Insights for Energy and resources | Microsoft Sustainability Blog http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/audience/energy-resources/ Explore sustainability news and solutions Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:28:50 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/cropped-cropped-microsoft_logo_element-400x4001-1-32x32.webp Insights for Energy and resources | Microsoft Sustainability Blog http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/audience/energy-resources/ 32 32 Harnessing AI for resilience, efficiency, and sustainability http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2025/03/18/harnessing-ai-for-resilience-efficiency-and-sustainability/ Tue, 18 Mar 2025 14:50:44 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/?p=15 As the new AI economy unfolds, we are seeing leading organizations around the world harness the potential of AI to accelerate business resilience, efficiency, and sustainability.

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Progress on the road to 2030 https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/02/13/progress-on-the-road-to-2030/ Thu, 13 Feb 2025 16:00:00 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/?p=6 2025 is a notable year in the world’s continued efforts toward a more sustainable future. It marks the five-year countdown to 2030, the end of the timeline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 2025 will also be the 30th convening of the UN Climate Change Conference—also known as COP30—and it is taking place in Brazil, […]

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2025 is a notable year in the world’s continued efforts toward a more sustainable future. It marks the five-year countdown to 2030, the end of the timeline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 2025 will also be the 30th convening of the UN Climate Change Conference—also known as COP30—and it is taking place in Brazil, both a symbolically and strategically important nation in the world’s fight against climate change and environmental degradation.

It is also a notable year for Microsoft. In addition to celebrating the 50th anniversary of our company’s founding, it is the midpoint of our own sustainability journey. In 2020 we announced our ambitions to be carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste by 2030, all while protecting ecosystems. We have made tremendous progress over the past five years, and we are proud of what we’ve accomplished. We’ve also learned lessons along the way, lessons that constantly inform and shape our path toward 2030 and beyond.

The goals that we set in 2020 reflected what we believed we needed to do in order to help push the world toward a net-zero economy. I joined Microsoft on this journey two years ago—becoming our Chief Sustainability Officer in January 2023—and I continue to be impressed by the work of employees across the company in their relentless pursuit of these goals.

In June 2020, we announced our largest power PPA to date at the time—a 500MW PPA with Sol Systems. Today, we are one of the largest carbon-free energy buyers in the world, with a 34-gigawatt (GW) contracted renewable energy portfolio across 24 countries to date. We are bringing more carbon-free electricity onto the grids where we operate, and we continue to advocate for the expansion of clean energy solutions around the world.
A key component of our water positive goal is to replenish more water than we consume across our global operations. We’ve grown our replenishment portfolio to 90 projects in over 40 locations around the world.
On our journey to become zero waste, we’re finding opportunities to keep electronics in circulation. The repairability of our current portfolio of Surface devices has evolved significantly from our first field-repairable product in 2019. This is also true of Xbox, which recently announced how they’re working to expand the number of ways players can get support to repair their consoles and accessories.
We exceeded our land protection goal, with 15,849 acres of protected land and surpassed our initial target of 11,000 acres by more than 40%.
This is only a snapshot of the real progress we’ve made over the last 5 years. We have a longstanding commitment to sustainability, and our experience shows us that the investments and innovations we’ve focused on are good for our company, our customers, the economy, and our planet. Every investment has also been a learning opportunity, a chance to test our assumptions and adjust as needed.

While we are proud of these achievements, we know that our work is far from over, and that the path ahead has gotten harder. The world is not on track to meet critical climate goals and we see many of these challenges reflected in our own journey.

In 2020, Microsoft leaders referred to our sustainability goals as a “moonshot,” and nearly five years later, we have had to acknowledge that the moon has gotten further away. However, the force creating this distance from our goals in the short term is the same one that will help us build a bigger, faster, and more powerful rocket to reach them in the long term: artificial intelligence (AI). This is not hyperbole. Already, we are seeing AI make a positive impact on the planet, and in the coming years, this technology will begin to rapidly accelerate climate solutions at a scale we’ve not yet seen. In November 2023, we introduced our AI and Sustainability Playbook, which highlights five foundational enabling conditions needed to unlock AI’s full transformative potential for accelerating sustainability progress. In January, we shared a report that highlights our progress and the innovations that have advanced each of those five pillars.

