Tag: Sustainability

With the catastrophic effects of climate change knocking at the world’s door, urgent action is needed. Countries and industries are coming together to create economic models that aim to address today’s challenges while providing more sustainable opportunities for growth.

For years Norway’s government has been especially involved in analyzing and investing in forward-thinking technologies and initiatives, not just to address climate problems now, but to envision new industries for the future.

One such project, a 3-year-old partnership called Northern Lights, is a joint effort of the Norwegian government and energy firms Equinor, Shell and Total, each of which has deep roots working with Microsoft. The partnership is seeking to standardize and scale carbon capture and storage, or CCS, across Europe.

CCS has great potential to reduce carbon output, particularly in industries where cutting emissions is more difficult to achieve, and recently the Norwegian government announced an investment proposal in Northern Lights. On Wednesday, Microsoft signed an agreement to explore how it can join the project as a technology partner.

Together, the group will explore how to integrate Microsoft’s digital expertise and work to find ways to invest in the effective development of the project. Microsoft will also look into the of use Northern Lights’ CO2 transport and storage facility as part of its own portfolio of carbon capture, transportation and storage projects.

“This is a challenge that no one government or corporation can solve alone,” says Lucas Joppa, chief environmental officer for Microsoft. “We all need to do more, and those of us who can move faster should. We’re excited by the potential of new approaches like the Northern Lights project. Together with our partners we can work to scale the transportation and storage of captured carbon to help achieve the business needs of a net zero carbon future.”

A permanent storage solution for CO2

Northern Lights has been developing a business model that chains together technologies developed for the energy industry across decades, using them in new ways to provide for the effective transportation, receipt and permanent storage of CO2 in a reservoir in Norway’s North Sea.

According to Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president of Equinor, the idea is to facilitate the capture and transport of CO2 from industrial emissions, and store it safely without releasing it into the atmosphere. Upon capture, the carbon is liquified and shipped to a Northern Lights facility near Bergen, where it’s pumped 2,600 meters below the sea floor into the pores of a saline aquifer .

“After 40 to 50 years of offshore drilling, instead of taking something out, we are pushing it back down into the earth,” Rummelhoff says. “This project is proving that we can repurpose oil technology in the area of carbon storage in sub-sea reservoirs.”

The plant can initially process up to 1.5 million tons of liquid CO2 each year, and more than 100 million tons over time. The Northern Lights storage facility has gone from an industrial-scale proof of concept to a mature technology, and recently the Norwegian government announced its proposal to invest 16.8 billion Norwegian Krones (1.55 billion Euros) into realizing the Longship CCS value chain, of which Northern Lights is the transport and storage part.

Adding Microsoft brings a technology partner with a global footprint to complement the energy expertise and resources of the other partners. Microsoft’s role is to explore providing a foundation of technology to innovate on, and to work to find ways to help the group further develop the project.

Bringing an ecosystem of innovation to the challenge

In January 2020, Microsoft made a pledge to become carbon negative by 2030 and to remove from the environment all of the carbon it has emitted directly and through electricity consumption since the company was founded by 2050. But company leaders acknowledged that to achieve those goals, they must bet on technologies that have not yet been developed or that are not yet deployed at scale.

Microsoft’s intent is to work with Northern Lights to create a new business ecosystem around carbon management. The company will explore how a software platform based on open-source principles could help foster the technology and business innovation needed to make CCS a reality at an unprecedented scale.

Microsoft can also implement technology in the storage facility itself, using insights and analytics to unlock innovation and blueprint those solutions for use elsewhere in the world. Microsoft’s vast global partner network can be tapped to offer specialized solutions and expertise to fill in the gaps.

“To achieve a net zero carbon future, companies need to be able to transport and store their captured carbon,” Joppa says. “We hope to enable a large-scale value chain and a transport and storage network where there aren’t yet large-scale carbon storage practices in place.”

Exploring the potential of a new industry

Joppa says that joining the project is a win-win situation that reflects Microsoft’s values while serving the common interests of people and countries worldwide. At this initial stage, Microsoft is evaluating what its investment in the initiative might look like, in terms of contributing resources, people, brainpower, research, technology or a combination of all.

