From just that headline, you’d think the company was boasting it had reduced its carbon emissions drastically. That’s not the case. Microsoft wrote the post in such an oblique way that it’s tough to know just what it’s claiming. Specifically, the company claimed to have met “our aim to match 100% of our annual global electricity consumption with renewable energy.”
That’s a roundabout way of describing carbon offsets — paying other companies to generate renewable energy that don’t release carbon. In that way, Microsoft can say it’s offsetting its own carbon emissions. Eventually, it claims, by using offsets it will accomplish its goal of removing more carbon from the atmosphere than it’s putting into it by 2030.
Is Microsoft greenwashing?
Critics say Microsoft’s carbon emissions are skyrocketing, and carbon offsets are little more than greenwashing. The Stand.earth Research Group, which does investigative research about climate change, warns that a single new recently announced Microsoft AI data center in West Virginia will “unleash a 44% increase in the company’s annual emissions.”