Building the AI economy of the future is a top priority for our business, but we are also in the business of sustainability. As CSO, it is my job to ensure that these dual mandates are working together.

To achieve this, we need to run our sustainability initiatives like we run the rest of our business: ensuring that our focus is on the highest-impact interventions that truly move the needle when it comes to planetary impact.

Carbon Neutrality
Microsoft announced that it was carbon neutral in 2012, several years ahead of our ambitious goal to be carbon negative by 2030. Microsoft’s prior years achieving carbon neutrality were based on a common combination of environmental attributes purchased with funds from our corporate-wide carbon fee and our overall carbon emissions reduction efforts. This is a prime example of where we have learned and adjusted along our journey. While we continue to apply the carbon fee to investments in emissions reductions, we have ceased purchasing non-additional, unbundled renewable energy certificates. We are refocusing the use of these funds on more long-term, higher-impact investments across carbon reduction, carbon removal, and clean electricity procurement. These interventions are expected to more effectively help us achieve our goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030 and may take us out of carbon-neutral position.

We will also continue to invest in innovative climate solutions through our $1B Climate Innovation Fund (CIF). Since launching the CIF in 2020, Microsoft has committed nearly $800M to solutions ranging from sustainable fuels and low-carbon building materials to carbon dioxide removal, water innovation, and circular economy technologies. We now have a portfolio of 63 investees that we’re helping to scale. Going forward, we will extend this strategy and continue to invest our capital to build new markets and increase the market supply of emerging sustainable technologies to address carbon, water, and waste.

We are proud to continue making decisions that drive positive environmental impact in the market and deliver high-integrity investments. We remain resolute in our commitment to our climate goals and to empowering others with the technology needed to build a more sustainable future.

In my first year with Microsoft, I wrote a piece on LinkedIn: Removing Roadblocks in the Race to Net Zero, where I compared reaching our sustainability goals to training for a marathon, noting that “it will take focus, planning, and perseverance to reach the finish line.” Today—and now two years into my role—I would like to add another comparison, to an African proverb that says the following: “If you want to travel fast, travel alone; if you want to travel far, travel together.”

In 2025, the moon is further away, so we all must travel together and do more if we are going to reach it. We will continue to work in close collaboration with our employees, customers, suppliers, industry peers, partners, and with policymakers to maximize our impact in pursuit of our shared goals.

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3 ways AI is helping the planet https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/sustainability/3-ways-ai-is-helping-the-planet/ Wed, 11 Dec 2024 15:58:00 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/?p=43 Schools in Georgia and furniture shops in Minnesota faced similar challenges with indoor air comfort. AI-powered tools now automate energy-saving strategies, integrating fresh air and reducing airflow to empty rooms. These tools simplify building management, saving energy and costs, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

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Sustainable by design: Next-generation datacenters consume zero water for cooling http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/12/09/sustainable-by-design-next-generation-datacenters-consume-zero-water-for-cooling/ Mon, 09 Dec 2024 16:40:00 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/?p=82 This summer, we released our Datacenter Community Pledge, detailing our commitment to the local economies and communities in which we operate our datacenters.

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Driving operational efficiency and sustainability with AI and data modernization http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/industry/blog/energy-and-resources/2024/10/31/driving-operational-efficiency-and-sustainability-with-ai-and-data-modernization/ Thu, 31 Oct 2024 16:00:00 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/2024/10/31/driving-operational-efficiency-and-sustainability-with-ai-and-data-modernization/ Microsoft is actively collaborating with energy companies on industrial carbon management solutions to help modernize and transform the industry.