“It will take an extraordinary effort to achieve a net zero carbon future,” he says. “We’re going to have to create technologies that don’t exist today at the scale we need them today. We want to explore how we can connect this carbon chain digitally, and we hope to use the Northern Lights project to help reach our own sustainability goals too. We don’t have all the answers at this point, but that is something that we are agreeing to explore together.”

For the world to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change, a huge transformation is required for the business value chain itself.

Top photo: The northern lights over Norway’s Lofoten islands. (Photo by Nutexzles/Getty Images)

Solar panels being installed on the roofs of dozens of schools throughout Dublin, Ireland, reflect a novel front in the fight against global climate change, according to a senior software engineer and a sustainability lead at Microsoft.

The technology company partnered with SSE Airtricity, Ireland’s largest provider of 100% green energy and a part of FTSE listed SSE Group, to install and manage the internet-connected solar panels, which are connected via Azure IoT to Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform.

The software tools aggregate and analyze real-time data on energy generated by the solar panels, demonstrating a mechanism for Microsoft and other corporations to achieve sustainability goals and reduce the carbon footprint of the electric power grid.

“We need to decarbonize the global economy to avoid catastrophic climate change,” said Conor Kelly, the software engineer who is leading the distributed solar energy project for Microsoft Azure IoT. “The first thing we can do, and the easiest thing we can do, is focus on electricity.”

Microsoft’s $1.1 million contribution to the project builds on the company’s ongoing investment in renewable energy technologies to offset carbon emissions from the operation of its datacenters.

A typical approach to power datacenters with renewable energy is for companies such as Microsoft to sign so-called power purchase agreements with energy companies. The agreements provide financial guarantees needed to build industrial-scale wind and solar farms and connections to the power grid.

The new project demonstrates the feasibility of agreements to install solar panels on rooftops distributed across towns with existing grid connections and use internet of things, or IoT, technologies to aggregate the accumulated energy production for carbon offset accounting.

“It utilizes existing assets that are sitting there unmonetized, which are roofs of buildings that absorb sunlight all day,” Kelly said.

New business model

The project is also a proof-of-concept, or blueprint, for how energy providers can adapt as the falling price of solar panels enables distributed electric power generation throughout the existing electric power grid.

Traditionally, suppliers purchase power from central power plants and industrial-scale wind and solar farms and sell it to consumers on the distribution grid. Now, energy providers like SSE Airtricity provide renewable energy solutions that allow end consumers to generate power, from sustainable sources, using the existing grid connection on their premises.

“The more forward-thinking energy providers that we are working with, like SSE Airtricity, identify this as an opportunity and industry changing shift in how energy will be generated and consumed,” Kelly noted.

The opportunity comes in the ability to finance the installation of solar panels and batteries at homes, schools, businesses and other buildings throughout a community and leverage IoT technology to efficiently perform a range of services from energy trading to carbon offset accounting.

Kelly and his team with Azure IoT are working with SSE Airtricity to develop the tools and machine learning models necessary to unlock this opportunity.

“Instead of having utility scale solar farms located outside of cities, you could have a solar farm at the distribution level, spread across a number of locations,” said Fergal Ahern, a business energy solutions manager and renewable energy expert with SSE Airtricity.

For the distributed power purchase agreement, SSE Airtricity uses Azure IoT to aggregate the generation of all the solar panels installed across 27 schools around the provinces of Leinster, Munster and Connacht and run it through a machine learning model to determine the carbon emissions that the solar panels avoid.

The schools use the electricity generated by the solar panels, which reduces their utility bills; Microsoft receives the renewable energy credits for the generated electricity, which the company applies to its carbon neutrality commitments.

The panels are expected to produce enough energy annually to power the equivalent of 68 Irish homes for a year and abate more than 2.1 million kilograms, which is equivalent to 4.6 million pounds, of carbon dioxide emissions over the 15 years of the agreement, according to Kelly.

“This is additional renewable energy that wouldn’t have otherwise happened,” he said. “Every little bit counts when it comes to meeting our sustainability targets and combatting climate change.”

