Advance sustainability

We have invested in acquiring 1.4 million tons of carbon removal from various sources in fiscal year 2022 and recycling it into marketable products.

We're adopting a more circular strategy for materials management by diverting over 12,000 metric tons of waste from landfills and incinerators in fiscal year 2022.

We reached just under one million people with clean water and sanitation solutions by the end of the calendar year 2022.

We protected 12,270 acres of land in Belize—we now protect more than the 11,206 acres of land that we use.

Water replenishment will play an important role in protecting watersheds across the globe. In a new white paper, we’ve outlined learnings from our replenishment program, hoping that it will help others navigate the challenges of this nascent market.

Embodied carbon is responsible for 8% of global GHG, yet reducing or eliminating embodied carbon from concrete and steel is difficult. Microsoft is piloting new concrete mixes at our Quincy, WA datacenter, with a goal to lower embodied carbon in concrete by more than 50%.

Over 3,500 companies globally have issued climate pledges—however, many lack a workforce with the skills to turn these pledges to progress. Our report shows the need to develop a new level of sustainability skills—and how we aim to help support the transformation. 

We are dedicated to finding solutions that have the greatest potential for positive impact, are transparent, and use market intelligence as one of the first businesses to source carbon removal to meet our goal of eliminating carbon emissions by 2050.

As we work to reduce the carbon intensity of our operations, we prioritize solutions that align with our sustainability goals.

We're pledging $1 billion in funding over four years to invest in cutting-edge climate technologies and hasten the implementation of already-existing climate solutions. Climate impact, underfunded markets, climate equality, and shared alignment are the four themes that guide our investments.

In 2020, we set an ambitious commitment to be water positive and co-founded the Water Resilience Coalition (WRC), a CEO-led initiative to reduce water stress by 2050. We're building on this foundation with the WRC and signing an Open Call for Water Action to accelerate the collective impact businesses can have in building greater water resilience.

Xbox is now the first gaming console to offer carbon aware game downloads and updates. By being carbon aware, Xbox consoles are reducing their carbon footprints by optimizing updates and downloads to run at a time when each console can use the most renewable energy.

We recently announced our new Chief Sustainability Officer, Melanie Nakagawa. Melanie joins Microsoft on the third anniversary of our ambitious climate goals to be carbon negative by 2030 and remove our historical carbon emissions by 2050.

To avoid the worst effects of climate change, governments and decision-makers in the Global South equally need access to reliable climate data. By harnessing the power of data and artificial intelligence to support new climate solutions, we’re expanding our collaboration with Planet Labs PBC and bringing our AI for Good Research Lab into Egypt and Kenya.