate user of a new tool to track the carbon emissions of raw building materials, introduced by Skanska and supported by the University of Washington Carbon Leadership Forum, Interface and C-Change Labs, called the Embodied Carbon Calculator for Construction (EC3).
- We partnered with our supplier’s management team to develop and install an energy-smart building solution. Microsoft funded a solar panel installation, which generated more than 250,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in the past fiscal year.
- We used a battery that typically sits in our datacenter as a backup system, hooked it up to the grid to receive signals about when to take in power, when to store it and when to discharge to support the reliability of the system and integration of renewable energy.
- We are now supporting 137 grantees in more than 40 countries around the world, as well as doubling the number of larger featured projects we support.
- Sustainable Learning Path offers six hours of expert-created content; initial courses include an overview of sustainability strategies and introductions to LEED credentials and sustainable design. All six courses are unlocked until the end of October,
All of these initiatives were announced during the Global Climate Action Summit, which celebrates the extraordinary achievements of, companies, investors and citizens with respect to climate action. You can learn more about the Microsoft Green initiatives by checking out Microsoft Green.