Every little bit counts

Victory Luke, a 16 year old student at Collinstown Park Community College in Dublin, has lived by the “every little bit counts” mantra since she participated in a “Generation Green” sustainability workshop in 2019 organized by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SSE Airtricity and Microsoft.

The workshop was part of an education program surrounding the installation of solar panels and batteries at her school along with a retrofit of the lighting system with LEDs. Digital screens show the school’s energy use in real time, allowing students to see the impact of the energy efficiency upgrades.

Luke said the workshop captured her interest on climate change issues. She started reading more about sustainability and environmental conservation and agreed to share her newfound knowledge with the younger students at her school.

“I was going around and talking to them about energy efficiency, sharing tips and tricks like if you are going to boil a kettle, only boil as much water as you need, not too much,” she explained.

That June, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland invited her to give a speech at the Global Conference on Energy Efficiency in Dublin, which was organized by the International Energy Agency, an organization that works with governments and industry to shape sustainable energy policy.

“It kind of felt surreal because I honestly felt like I wasn’t adequate enough to be speaking about these things,” she said, noting that the conference attendees included government ministers, CEOs and energy experts from around the world.

At the time, she added, the global climate strike movement and its youth leaders were making international headlines, which made her advocacy at school feel even smaller. “Then I kind of realized that it is those smaller things that make the big difference,” she said.

SSE Airtricity and Microsoft plan to replicate the educational program that inspired Luke and her classmates at dozens of the schools around Ireland that are participating in the project.

“When you’ve got solar at a school and you can physically point at the installation and a screen that monitors the power being generated, it brings sustainability into daily school life,” Ahern said.

Proof of concept for policymakers

The project’s education campaign extends to renewable energy policymakers, Kelly noted. He explained that renewable energy credits – a market incentive for corporations to support renewable energy projects – are currently unavailable for distributed power purchase agreements.

For this project, Microsoft will receive genuine renewable energy credits from a wind farm that SSE Airtricity also operates, he added.

“And,” he said, “we are hoping to use this project as an example of what regulation should look like, to say, ‘You need to award renewable energy credits to distributed generation because they would allow corporates to scale-up this type of project.’”

For her part, Luke supports steps by multinational corporations such as Microsoft to invest in renewable energy projects that address global climate change.

“It is a good thing to see,” she said. “Once one person does something, other people are going to follow.”

Top image: SSE Airtricity employees Derek Conty, left, Francie Byrne, middle, and Ryan Doran, right, install solar panels on the roof of Kinsale Community School in Kinsale, Ireland. The installation is part of a project with Microsoft to demonstrate the feasibility of distributed power purchase agreements. Photo by Naoise Culhane.

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John Roach writes about Microsoft research and innovation. Follow him on Twitter.

On our journey to become carbon negative by 2030, Microsoft is continually innovating and advancing the efficiency and sustainability of our cloud infrastructure, with a commitment to use 100 percent renewable energy in all of our datacenters and facilities by 2025. Today, we are taking a significant step toward that goal, revealing plans for our newest sustainable datacenter region in Arizona, which will become our West US 3 region.

Companies are not only digitally transforming their operations and products to become more sustainable—they’re also choosing partners with shared goals and values. In developing the new West US 3 region, we have water conservation and replenishment firmly in mind. Today, Microsoft announced an ambitious commitment to be water positive for our direct operations by 2030. We’re tackling our water consumption two ways: reducing our consumption and replenishing water in the regions we operate. Since we announced our plans to invest in solar energy in Arizona to build more sustainable datacenters last year, we have been working with the communities of El Mirage and Goodyear on water conservation, education and sustainability projects to support local priorities and needs.

Sustainable design delivering the full Microsoft cloud for global scale, security and reliability

Our datacenter design and operations will contribute to the sustainability of our Arizona facilities. In Arizona, we’re pursuing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification, which will help conserve additional resources including energy and water, generate less waste and support human health. We’re also committed to zero waste-certified operations for this new region, which means a minimum of 90 percent of waste will be diverted away from landfills through reduction, reuse and recycling efforts.

