Microsoft Commits to New Climate Goals: 100/100/0 by 2030

Tech giant Microsoft has announced new goals: by 2030, the company will have 100% of its electricity consumption, 100% of the time, matched by zero carbon energy purchases.

Advertisment

The new commitment expands the scope of Microsoft’s existing aims to execute power purchase agreements equivalent to 100% of its energy needs by 2025.

“At Microsoft we have a long-term vision that we refer to as 100/100/0 – that on all the world’s grids, 100 percent of electrons, 100 percent of the time, are generated from zero carbon sources,” said Lucas Joppa, Microsoft Chief Environmental Officer, in a company blog post, adding “While we can’t control how our energy is made, we can influence the way that we purchase our energy.”

Over the last 12 months, Microsoft has signed new purchase agreements for approximately 5.8 GW of renewable energy across 10 countries. This includes over 35 individual deals, including over 15 in Europe, bringing the company’s operating and contracted renewable energy projects to 7.8 GW globally.

Advertisment

But in addition to the volume of zero carbon energy procured, where, when, and from whom the purchase is made is also essential to decarbonize the grid, believes the company. Moving forward, to rebalance the carbon intensity of any grid on which the company operates, Microsoft will match purchasing of zero carbon energy with consumption on an hourly basis on the same grid systems into which the company is already connected.

The new commitment build upon the work Microsoft already has underway:

• Temporal matching: In November 2020, Microsoft announced the availability of the first commercial 24/7 hourly energy-matching solution, with partner Vattenfall, to monitor energy use and zero carbon energy matching for Swedish data centers. The company has also initiated a new 24/7 pilot in the Netherlands with energy provider Eneco and FlexiDAO, a technology supplier, which will match one of Microsoft’s Amsterdam data center’s hourly energy consumption with Dutch offshore wind farm Borssele. Microsoft will be a flagship customer of FlexiDAO’s 24/7 solution, which will enable Eneco customers including Microsoft to have access to FlexiDAO’s 24/7 renewable energy-matching tools at scale.
• Spatial matching: Enabling more granular measurement with data called Locational Marginal Emissions (LMEs), which considers the condition of the power grid at the time and location that the clean energy was produced. Microsoft partnered with REsurety to create an LME tool on Azure that calculates the decarbonization impact of renewable energy supply with greater accuracy.
• Purchasing partnerships: Microsoft has executed over 35 power purchase agreements across the globe with energy partners, including Volt Energy, BP, Invenergy, AEP Energy and Shell.

Microsoft has also pointed towards its investments for the future​. Through its $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund, the company has made the following direct investments:

• NCX, formerly SilviaTerra, to help fund the creation of the largest forest carbon project by acreage in the continental United States and help make carbon market participation more accessible to landowners of all sizes.
• Twelve, formerly Opus12, to help scale the reduction of emissions from supply chains and essential products across a range of industries. across a range of industries.
• Rheaply, to fund the development of carbon-related Rheaply feature updates to help companies measure carbon emissions savings from reuse and fuel the circular economy.

Microsoft's efforts come at a time when corporate purchases of renewable energy are hitting record highs every year. With many tech firms like Google even becoming virtual investors in renewable energy in cases.