Microsoft’s greenhouse gasoline air pollution elevated by roughly 25 p.c final 12 months, the corporate says in its new sustainability report launched Thursday.
The report follows related ones launched by Google and Amazon final week. Collectively, they present a troubling development of rising tech firm emissions, pushed by the worldwide race to construct out power-hungry data centers.
In a blog post saying the report, Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith and chief sustainability officer Melanie Nakagawa say that the emissions enhance is pushed “primarily by the enlargement of our datacenter infrastructure.”
A good portion of that enhance, they write, was tied to emissions from vitality the corporate bought or acquired to run its operations. Often known as Scope 2 emissions, that greenhouse gasoline air pollution accounted for 13 p.c of Microsoft’s complete.
Knowledge facilities, which use massive quantities of vitality operating synthetic intelligence chips, have pushed many massive tech firms’ net-zero targets more and more out of attain over the previous few years.
Amazon disclosed a 16 p.c enhance in its CO2 emissions in its latest sustainability report. Google said in its new sustainability report that annual greenhouse gasoline emissions rose 18 p.c final 12 months in comparison with 2024, the biggest single-year increase it’s recorded. The corporate has aggressively invested in renewable vitality, but it surely’s additionally begun including fossil fuel power for a few of its knowledge facilities.
Microsoft highlighted in its sustainability report that it had matched 100% of its electrical energy consumption with carbon-free sources. However the knowledge middle build-out is about to speed up—and a few of Microsoft’s latest investments may drive its emissions higher. Notably, the brand new report covers the 2025 fiscal 12 months, which ended final June, and has made various offers since then involving gas-powered knowledge facilities.
Final month, the corporate formally introduced a partnership with Chevron, which is constructing an influence plant to produce a future knowledge middle for the corporate in West Texas. Permits present that that energy plant may emit greater than 11.5 million tons of CO2 equal yearly, an quantity better than the complete state of Rhode Island. The corporate has additionally leased buildings on the Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas, which will likely be powered by an onsite energy plant that would emit greater than 7.8 million tons of CO2 equal annually. Microsoft has additionally signed a nonbinding letter of intent for compute at a West Virginia knowledge middle, which might be powered by off-grid gasoline that would emit more than 11 million tons of greenhouse gases.
“Microsoft’s technique consists of exploring quite a lot of choices for mitigating the emissions from its electrical energy consumption, per our sustainability ambitions,” Nakagawa says in a press release to WIRED.
Microsoft’s method to offsetting a few of its emissions through credit and different investments can also be altering. The corporate says it stopped buying unbundled renewable vitality certificates, a transfer that contributed partly to the rise in Scope 2 emissions. Utilizing a lot of these certificates have been criticized in recent years as greenwashing as a result of they don’t essentially add extra clear energy to the grid. Unbundled RECs are primarily a “paper transaction that’s bodily disconnected from real-world penalties,” says Danny Cullenward, a researcher on the College of Pennsylvania. (Cullenward can also be a visiting college member at Google however notes he was not talking on behalf of the corporate.)
“I feel it is extremely commendable that [Microsoft] is transferring away from unbundled RECs and prioritizing investments in new clear electrical energy, the place energy buy agreements and different long-term offtake agreements can and do trigger new clear electrical energy to come back on-line,” he provides.
Regardless of the rise in emissions and its continued investments in AI, Microsoft nonetheless says that it plans to develop into “carbon detrimental” by 2030. Smith and Nakagawa write that the worldwide race for AI is “growing demand for … vitality, water, land, and supplies.” They are saying that the corporate “has a accountability to assist be certain that know-how strengthens, quite than strains, the techniques and communities on which it relies upon.”