The new datacenter region will deliver enterprise-grade cloud services, all built on a foundation of trust:

• Microsoft Azure, an ever-expanding set of cloud services that offers computing, networking, databases, analytics, AI and IoT services.
• Microsoft 365, the world’s productivity cloud that delivers best-of-breed productivity apps integrated through cloud services and delivered as part of an open platform for business processes.
• Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, the next generation of intelligent business applications that enable organizations to grow, evolve and transform to meet the needs of customers and capture new opportunities.
• Compliance, security and privacy, Microsoft offers more than 90 certifications and spends $1 billion every year on cybersecurity to address security at every layer of the cloud.

To support customer needs for high-availability and resiliency in their applications, the new region will also include Availability Zones, which are unique physical locations of datacenters with independent power, network, and cooling for additional tolerance to datacenter failures.

Our construction partner Nox Innovations is helping build these sustainable datacenters with the help of Microsoft HoloLens 2, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Microsoft mixed reality partner solution VisualLive, to visualize building information modeling (BIM) data in the form of holograms and overlay the 3D assets in the context of the physical environment. VisualLive’s solution is powered by Azure Spatial Anchors, a new Azure mixed reality service that maps, persists and restores 3D experiences in the real-world, VisualLive’s solution. The hands-free and remote work environment enabled by HoloLens 2 and cloud services enables virtual collaboration that has led to greater efficiency, safety and accuracy.

Delivering renewable solar energy and replenishing water in Arizona

Our commitment in Arizona includes a sustainable datacenter design and operations as well as several local initiatives to support water conservation. First, Microsoft is collaborating with First Solar, an Arizona-headquartered global leader in solar energy, on their Sun Streams 2 photovoltaic (PV) solar power plant, which will offset the day one energy usage of the new campus, available in 2021, with solar energy once the facility is operational. Clean solar PV energy displaces the water needed in the traditional electricity generation process. First Solar’s lowest carbon solar PV technology does not require water to generate electricity and is ideally suited to meet the growing energy and water needs of arid, water-limited regions. By displacing conventional grid electricity in Arizona, First Solar’s Sun Streams 2 Project is expected to save 356 million liters of water annually.

Microsoft’s Arizona datacenters will use zero water for cooling for more than half the year, leveraging a method called adiabatic cooling, which uses outside air instead of water for cooling when temperatures are below 85 degrees Fahrenheit. When temperatures are above 85 degrees, an evaporative cooling system is used, which is similar to “swamp coolers” in residential homes. This system is highly efficient, using less electricity and a fraction of water used by other water-based cooling systems, such as cooling towers.

For the last year, we have also been investing in water conservation to have a longer-lasting impact on replenishing water in Arizona to sustain water levels in Lake Mead, with the goal of supporting the state to meet its Drought Contingency Plan Commitments. Microsoft’s investment in this project has also generated a one-to-one cash match from the Water Funder Initiative that will support the state’s efforts and further expand project impact. The project will benefit the Colorado River Indian Tribes, ultimately resulting in more water in Lake Mead and more efficient water infrastructure.

Lastly, Microsoft and Gila River Water Storage, LLC are recharging and replenishing groundwater levels in the Phoenix Active Management Area with long term storage credits dedicated to the cities of Goodyear and El Mirage to balance a portion of Microsoft’s future water use, contributing an estimated additional 610,000 cubic meters. Microsoft is also collaborating with The Nature Conservancy to support water conservation in the Verde River Basin, installing a new pipe in the leakiest part of the Eureka Ditch to increase resilience for local farmers.

Supporting local growth, opportunities in Arizona

Through our Datacenter Community Development initiative, we are actively engaged in El Mirage, Goodyear, and across Arizona to advance community priorities in education, workforce development and further community connection. These investments in local projects total more than $800,000 and employee volunteer time as well as community partnerships to clean up the Gila River, provide WiFi connectivity for 1,000 students across the Navajo Nation and support the expansion of Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) to serve 1,500+ middle school and high students across Arizona. In addition, Microsoft is collaborating with two Maricopa Community Colleges, including Estrella Mountain Community College in Avondale and Glendale Community College in Glendale, to develop workforce training that prepares workers for jobs in the IT sector, including work in Microsoft datacenters.

