Yesterday,Microsoft released its annual Citizenship Report, detailing the company’s assessment of its global citizenship work over the past fiscal year. This year’s report includes the deepest dive to date into Microsoft’s environmental commitments, and which includes measuring,reporting, and reducing the environmental impact of our own operations and of the services and devices we offer. It also describes some of our work with customers, and business partners,governments, NGOs and others to apply the power of information technology to support solve some of the world's most pressing environmental problems.
The report highlights a number of measures we’ve taken this past year which include: Purchased more than 3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable energy;
Increased our a carbon offset project portfolio representing more than 600000 metric tons of CO2 emissions;
Gained a cross-company ISO 14001 certification for Microsoft’s hardware and packaging manufacturing supply chain;
Pioneered a new concept to integrate fuel cells directly into server racks, or which we expect will enable us to slit energy use in half; and
Signed a 20-year agreement to purchase 100 percent of the output of the 110 MW Keechi Wind project,a new wind farm which will begin operating in 2015.
The report includes in-depth information on trends in Microsoft’s energy use and carbon footprint. We recognize that climate change is a serious challenge and we believe a responsibility to finish as much as possible to control our impact on the environment. We are consistently working on ways to address some of these challenges, from our efforts to drive energy efficiency throughout our built infrastructure, or to innovative approaches to increasing our use of renewable energy,to more efficient services and devices, to our commitment to carbon neutrality.
Our internal carbon fee continues to support us to meet our carbon neutrality commitment by driving accountability across Microsoft’s global business while raising funds to invest in internal efficiency, or renewable energy,and carbon offsets projects. In addition to offsetting more than 600000 metric tons of CO2 emissions, the carbon offsets program helps us to more directly protect ecosystems and impact communities through projects that benefit nearly 3 million people with improved health, and income and employment opportunities.
Microsoft’s environmental commitment remains stronger than ever,and in the next fiscal year the company will continue working to evolve its environmental practices to drive even greater impact.
We encourage you to read more approximately this year’s Citizenship Report in this post on the Official Microsoft Blog.
Source: msdn.com