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During a time of both rapid transformation and intense scrutiny, today’s energy industry leaders are increasingly turning to advanced solutions in AI and data management to drive sustainability and efficiency as the global community works to combat climate change. This is a time-sensitive effort, as increased energy demand and the continued role of fossil fuels mean emissions could keep rising through 2035.1 As energy leaders look to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the carbon capture and storage (CCS) industry has become a key component in the approach. Industrial carbon management (ICM) encompasses a range of technologies designed to capture, transport, and store carbon dioxide (CO2) underground to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. Microsoft is actively collaborating with energy companies on industrial carbon management solutions. One example of this collaboration is Northern Lights, a partnership between the Norwegian government and energy companies Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies, which is now fully operational. This groundbreaking initiative was established to accelerate decarbonization and address emissions as we all work towards a more sustainable future.  

Field engineers inspect solar panels

Microsoft for energy and resources

Achieve more in the energy and resources industry with trusted data and AI solutions

enabling carbon reduction in the energy industry


Read the blog

Transforming the global energy industry is not a small feat, nor one that happens without the collective work of dedicated partnerships and innovative technology. The standardized data model and secure data sharing in Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy along with operations data management powered by Azure AI and Microsoft Copilot can accelerate innovation across the end-to-end CCS value chain. Copilot and Azure Data Manager for Energy put data and AI to work, integrating industry datasets, applications, and other cloud services—managing intensive workloads at global scale, and quickly ingesting data for analytics and decision-making. These are high-impact capabilities that ultimately help energy companies accelerate their transition to more sustainable practices by reducing time, costs, and risks associated with their complex operational requirements.     

Enhancing energy operations with modern data management  

Data modernization is a critical component in advancing sustainability and CCS efforts within the energy sector. By leveraging Azure Data Manager for Energy, energy companies can efficiently manage and analyze vast amounts of data—enabling more accurate and comprehensive simulations of subsurface reservoirs. This capability is essential for identifying optimal CO2 storage locations and ensuring the safe and efficient injection and storage of carbon dioxide.  

The platform’s robust, scalable, and secure data management solutions allow for real-time data integration and continuous model refinement, which are crucial for making informed decisions and mitigating risks. Additionally, Azure Data Manager for Energy’s high-performance computing capabilities enable rapid simulations, which significantly reduce the time required for planning studies and optimizing reservoir performance. These high-impact capabilities ultimately help energy companies accelerate their transition to more sustainable practices by reducing time, costs, and risks associated with their complex operational requirements. 

Harnessing the power of AI with Copilot 

Along with data modernization and robust data analytics, Azure Data Manager for Energy users will have the option to take advantage of Copilot to interact with well data. Azure Data Manager for Energy helps ingest and organize domain-specific data from across the enterprise data landscape to enhance data access, analysis, and application interoperability. Developed in alignment with OSDU® standards, Azure Data Manager for Energy helps get the right data organized within the right domain workflow while providing trustworthy data delivery that sets the stage for improved and timely analysis.  

However, the enterprise data landscape for any analysis may extend beyond domain-specific data types and require reports with different file types, as well as images, data and records stored in other databases, spreadsheets, and shared folders. Further, the entire value chain extends into data from operations, supply chain, health, safety and environment (HSE), enterprise resource planning (ERP), legal and compliance, and even social media—some of which may be hosted on external platforms.  

In these scenarios, generative AI capabilities can help users optimize data for enhanced insights—faster. One example of how to approach this is with Microsoft Fabric, an end-to-end analytics and data platform. Fabric can help integrate the data in Azure Data Manager for Energy with other adjacent data sources, ultimately preparing it for analysis and other interactions through AI and Copilot. This means users can potentially run traditional AI-powered workflows such as automated interpretation of data or event prediction through machine learning-driven algorithms. They can also leverage Copilot to chat with the data or implement intelligent search, domain-based intelligent assistants, or cross-domain intelligent advisors.  