The new datacenter region and related work is expected to create over 100 permanent jobs across a variety of functions, including mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and datacenter technicians, when the facilities are fully operational, and more than 1,000 construction jobs over the initial building phases. Once the datacenters are operating, they’re expected to have an annual economic impact of approximately $20 million across communities in Arizona.

Water is essential to life. We depend on it for our survival. The basic need has shaped how human societies have advanced over time. Explorers from pre-Columbian times and the age of antiquity to NASA have lived by the motto “follow the water” as they have sought and continue to seek to discover new opportunities for the expansion of human civilization.

While water is plentiful – covering 70% of the Earth’s surface – 97% of this water is saline, located in our oceans, and not fit to drink or use for crops. The world’s fresh water is not equally distributed or accessible and is found disproportionately in places where people do not live. And as human civilization has expanded, we have reached the point globally where humanity depletes the available freshwater supply at a rate of 4.3 trillion cubic meters every year – the majority of which goes to agricultural and industrial uses.

This needs to change. That’s why we’re announcing an ambitious commitment for Microsoft to be water positive for our direct operations by 2030. We’re tackling our water consumption in two ways: reducing our water use intensity – or the water we use per megawatt of energy used for our operations – and replenishing water in the water- stressed regions we operate. This means that by 2030 Microsoft will replenish more water than it consumes on a global basis.

As with our other environmental commitments, we hope these steps will help contribute to a growing movement to address the world’s sustainability needs.

More momentum is clearly needed. Today, according to United Nations Water, more than two billion people lack access to safe drinking water. And climate change is only intensifying this water shortage. The U.N. estimates that one in four people may live in a country affected by chronic shortages of freshwater by 2050. According to the World Bank, this climate-induced reduction in freshwater availability, coupled with increased demand, could reduce water availability in cities by more than 66% by 2050.

Getting ahead of the world’s water crisis will require a reduction in the amount of water humans use to operate economies and societies, as well as a concerted effort to ensure there is sufficient water in the places it is needed most. This will require a transformation in the way we manage our water systems and a concerted effort for all organizations to account for and balance their water use. As a global technology company Microsoft is prepared to act on both accounts, taking responsibility for our own water use and partnering on technology platforms to help others do the same.

Over the past year we have committed Microsoft to becoming a carbon negative, zero waste company that is building a new planetary computing platform to transform the way we monitor, model, and ultimately manage Earth’s natural systems. Our pledge today to become water positive by 2030 adds a fourth pillar to this work. And as in our other areas, we’re committed not only to setting ambitious goals for ourselves but using technology to better help our customers to do the same.

Water positive by 2030

By 2030 we will be water positive, meaning we will replenish more water than we use. We’ll do this by putting back more water in stressed basins than our global water consumption across all basins. The amount returned will be determined by how much water we use and how stressed the basin is.

Our replenishment strategy will include investments in projects such as wetland restoration and the removal of impervious surfaces like asphalt, which will help replenish water back into the basins that need it most. We will focus our replenishment efforts on roughly 40 highly stressed basins where we have operations. This reflects a science-based assessment of the world’s water basins. The majority of the world’s freshwater is divided into 16,396 basins, each of which has been assigned a “baseline water stress” score by the World Resources Institute (WRI), a leading nonprofit global research organization that focuses on natural resources. A basin is considered “highly stressed” if the amount of water withdrawn exceeds 40% of the renewable supply. Globally there are 4,717 basins that fall into this category.

All of this work will build on our ongoing investments, and advances water reduction and replenishment across our operations. This includes a sustainability design standard across Microsoft that requires water conservation at all locations globally. These include:

