Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of top U.S. companies, published its 2014 report on how 150 of the U.S.’s top companies are demonstrating success in their sustainability efforts.
The report includes a letter from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who outlines how Microsoft is meeting its commitment to become carbon neutral and using technology to discover new ways to better understand our planet.
The letter follows:
At Microsoft, we believe that information technology has tremendous potential to help us address environmental challenges and attain a clean-energy future. We are mindful that environmental stewardship needs to begin in our own operations. To this end, we seek to serve as a model in how we demonstrate our commitment to environmental sustainability. This includes: delivering on our commitment to be carbon neutral, working with customers and partners to uncover new ways for technology to help us better understand our planet, and using natural resources more efficiently.
Making our operations carbon neutral
Microsoft has set an internal price on carbon as part of our carbon-neutral commitment. Our approach helps us prioritize the purchase of renewable energy and drives our investment in alternative energy creation technologies. Our commitment to carbon neutrality has resulted in a doubling of our purchase of renewable energy credits to 2.3 billion kilowatt hours. Last fall, we expanded our direct purchase of renewable energy, including a 20-year agreement to buy 110 megawatts of wind energy in Texas. We have also created innovative new data center designs ranging from an off-grid data center powered by biogas from a sewage treatment plant to a new approach of integrating fuel cells directly into a datacenter.
Developing next-generation technologies to protect our environment
Through Microsoft Research, we have teams of computer scientists who are using the power of big data to understand complex environmental challenges in ways they never have before. This deeper understanding of the planet’s various ecosystems can enable scientists and policymakers to take more informed and holistic approaches to addressing environmental challenges from the very local to the truly global level.
Reinventing cities with IT
More than half the world’s population lives in cities, and that number is expected to reach 70 percent by the year 2050. Microsoft’s CityNext initiative helps cities drive transformative, technology-based improvements to deliver services more efficiently. For example, we are working with Seattle to implement a smart building pilot that should lead to energy and operating savings between 10 and 25 percent. In Buenos Aires, we are using data to optimize public transportation systems for greater efficiency and citizenship engagement. Around the world, Microsoft is working with customers and partners to create and accelerate cloud-based technology solutions that will enable a more sustainable future.