In doing so, end users—people in roles across geoscience or petrophysics—have an easier and faster way to interact with and query their data, both within and outside Azure Data Manager for Energy. Plus, data engineers and data scientists have a foundation from which to build similar solutions for their end users. The Copilot capabilities also mean simplified research processes and the generation of valuable data insights, enabling enterprise and business unit leaders, as well as data scientists and geophysicists, to make more informed decisions and take advantage of greater efficiencies in reservoir management.  

Optimize carbon capture and storage and enhance reservoir management 

Building on the capabilities of Copilot and Azure Data Manager for Energy, we can further optimize CCS to work towards a more sustainable future. Reservoir modeling is a critical aspect of modern energy management, playing a vital role in the underground storage of CO2. This multidisciplinary field involves the integration of geological, geophysical, thermal, and engineering data to create detailed models of subsurface reservoirs. Reservoir engineers create models that simulate the behavior of fluids within the reservoir to predict future performance and optimize injection and production strategies. With global energy demand projected to increase 47% by 2050,2 the need for sustainable energy solutions and CCS is paramount.  

Microsoft is working with partners to provide the efficiency, predictive power, and speed of reservoir simulations and optimizations. Built on top of Azure Data Manager for Energy, customers can now leverage Azure’s robust enterprise capabilities in security, scalability, and reliability, while accessing its domain-specific solutions and maintaining full control over their data.   

Traditionally, identifying optimal CO2 storage locations requires lengthy studies, sometimes spanning months or even years. The work Microsoft is doing with partners transforms this process by enabling scalable and efficient simulations. This will enable engineers to run numerous models in parallel, leveraging high-performance computing to quickly analyze vast datasets and identify the best storage locations. The ability to perform rapid simulations at scale significantly reduces the time required for planning studies.

Explore more energy solutions and resources 

At Microsoft, our dedication and commitment to accelerating the energy transition to carbon-free resources is matched only by the power of our partner ecosystem and the knowledge-sharing that makes it all possible. With Azure Data Manager for Energy, industry leaders can connect to an open ecosystem of interoperable applications from independent software vendors (ISVs) and the Microsoft ecosystem of productivity tools. By harnessing capabilities and features from across Microsoft and partner solutions, energy leaders can optimize value across their entire enterprise while working towards sustainability goals.  

Ready to dive deeper? Check out additional resources to learn more. 


1 McKinsey & Company, Global Energy Perspective 2024, September 2024.

2 S&P Global, Global energy demand to grow 47% by 2050, with oil still top source: US EIA, October 2021.

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Sustainable by design: Innovating for energy efficiency in AI, part 2 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/09/26/sustainable-by-design-innovating-for-energy-efficiency-in-ai-part-2/ Thu, 26 Sep 2024 15:33:00 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/?p=76 In this blog, I’d like to share a few examples of how we’re bringing promising efficiency research out of the lab and into commercial operations.

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Driving business value with ESG data readiness http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/industry/blog/sustainability/2024/09/25/driving-business-value-with-esg-data-readiness/ Wed, 25 Sep 2024 15:00:00 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/2024/09/25/driving-business-value-with-esg-data-readiness-2/ Customers from many industries have been reaching out to us to discuss how to move from reporting to carbon reductions, and how to identify opportunities to drive sustainability progress in their organizations.

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Customers from many industries have been reaching out to us to discuss how they can move beyond their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting, to where they can also spot opportunities to drive sustainability progress and reduce carbon across their value chains. At Microsoft, we’ve been tackling related questions for nearly two decades, and in 2020 we committed to becoming carbon negative, zero waste, and water positive, and to protecting more land than we use. We share our successes and setbacks annually in our Environmental Sustainability Report.

Now, we’re sharing additional learnings—from our efforts and those of our global ecosystem of partners and customers, and from advice we’ve received from external sustainability experts—in the Leader’s Guide to Sustainable Business Transformation. The guide offers practical tips to help business leaders consider what steps can help their organizations build a culture and infrastructure around ESG data, and provides context for taking the Microsoft ESG Data Readiness Assessment.