• Our new Silicon Valley campus, opening later this year in California, features an on-site rainwater collection system and waste treatment plant to ensure 100% of the site’s non-potable water comes from onsite recycled sources. An integrated water management system will manage and reuse rainwater and wastewater. By recycling our water, the campus will save an estimated 4.3 million gallons of potable water each year.
• Nearly halfway around the world, our new Herzliya, Israel campus features water-efficient plumbing fixtures that drive up water conservation by 35%. In addition, 100% of water collected from air conditioners will be used to water plants on-site.
• In India, our newest building on our Hyderabad campus will support 100% treatment and reuse of wastewater on-site for landscaping, flushing, and cooling tower makeup.
• At our headquarters redevelopment in Puget Sound, all new office buildings will reuse harvested rainwater in flush fixtures and low-flow systems, which is projected to save more than 5.8 million gallons annually.
• At our new datacenter region in Arizona, available for use in 2021, we are innovating ways to reduce our water use intensity and replenish water in this highly stressed region. We will use zero water for cooling for more than half the year, leveraging a method called adiabatic cooling, which uses outside air instead of water for cooling when temperatures are below 85 degrees Fahrenheit. When temperatures are above 85 degrees, an evaporative cooling system is used, acting like a “swamp cooler” that you find in residential homes. This system is highly efficient, using less electricity and up to 90% less water than other water-based cooling systems, such as cooling towers. We are also partnering with First Solar to provide solar energy rather than traditional electricity generation, which is expected to save more than 350 million liters of water annually.

Our reduction in water use intensity and our replenishment commitments address the key issue of water availability, which is the amount of water that can be used to meet demand. That, however, is only part of the challenge. Equally important is the issue of accessibility, which is the supply of safe drinking water and sanitation. That is why we are partnering with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to ensure more than 1.5 million people have access to clean drinking and sanitation water. We’ll focus this work in seven countries. We’ll start by partnering with Water.org, a leading global nonprofit focused on underserved communities, to help people in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Mexico. We’ll then expand this work with partners in China, Malaysia and South Africa.

Digitizing water data

We will also use our technology to better understand where water stress is emerging and optimize water replenishment investments across a region. Through our AI for Earth program we are supporting projects in each of these areas:

• Vector Center works with governments and companies around the world to better understand the impact of water availability and accessibility. One of the challenges it addresses is water risk and scarcity in urban communities where data is still often analog, printed and stored in stacks. It is digitizing data and has developed a platform called the Perception Reality Engine on Azure to collect, correlate and analyze data and produce an overall picture of what’s actually happening in real time, to better see how to forestall the threat of when water may not be available. It also can provide a historic view of water in a particular area. The Perception Reality Engine uses data on rainfall, surface water amounts, plant growth and more to map water availability around the world and flag where crises are occurring or may soon occur. It also overlays this information with news sources and social media to determine where the public perception is different than reality so governance, education and behavior changes can be made before water runs out in a region.
• The Freshwater Trust, a nonprofit that protects and restores freshwater ecosystems, and Upstream Tech, a company that develops technological solutions for water conservation, worked together to develop a tool called the BasinScout Platform. It uses satellite data, data about crop growth and farming practices, and applies machine learning to assess field-level agricultural practices and their impact on water resources at scale, including scenarios about how to be more water- and cost-efficient. This helps conserve and protect the water basins that are main sources of the public’s water supply.
• Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability is a California nonprofit focused on land use and transportation in underserved communities. It is working to address the challenge of drinking water availability in California’s Central Valley. About 1.5 million people in the region rely on private domestic wells for drinking water, and many of these wells often fail during drought or due to groundwater management issues. The Leadership Counsel is using AI to predict domestic well failure resulting from groundwater changes and resulting drinking water shortages. They’re providing that information to local agencies that can use this information to prevent well failure and improve water resource management and planning.

Climate Innovation Fund investment: Emerald Technology Ventures

Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund is investing $10 million in the Emerald Technology Ventures’ $100 million Global Impact Fund, whose investors also include Temasek, Ecolab and SKion. The fund will partner with early- to expansion-stage companies from around the world, driving innovation and its adoption in water technologies. It will focus on pressing challenges, including conserving water resources, improving water efficiency and quality, avoiding carbon emissions in water treatment, and adapting to climate change. This fund is one of the few funds solely focused on water strategy.

This is the third investment the Climate Innovation Fund has made in one of company’s four sustainability focus areas. The first was focused on carbon and the second on waste.

Empowering our customers

Microsoft is also developing solutions to help customers understand water-related risks due to climate change; use data to reduce water use and make smarter decisions about water; and, improve water quality and conservation. Technologies like IoT and AI are playing a critical role in improving water quality and water efficiency. For example, the Azure IoT Central government app templates includes remote, real-time water quality monitoring and water consumption monitoring, geared toward reducing water consumption.

