Microsoft’s recent sustainability report, released late last week, shows how a carbon-heavy economy can weigh on an organization that wishes to be carbon light.
Since 2020, its carbon emissions are up 23.4%, mostly a results of breakneck data center buildout to support its growing cloud and AI operations. Buying enough clean electricity is definitely the simple part — it’s the facilities themselves which are laden with carbon-intensive materials and products, including steel, concrete, and computer chips.
“We reflect the challenges the world must overcome to develop and use greener concrete, steel, fuels, and chips,” a Microsoft spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. “These are the most important drivers of our Scope 3 challenges.”
Scope 3 emissions are those which are outside an organization’s direct control, including raw materials, transportation, and purchased goods and services. Emissions in Scope 3 represent nearly all of Microsoft’s carbon footprint, just over 97% for fiscal 12 months 2024, which the 2025 sustainability report covers.Â
Microsoft’s Scope 3 profile is dominated by capital goods and purchased goods and services, with the 2 contributing about three-quarters of the corporate’s total carbon emissions.
The development of information centers has been the essential driver behind Microsoft’s stubborn Scope 3 emissions. The steel utilized in the buildings comes from a supply chain that relies on blast furnaces heated by fossil fuels, and concrete utilized in the muse is the product of a chemical response that’s each powered by and a producer of carbon dioxide. Some startups are working to decarbonize each steel and cement, and Microsoft is an investor within the space, however it’ll be years before those bets can have a major impact.
Carbon emissions are embodied in the pc chips inside the info center, too. Semiconductor lithography relies on chemicals which have extremely high global warming potential. For instance, hexafluoroethane, which is used to etch features on chips, is a potent greenhouse gas, with 1 ton generating as much warming as 9,200 tons of carbon dioxide.
Even in green electricity, which is simpler to seek out, hurdles have popped up as data centers aren’t at all times built near abundant clean energy sources. Due to that, Microsoft has had a difficult time finding nearby sources of zero-carbon electricity, forcing it to depend on purchases elsewhere. “Our electricity consumption has grown faster than the grids where we operate have decarbonized,” the spokesperson said.
Overall, Microsoft’s 2024 emissions were down barely compared with 2023, suggesting that the corporate is recovering at constructing data centers with lower climate impacts. Still, it has an extended technique to go to fulfill its 2030 goal of removing more carbon pollution that it generates. By its own forecast, Microsoft can have to chop its emissions by greater than half while also significantly ramping up its carbon removal efforts.
There are signs that Microsoft is making some headway on each fronts. It has been one among the leading investors in and buyers of solar energy in recent months, and its zero-carbon electricity portfolio now stands at 34 gigawatts of capability. Plus, it has recently signed some very large deals that promise to remove tens of millions of metric tons of carbon.Â
2030 is just a couple of years away, nonetheless, and the corporate’s push into AI and cloud could also be profitable — however it’s made reaching its sustainability goals that much harder.
