Microsoft confirms an increase in carbon emissions due to strong growth

Microsoft has been able to grow significantly lately and therefore reported rising profits. However, it also means that the group’s goal of operating “carbon negative” by 2030 is getting further and further away. In addition to profit, emissions also grew. Like Microsoft yesterday in one blog post explained that thanks to new efforts and increased measures to protect the environment, the company was able to reduce the company’s direct greenhouse gas emissions by about 17 percent by 2021. This was made possible because the group purchased, among other things, renewable energy sources.

Strong increase in Scope 3 emissions

However, so-called Scope 3 emissions, i.e. emissions caused by factors such as the use of the products sold by Microsoft, investment, transportation and distribution or disposal of Microsoft products, purchase of goods, or commuting of employees, increased significantly. to. In Microsoft’s case, the increase in Scope 3 emissions is largely attributed to the company’s strong growth around its cloud offering, specifically the expansion of its data center capabilities.

Another reason is said to be the general growth in sales and an increase in the sales of hardware products from Microsoft. Microsoft now wants to take measures to prevent a further sharp increase in the company’s CO2 emissions. To this end, the incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions internally must be further strengthened. In addition, the various divisions of the group will have new, specific annual targets to reduce their emissions. On the contrary, Microsoft wants to ensure that it will no longer emit greenhouse gases by 2030, at least from a purely mathematical point of view.

But as the company’s cloud services continue to grow, Microsoft is also building more and more data centers that cannot always run on renewable energy.