• Ecolab, a leading global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies and services, is a Microsoft customer and a partner that is using data and technology to help its customers be more water efficient and use less water across their operations. The data Ecolab collects from more than 42,000 connected smart water sensors around the world is used to make informed recommendations to improve processes and reduce water consumption. It leads to a “virtuous cycle” of less water, better results and much lower operating costs. Using Microsoft technologies like Azure, Azure Machine Learning, Power BI and more, Ecolab is accelerating net zero water usage around the world in sectors including energy, agriculture, food and beverage, manufacturing and hospitality.

• Schneider Electric (SE) provides energy and automation digital solutions for efficiency and sustainability; combining world-leading energy technologies, real-time automation, software and services into integration solutions. They have recently co-innovated solutions on Azure to improve water and wastewater management along the water cycle through smart water technology and services for optimized water and waste operations, water and energy, safety and enterprise sustainability. This includes recent work to help restore the water quality of the Bogotá River with the expansion of the Salitre II wastewater treatment plant. Working with the Bogotá Colombia Water treatment plant, the largest in Colombia and under execution by Aqualia, new digital technologies are making the plant more efficient. The Bogotá River is polluted, and this is threatening the environment and health of the 8 million inhabitants of Bogota. The wastewater treatment plant is an important part of the remediation efforts.
• Grundfos is a global water technology company headquartered out of Bjerringbro, Denmark. They pioneer solutions to the world’s water and climate challenges improve quality of life for people. Grundfos utilizes Microsoft to support their business’ transformation in digital and water solutions with the expected outcomes of improving customer satisfaction, increasing innovation and operational excellence. Two ambitious water goals are to provide safely managed drinking water to 300 million people in need and save 50 billion cubic meters of consumable freshwater by 2030, which is why a lot of innovation is going on. To provide water also means to reduce the amount of energy needed to heat our cities – enter the Grundfos iGRID system built on Azure. Azure services, such as the IoT Hub, are utilized by iGRID to optimize heat distribution in cities to save energy. Grundfos can reduce heat losses by 20%, which means iGRID on Azure will be reducing the energy usage in our cities, improving the longevity of our existing networks and lowering the costs to the everyday citizen.
• Seequent is a New Zealand-based Microsoft customer and partner. They rely on Azure to drive their geospatial and geoscience work, including important work to address water quality and quantity with the Water Replenishment District (WRD), the largest groundwater agency in the state of California. WRD’s service area covers a 420-square-mile region of southern Los Angeles County and accounts for approximately half of the region’s water supply. The WRD is using Seequent’s Leapfrog Works to create 3D models of the local water basins, creating better understanding of groundwater flow and identifying contamination. These models are helping WRD maintain their Water Independence Now Program, which has made the region sustainable using local resources including advanced treated recycled water to replenish groundwater supplies.

Water Resilience Coalition

We understand that no one company or organization can solve the world’s water crisis. The private sector also has a significant opportunity to have a positive impact on water availability and accessibility: 150 of the world’s biggest companies have the potential to influence one-third of global freshwater use. Launched earlier this year, the Water Resilience Coalition is an initiative of the United Nations Global Compact CEO Water Mandate. Founded by seven companies, including Microsoft, the coalition has since grown to 16 industry-leading corporations, all of whom have pledged to work collectively on water issues. We are working together to identify priority basins for collective action and to set targets for improving conditions in those basins. As part of our water goals, we will partner with Water Resilience Coalition members to co-invest in availability, accessibility and quality projects in water-stressed basins and we will actively recruit other companies to join us in this important coalition.

Policy

Governments also play a fundamental role in ensuring the availability of safe, clean drinking water, maintaining and expanding water infrastructure, protecting critical water ecosystems, and responding to water crises. We will use our voice at the local, national and global levels on public policy that would increase water access and availability and improve quality.