For quick examples of industry-specific considerations addressed in the guide, see the chart below.

ESG Data Readiness Assessment

Leveraging the Leader’s Guide

When we began our own sustainability journey, we learned that to make progress on our ESG goals we had to bring sustainability out of siloed reporting efforts and into the core of our business. The Leader’s Guide discusses approaches to this operational shift, including ways to facilitate cross-functional conversations within your organization around the value of harnessing ESG data.

The guide also shows how Microsoft customers in different industries are using sustainability solutions to transform their operations. For example, international forestry group Södra had been limited to a labor-intensive process—siloed within its sustainability unit—to answer routine inquiries about its environmental data. Since collaborating to adopt Microsoft Sustainability Manager in 2023, Södra’s IT and sustainability teams have been generating significant insights for stakeholders, including the organization’s estimate that its positive climate impact is equal to about one-fifth of Sweden’s reported carbon dioxide emissions.

We’re ready to partner with your organization so you can also use ESG data to uncover operational insights to support your sustainability progress.

How ESG data supports business resilience

As organizations worldwide try to predict and prepare for emerging ESG disclosure requirements, they also need to respond to expanding market expectations. Investors, consumers, and shareholders are tracking companies’ sustainability commitments, and they’re looking for products and solutions that champion those commitments.

sustainability for retail and consumer goods


Unlock business value

Our customer King Steel, a Taiwan-based global shoe manufacturer, faced this situation when major brands like Nike and Adidas began expecting sustainable and recyclable products. To align with its customers, King Steel started collecting and digitizing its ESG data using Dynamics 365 and capabilities within Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability. This shift to a digitized data estate not only enabled King Steel to deliver transparent data to demanding customers, it also helped the company uncover insights into materials and operations that resulted in more sustainable production, reduction of waste, and innovation of new customizable products.

By implementing a robust ESG data infrastructure, your organization can also respond to sustainability-driven market demands with speed and insights.

From commitments to solutions

Early in our journey, we quickly realized our environmental commitments necessitated better tools to manage the increasing number, size, and complexity of our ESG datasets. We also needed to unify siloed data and ensure traceability and transparency—to execute our plan to publicly self-disclose our ESG progress, and to prepare for the evolution of sustainability reporting requirements. Simultaneously, we wanted to use our ESG data to identify opportunities to drive sustainability efficiencies and business growth.

This led us to Microsoft Fabric and AI tools built on Microsoft Azure. By adopting these capabilities, we’ve now integrated our ESG, operational, and financial data, empowering our employees to access timely data intelligence so they can contribute ideas and innovate.

A screenshot of a website
Three key actions to achieve ESG goals with Microsoft Fabric

But to meet our ambitious sustainability commitments, we must also drive change across our value chain. In 2023, we estimated that 75% or more of our carbon footprint was coming from indirect, or Scope 3 emissions, which organizations accrue from suppliers. To address this, the Microsoft Procurement team needed customized ESG inquiries, granular data, and flexible, collaborative reporting. The team partnered with Microsoft engineers to add new capabilities to our data technologies, including low-code customization and self-service features to help our value-chain partners find ways to reduce their environmental impact.

Then we carried these robust solutions forward to our customers, so organizations like US farming powerhouse Land O’Lakes can access their ESG data for day-to-day decision-making. For example, the company relies on Azure Data Manager for Agriculture to collect and unify data on weather, soil, and irrigation—freeing Land O’Lakes data scientists to help optimize planting decisions. The Azure-based ESG data infrastructure also boosts the Land O’Lakes competitive stance by providing consumers with visibility into the organization’s farming practices and environmental outcomes.

Exploring industry-specific considerations

With the right tools, ESG data can support each industry’s unique set of goals, challenges, and opportunities.

Here’s a look at some of the issues our Leader’s Guide and ESG Assessment can help you start exploring:

Visit the Leader’s Guide for in-depth information and resources.

