MICROSOFT CANADA
PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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Q&A: MICROSOFT CANADA
PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
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First of all, can you briefly outline for our readers Microsoft’s intention to become carbon negative by 2030, to remove all the carbon emitted directly or indirectly by Microsoft by 2050, and your $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund? Microsoft is proud to have been one of the first major companies to be carbon neutral in our operations by reducing our emissions, purchasing renewable energy, and investing in carbon offsets. But as the science and technology has advanced, we realize that’s not good enough and we need to be more ambitious. Because of this, in January, Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft globally, announced that by 2030 across Microsoft’s entire business, including our supply chain, we will reduce our emissions by more than half and remove more carbon than we emit annually as a company, resulting in a carbon impact that is below net zero. Additionally, Microsoft announced the goal of removing from the environment by 2050 all the carbon Microsoft has emitted either directly or via electricity consumption since it was founded in 1975, and that we are launching a $1 billion climate innovation fund using our own capital to accelerate the development of sustainability solutions, including carbon reduction and removal technologies that will help us and the world become carbon negative. The Climate Innovation Fund will invest $1 billion of our capital over four years from the original announcement to accelerate the development of environmental sustainability solutions, including carbon reduction and removal technologies, based on the best available science.
What are your planned steps to achieve these ambitious goals, and how will you measure your progress? Microsoft is committed to achieving these goals in a number of ways, including: • In July 2020, we began expanding our current internal carbon fee to cover our scope 3 emissions, the indirect emissions of activities like the production of the goods purchased and waste. • We’re empowering suppliers and customers around the world. We will develop and deploy technology to help our suppliers and customers reduce their carbon footprints around the globe. We will also begin to make carbon reduction an explicit aspect of our procurement processes for our supply chain. • We will be an advocate for greater transparency. We will support strong industry-wide standards for transparency and reporting on carbon emissions and removal, and we will apply these ourselves in a new, annual environmental sustainability report. • We will use our voice to support new public policy initiatives to accelerate carbon reduction and removal opportunities. In 2020, we’ve already announced several initiatives as part of our commitment to sustainability, including: • Important commitments to reduce waste in our business and empower our partners and customers to do the same, including a goal to be zero waste by 2030 for our direct waste footprint; the launch of Microsoft Circular Centers at our major datacenters to process hardware onsite for reuse and repurposing; and the elimination of single-use plastics in our packaging by 2025. • Announced the launch of the Planetary Computer, a new kind of computing platform that uses AI and machine learning to make it easy for anyone in the world to search the state of the planet so they can make smart decisions about managing natural resources – so we can better understand questions around species, biodiversity, and ecosystems that are vital to our health and prosperity. SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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Q&A: MICROSOFT CANADA
• Forged innovative new alliances, like our work with Land O’Lakes, which is harnessing the power of cutting edge technologies like Microsoft Azure, edge computing, and AI to pioneer new solutions that solve for some of the most challenging issues in agriculture, helping to increase farmers’ profit potential and encourage more sustainable practices. Together, Microsoft and Land O’Lakes will not only transform the agriculture industry but help businesses evolve to work and operate in a more sustainable way. This is on top of our AI for Earth program, which awards grants to support projects that use AI to change the way people and organizations monitor, model, and manage Earth’s natural systems. How is Microsoft Canada participating in this global strategy? • Global initiatives like our zero-waste commitment and our commitment to make carbon reduction an explicit aspect of our procurement processes for our supply chain will of course apply to Microsoft Canada. • We have several Canadian AI for Earth grantees, including a PhD candidate from McGill who is using AI and machine learning to build a prototype environmental monitoring and data analysis for Smart Cities to mitigate climate change and water management, and a team from UBC that is using AI to acquire, process, and disseminate data from a network of forests in BC, then sharing this data with scientists, educators and the public in real-time to inform research and enable participatory decision making. • We are also reducing our physical footprint. We’re moving employees from our Canadian headquarters in Mississauga and our Bay St. office to two floors at CIBC Square in downtown Toronto. We’re targeting LEED Platinum certification for the new space and it’s steps away from Union Station, making it more accessible by transit. • Of course, most of our employees are working from home right now as a result of COVID-19, but it’s always been part of our DNA to empower employees to work where and when they’re most productive; for many, that means working from home some or most of the time, which reduces their individual carbon footprints. 4 | SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MAGAZINE
Why, in your view, are technology companies wellpositioned to have a significant impact on global carbon emissions? While the world will need to reach net zero, those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so. That’s why announced our ambitious goal and a new plan to reduce and ultimately remove Microsoft’s carbon footprint. We also believe that technology is a force multiplier and has the power to accelerate the amazing work of researchers, non-profits, businesses, and public sector organizations in the fight against climate change. Take the example of the Planetary Computer that we mentioned earlier: We do not know enough about species, biodiversity, and ecosystems that are vital to our health and prosperity. Simply understanding where the world’s forest, fields,
and waterways are remains a daunting task of environmental accounting. Understanding what species call those ecosystems home or why they thrive or decline is largely unknown. We simply can’t solve a problem we don’t fully understand. The world’s first such assessment was launched by the United Nations in 2000 and took nearly five years and more than 1,300 experts from around the world to complete. The more recent assessment, by the UN’s Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was designed to close the gap between simple scientific insight and more effective policy implementation, was 1,700 pages, cited more than 15,000 scientific sources, and wasn’t published until 15 years after the first. These are years that we can’t afford as our environmental challenges intensify. It is abundantly clear that the world needs greater access to environmental data to assess, diagnose, and treat the natural systems that society depends on. This is why data powered by machine learning will be a game changer. Assessing the planet’s health must become a more sustained, integrated practice that allows us to understand exactly what is happening in time to enable smart decision-making. Fortunately, there is massive potential for technology to revolutionize our environmental assessment practices, so they are faster, cheaper, and – for the first time – operate at a truly global scale.
tive focused on helping 25 million people impacted by COVID-19 gain new digital skills. As part of this initiative, Microsoft will combine existing and new resources from LinkedIn, GitHub, and Microsoft. Starting today, Microsoft will: • Provide free access to learning content • Invest in access to in-demand skills training • Offer low-cost tests that provide industryrecognized certifications • Deliver free connections to employability tools In addition to the investments noted above, Microsoft is also providing $20M in cash grants to help nonprofit organizations assist the people who need it most, including three Canadian nonprofits – NPower Canada, Canada Learning Code (CLC) in partnership with Juno College of Technology, and Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) of Canada. We also recently announced the Canada Skills Program, a collaboration with 12 colleges and universities in Canada to provide access to Microsoft Certifications in the most in-demand cloud and AI skills alongside the institutions’ credentials. c
How is Microsoft Canada also investing in and contributing to local Canadian communities? Sustainability is a huge priority for us at Microsoft, which is why we’re making local and global investments mentioned above. Another important priority for us is providing Canadians with the digital skills they need to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the innovation economy, including opportunities in sustainable tech and clean energy. In response to the global economic fallout from COVID-19, we recently announced a global skills initia-
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Microsoft Canada Mississauga, Canada www.microsoft.com/en-ca
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