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Advance sustainability

Climate change requires swift, collective action and technological innovation. We are committed to meeting our own goals while enabling others to do the same.
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Melanie Nakagawa is smiling within a green circular border, with a green check mark on the bottom right.

"In the last year, the urgency of climate change has driven world leaders and experts to increase collaboration, with AI offering new opportunities to speed up the availability of climate solutions."


— Melanie Nakagawa, Corporate Vice President, Chief Sustainability Officer

Read Melanie's message

Our commitments

We work to ensure that technology is inclusive, trusted, and increases sustainability. In 2020, we announced our sustainability commitments and detailed plans for working towards a more sustainable future.
Learn about our approach
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Carbon negative

By 2030, we’ll be carbon negative, and by 2050, we’ll remove our historical emissions since our founding in 1975.

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Water positive

By 2030, we’ll replenish more water than we consume across our direct operations.

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Zero waste

By 2030, we’ll be zero waste across our direct waste footprint.

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Protect and preserve ecosystems

We’ll protect more land than we use by 2025 and build a Planetary Computer.

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Investing in nature

Nature is essential for people and the global economy, but the ecosystems that support us are rapidly being degraded and lost. To avoid escalating risks to society and the climate crisis, increased investments are needed to protect and enhance the health of ecosystems. We’re exploring what’s needed to maximize the sustainability impact of corporate investments in nature.
Read our nature whitepaper

Our progress

When we announced our climate commitments in January 2020, we also committed to transparency in sharing our learnings. We aspire to build a world better than the one we found.
View additional reports

Investing in renewable energy

In FY23, we invested in over 23.6 million MWH of renewable energy. This would be enough to power Paris with renewable electricity for about two years.

Replenishing water used

Since the program’s inception, we’ve contracted 61.7 million m3 total volumetric water replenishment benefits. This is enough water to fill over 24,000 Olympic sized swimming pools.

Reducing waste

In FY23, we diverted 18,537 metric tons of solid waste from landfills and incineration across our owned datacenters and campuses. This is equivalent to the weight of over 45 commercial passenger jets.

Protecting more land than we use

We protected 15,849 total acres of land— exceeding our land protection target of 11,000 by more than 40 percent. This is equivalent to over 9,000 soccer pitches.

Feature stories

Take a deeper look at the stories behind our work to move towards a net zero, environmentally sustainable future.
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Using AI to help conserve drinking water

Leaking pipes form an insidious enemy, accounting for average losses of 30 percent of piped drinking water across the world. As part of our work to replenish water in the regions we operate, a new AI-powered tool is making the process to identify leaks faster and more accurate.
Read how it works
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Accelerating sustainability with AI

Organizations worldwide are working toward meeting their own sustainability objectives, but progress is slow. Our 5-point playbook outlines what is needed to ensure that AI delivers on its potential as an accelerator for sustainability solutions.
Read our playbook
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Laying the foundation for buildings of tomorrow

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%.
Learn about our pilot

“While the world will need to reach net zero, those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so.”

Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President

Our contributions

In addition to embedding science and sustainability into the way we do business, we also believe our greatest contributions to a sustainable future come from enabling our customers, partners, and suppliers on their own journeys.
Learn about our global impact
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Planetary Computer

The Planetary Computer combines a multi-petabyte collection of global environmental data with user-friendly APIs, a flexible scientific environment that enables users to respond to global queries about that data, and applications that provide conservation stakeholders access to those answers.
Discover the Planetary Computer
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Supply chain integrity

Microsoft has relationships with hundreds of suppliers around the globe, and we work to ensure transparency and ethical standards across our supply chain. We collaborate with our suppliers to protect the fundamental rights of people at every step of the process—from responsible sourcing to production and distribution.
Learn about supply chain integrity
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Sustainability science and innovation

At Microsoft, we have a dedicated Sustainability Science and Innovation team whose mission is to ensure that our sustainability work is grounded in the best available science. This drives our work in sustainability, from our climate commitments to partnering with our customers and partners on co-designing new solutions.
Read about our latest work
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Microsoft Climate Research Initiative

Accelerating cutting-edge research in climate science and technology is a priority for this multidisciplinary community of researchers.
Explore innovation in climate

Microsoft sustainability programs

As part of our commitment to building a sustainable future, we partner with organizations to provide grants and funding that help drive innovation and impact in the areas of carbon removal, carbon reduction, and new climate technologies.
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Carbon removal

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.
Learn about our carbon removal efforts
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Carbon reduction

As we work to reduce the carbon intensity of our operations, we prioritize solutions that align with our sustainability goals.
Learn about our carbon reduction efforts
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Water replenishment

Water replenishment is a key pillar of our 2030 water positive goal. We see replenishment as a way for our company to help restore and protect the water basins where we operate.
Learn about our water replenishment efforts
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Climate Innovation Fund

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.
Learn more about the fund

Sustainability products & solutions

Building a more sustainable future, harnessing the power of technology.
Learn how we’re empowering customers
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Your sustainability journey

Microsoft is using our experience to build solutions to accelerate your sustainability journey. No matter where you are, we can help you move forward.
Discover our solutions
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Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

Through environmental, social, and governance (ESG) capabilities, the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability enables you to accelerate development and transform your company.

Accelerate your progress
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Emissions Impact Dashboard

Make better data-driven decisions about your cloud usage by estimating your carbon emissions using Microsoft cloud services, such as Azure and Microsoft 365.

Learn how to track your data

Latest news

Read recent news and perspectives on today's pressing societal and tech issues from Microsoft.
Read Microsoft on the Issues blog
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Reviewing our progress and sharing our learnings

Since 2020, we’ve seen major changes both in the technology sector and in our understanding of what it will take to meet our collective climate goals. We remain resolute in our commitment to address our own climate impact, and to empower others with the technology needed to build a more sustainable future.
Read our learnings
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Sustainable by design

Alongside the benefits of AI, we recognize the resource intensity and the need to address the environmental impact from every angle. We’re determined to tackle this challenge so the world can harness the full benefits of AI and we're sharing the three areas where we’re deeply invested and increasing our focus.
Read about our approach
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The journey to water positive

We set an ambitious commitment in 2020 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.
Read about our commitment
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Xbox offers first carbon aware console

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.
Explore what we're doing

View more of our commitments

  • Pursuant to California Assembly Bill No. 1305 (the “law” or “1305”), which was signed into law October 7, 2023, Microsoft may be required to make certain disclosures regarding its involvement in the voluntary carbon offsets markets, use of voluntary carbon offsets, and/or certain claims or goals regarding greenhouse gas emissions reductions.  While the law itself does not specify a deadline for initial disclosures, the bill’s author has indicated that his intent was that the deadline for companies’ first annual disclosure under the law should be considered to be January 1, 2025.  Microsoft is in the process of determining the scope of our potential reporting obligations under this law.  We take our sustainability commitments and disclosure obligations seriously, and should we determine that we have reporting obligations under 1305, we will promptly determine the scope of those obligations and comply with those obligations no later than January 1, 2025.

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