Next steps

As you rethink operations to support your organization’s sustainability progress, we’re ready to share our learnings and continuous innovation to help advance your ESG priorities, accelerate your growth, and partner for a shared sustainable future.

Dive deeper into ESG data readiness strategies for your industry:

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Accelerating the addition of carbon-free energy: An update on progress http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/09/20/accelerating-the-addition-of-carbon-free-energy-an-update-on-progress/ Fri, 20 Sep 2024 11:00:00 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/2024/09/20/accelerating-the-addition-of-carbon-free-energy-an-update-on-progress/ Today, we’re announcing a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Constellation that will enable the restart of an 835 megawatt (MW) nuclear facility in Pennsylvania that was retired in 2019.

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At Microsoft, we seek to enable a decarbonized grid for our company, our customers, and the world. It’s part of our commitment to support a more sustainable future and become a carbon negative company. We’re dedicating significant resources to advancing this goal and adding carbon-free electricity and capacity in the grids where we operate.

Today, we’re announcing a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Constellation that will enable the restart of an 835 megawatt (MW) nuclear facility in Pennsylvania that was retired in 2019. This will bring a significant supply of net-new, reliable, carbon-free electricity to the PJM power grid, the regional transmission organization covering 13 states, recognizing the importance of nuclear energy and complementing our 34 gigawatt (GW) contracted renewable energy portfolio in 24 countries.

As highlighted by the International Energy Agency, complete grid decarbonization will require a multi-technology approach with a broad range of carbon-free technologies such as wind, solar, geothermal, clean hydrogen, sustainable biomass, nuclear, fusion, energy efficiency, and storage, as well as transmission infrastructure to connect these technologies to the grids that need them.1 Alongside our extensive work on carbon reduction and carbon removal, Microsoft embraces this multi-technology approach as an essential pathway to achieving our goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030.

Carbon reduction

Explore our approach to carbon reduction

An employee working outside on a laptop

As we continue to expand our portfolio of solutions to accelerate the energy transition, we collaborate with governments, communities, developers, and energy service providers in many ways. In this blog, I’ll share more about how we approach our work to (1) shape market demand for carbon-free electricity and (2) advance energy policy through advocacy.

Shaping market demand to accelerate the addition of carbon-free electricity

We employ a wide range of contracting mechanisms to meet our goals and secure carbon-free electricity, crafting innovative agreement structures alongside our large portfolio of renewable PPAs. A few examples:

  • Our recently announced five-year global agreement with Brookfield Renewable Partners provides a pathway for the development of more than 10.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity in the United States and Europe, almost eight times larger than the largest corporate PPA ever signed. This agreement provides an incentive for Brookfield to build a large portfolio of new renewable energy projects in the coming years, contributing to the decarbonization of the grid, and matched to the locations where Microsoft consumes electricity.
  • In Washington state, our agreement with Powerex matches hourly datacenter demand with direct deliveries of carbon-free hydro, solar, and wind power on a 24-hour basis throughout the year. During the day, when our contracted renewable resources produce more power than needed, Powerex takes the surplus renewable power, conserving water from hydropower reservoirs and effectively storing it like a battery. This energy can then be delivered back to the datacenter in later hours, for example at night when wind and solar sources may be offline.
  • As a global company committed to decarbonization on a global level, Microsoft also has worked to develop renewable energy in communities and locations that often are not prioritized. An example of this unique approach was our five-year framework agreement with Pivot Energy to develop up to 500 MW of community-scale solar energy projects across the US between 2025 and 2029. The agreement will enable Pivot to develop approximately 150 US solar projects in roughly 100 communities across 20 states, including Colorado, Maryland, Illinois, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, with each solar project including significant community benefits.  

Advancing carbon-free electricity through policy advocacy

Our public policy advocacy relating to the electrical grid is focused on accelerating the transition to clean electricity generation, modernizing and improving grid infrastructure, and encouraging an equitable energy future. A grid mix that includes adding and retaining firm carbon-free energy technologies as well as renewables will be pivotal to providing electricity access across the globe and progressing decarbonization.

In December 2023, we published a policy brief on advanced nuclear and fusion energy that highlights the importance of carbon-free electricity and the role advanced nuclear and fusion energy will have in a decarbonized energy future. As advanced carbon-free energy technologies are developed, each comes with its own set of considerations, benefits, risks, regulatory dynamics, and acceptance. Our policy priorities are focused on advancing research, development, and demonstration projects; enabling safe deployment of technologies; and encouraging an efficient and effective regulatory process for new technologies to be deployed.

Explore Sustainable by design

Discover more about how Microsoft is advancing the sustainability of cloud and AI through our blog series on the topic:


1The path to limiting global warming to 1.5 °C has narrowed, but clean energy growth is keeping it open, IEA, 2023.

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Sustainable by design: Innovating for energy efficiency in AI, part 1 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/09/12/sustainable-by-design-innovating-for-energy-efficiency-in-ai-part-1/ Thu, 12 Sep 2024 15:31:00 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/?p=73 Read some examples of how we’re advancing the power and energy efficiency of AI.

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Enabling carbon reduction in the energy industry http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/industry/blog/energy-and-resources/2024/08/21/enabling-carbon-reduction-in-the-energy-industry/ Wed, 21 Aug 2024 15:00:00 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/sustainability/blog/2024/08/21/enabling-carbon-reduction-in-the-energy-industry/ Led by the European Union (EU), the new global push toward improved industrial carbon management (ICM) requires sophisticated new support mechanisms, including the development of technologies capable of orchestrating the carbon capture and storage (CCS) process from early planning to operations.

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The ways the energy industry captures, transports, stores, and otherwise removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere are changing. Led by the European Union (EU), this new global push toward improved industrial carbon management (ICM) requires sophisticated new support mechanisms, including the development of technologies capable of orchestrating the carbon capture and storage (CCS) process from early planning to operations. Microsoft is committed to be carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 to remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted since it was founded in 1975. Our goal is to empower organizations worldwide to accelerate innovation across the entire end-to-end CCS value chain. By leveraging the standardized data model and secure data sharing in Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy and Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, along with operations data management powered by Azure AI and Microsoft Copilot, we aim to achieve business goals of net zero, sustainability, and profitability.

Azure Data Manager for Energy

An energy employee working on a tablet

Enabling energy industry innovation through modern technology

The process of finding suitable CCS sites is costly and time consuming, and not without its own unique information security risks. Traditional energy industry technologies used during this process both increase in cost over time and contribute to the data silos that exist between the site selection process and operational concerns like site-specific safe liquid CO2 injection speeds and storage capacities. These factors have led to challenging commercial margins of CCS as a process, presenting a barrier to entry for many interested businesses.

Carbon management technologies set to soar in Europe


Read more

The process is not unfamiliar to Microsoft, which has already invested in multiple large-scale CCS projects around the world, including Northern Lights, a partnership between the Norwegian government and energy companies Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies. Northern Lights was created to help accelerate the decarbonization of European industry and mitigate its otherwise unavoidable emissions. The project facilitates the capture and transport of industrial CO2 emissions, which it then liquifies and stores safely in the pores of saline aquifers 2,600 meters below the seafloor.

By 2030, Microsoft plans to have an established system that removes five million metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year. With Azure Data Manager for Energy and operations data management powered by Azure AI and Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft aims to help increase the return on investment (ROI) of CCS projects, helping customers optimize their costs with AI, automation, and the discovery of new best practices. Additionally, organizations can employ Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability—a growing set of powerful data and AI capabilities designed to help businesses create more accurate and reliable data intelligence to drive impact reduction efforts and business transformation. These solutions help users gain actionable insights to drive sustainable practices, providing visibility into sustainability performance with advanced analytics and reporting. The global Microsoft partner network, with its industry specific expertise and highly targeted CCS solutions, further strengthens these capabilities, providing customers with valuable resources and support

The path forward for carbon capture storage

There are two divergent paths ahead for the emerging CCS industry, both recursive in nature. On the first and more positive path, companies will see a clear value in negating and offsetting their carbon emissions efficiently and effectively. On the other path, companies could lack the tools that efficiently connect the dots between carbon emissions and offsets, and hence be left with a less clear value proposition. By underpinning the positive path with technology, Microsoft hopes to help industry and humanity at large meet their shared sustainability goals.

Azure Data Manager for Energy is aligned with the highly secure OSDU® and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) data standards, which will ease the development of new services and workflows that transcend today’s data silos. This standardization also paves the way for the adoption of co-pilots and other time-saving AI solutions. Combining Azure Data Manager for Energy with other services, such as Microsoft Fabric, Environmental Credit Service, and Microsoft Sustainability Manager, helps organizations in the energy industry validate and demonstrate their CCS efforts and carbon credit purchases to regulators in the rapidly emerging and expanding ICM business.

intelligent forecasting and data analysis


Advance your carbon reduction strategy

Sustainability data solutions in Fabric offer unique capabilities that provide prebuilt and preconfigured Fabric resources. These resources include data stores in the form of data lakes, prebuilt notebooks, and dashboards to ingest, process, aggregate, and display data for various ESG scenarios. By combining and transforming disparate social and governance data into a standardized data lake, organizations can compute, analyze, and disclose social and governance metrics effectively. 

How scalability, standardization, and security contribute to sustainability

Data standardization and AI readiness are the first steps toward innovative capabilities, especially when paired with the hyper-scalability of Azure. During the process of identifying ideal sites for carbon storage, energy companies run multiple site-specific simulations that traditionally include the manual numerical simulation of seismic data. These simulations are time consuming, complex, and data intensive. They’re also critical to the site selection process, so when companies are given the opportunity to infuse them with AI and run them at scale, there’s massive potential for time savings and efficiency gains.

The ability to scale up the computing power required to run thousands of simulations against hundreds of potential sites when required could help shorten the CCS site selection process substantially. It could also help refine the simulations and their related data models and lead to further efficiency gains. Scaling compute back down after the simulations have been run can help energy companies not only reduce their costs, but also reduce the same carbon footprint the CCS process is helping to address. By running the simulations on Azure, energy companies are taking advantage of hyper-scalability on a cloud that has itself been carbon neutral since 2012.

After months of work going into the selection and analysis of a proper CCS site, energy companies want to make sure their data is not just secure but fully under their own control. If that information were to leak to either the public or their competitors, all that effort and investment could be lost. For this reason, Microsoft is working toward enabling Azure Data Manager for Energy on customer cloud tenants, which will grant them the control they require as well as the layered security of Microsoft managed services in the cloud. For real-time CCS operations data, Microsoft is also developing a reference architecture and toolkit to enable partners to build ICM solutions to deliver value to our customers. 

Clearer skies ahead

With Azure Data Manager for Energy and the power of Azure AI, Microsoft Copilot, and capabilities from Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, Microsoft hopes to give the energy industry the standardization and systemization that its past technologies may not have provided. To keep global warming within 1.5 degrees, the United States Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory reports that the world needs to start removing 10 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually by 2050.1 To reach that important milestone in time, the energy industry needs a technological foundation to build its next wave of advancements upon.

If, as the Clean Air Task Force states, Europe alone has the storage capacity for 1,520 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions, helping energy companies rapidly, cost-effectively identify and provision CCS sites is a big step in the right direction, and one which Microsoft hopes to help the energy industry take.2

Explore more on carbon management


1Diverse Approach Key to Carbon Removal, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 2023.

2Unlocking Europe’s CO2 Storage Potential, Clean Air Task Force, 2023.

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