Improving Data in Water Stressed Areas:  We can’t solve a problem that we don’t fully understand.  Governments ought to develop more accurate and up-to-date assessment of ground and surface water levels and how they are changing over time. This data can help local stakeholders calculate and forecast demand and supply balances; track water quality; facilitate disaster prevention and early warning systems; and ultimately develop innovative solutions. We are encouraged to see the EU’s plans to create a Common European Green Deal data space, as part of the European Strategy for Data, that aims to harness the potential of environmental data to help achieve the EU’s ambitious climate objectives. To support such efforts, Microsoft will work with partners to deploy tools that provide better hydrologic data that enable enhanced water management.

Upgrading Water Infrastructure: We need governments to invest in upgrading and expanding water infrastructure. This is critical to provide safe drinking water, treat storm and wastewater, manage water levels, and protect against climate impacts, particularly in the most vulnerable communities. These investments can also provide much needed job creation. National governments should look for opportunities to integrate water infrastructure into COVID-19 recovery packages and foster innovative solutions. We applaud the EU for including water-related green infrastructure in the InvestEU Programme as well as recent bipartisan effort by the U.S. Congress to consider reauthorization of critical water infrastructure funding.  We will encourage national governments to prioritize these critical investments in the months and years ahead.

Integrating water into climate strategies: Water is the primary means through which climate change will be experienced. As such, we need government to address climate and water challenges in a more integrated way. One way to do this is through the long-term goals that countries set as part of their national climate plans or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) under the Paris climate agreements. As national governments work to update their 2030 climate plans, in advance of COP26, the annual UN climate conference, in 2021, they should include an explicit water-related target in their climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

To help advance these policy efforts, we will join WaterEurope to promote smart water solutions and will encourage our other trade associations and advocacy partners in the U.S. and EU to play a more active role in advocating these policies.

Enlisting our employees

As we have with each of our previous sustainability commitments, we will enlist our employees by inviting them to participate in volunteer opportunities associated with the replenishment projects we will be investing in. Our employees have volunteered with NGOs we’re partnering with on water replenishment projects, including  the restoration of Lake Sembakkam in Chennai, India; restoration of Crow Creek in Cheyenne, Wyoming; and, habitat restoration along the Red River in Fargo, North Dakota. In regions without active replenishment projects, we will provide information about volunteer opportunities with nonprofits working on water projects in their communities.

While our commitments focus on fresh water  we recognize the need to protect the world’s oceans, which generate more than 50% of the world’s oxygen, absorb half the carbon produced and account for 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. Oceans also are critical to our globally economy and food security, with more than 100 million households dependent on the fisheries for their livelihoods, and 3 billion dependent on seafood as their primary protein.

Protecting the world’s oceans

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that by 2030 the value of the ocean economy could exceed $3 trillion and more than 40 million jobs. To realize this potential economic impact, the private and public sectors and civil society must work together to reverse declining ocean biodiversity resulting from climate change, pollution and overexploitation. That requires good data, governance and policies, and technological innovations like smart sensors, autonomous robots, data analytics and AI to better monitor, model and manage oceans.

That’s why we’re joining the World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network for ocean innovation and technology in Norway (C4IR Ocean). It’s dedicated to using data, technology and governance frameworks to protect the world’s oceans and increase the sustainability of ocean-based industries.

Unlike roads, oceans have not been adequately mapped, so we are not making informed decisions. We’re one of the organizations working with C4IR Ocean on its Ocean Data Platform. This global, open-source platform gives data scientists, app developers and marine spatial planners access to data coming from historic and real-time data sources to develop solutions to improve ocean health.

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Our mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. We believe that the purpose of business – and our responsibility – is to produce profitable solutions to the problems of people and planet. That’s why we’re working every day with our customers, partners, NGOs and others around the world to address the climate crisis. What’s good for the planet is ultimately good for Microsoft.

Tags: Brad Smith, sustainability, water

Today, Microsoft is joining Allianz, Amazon and S&P Global in announcing plans to launch the Climate Finance Foundation, a new initiative led by the Linux Foundation to build the OS-Climate Platform. This initiative leverages open-source analytics and open data to empower the investment community, as well as NGOs, academia and others, to help better model companies’ exposure to climate change. Microsoft is committing to sharing its significant and relevant sustainability data to advance the financial modeling and understanding of climate change impact.

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century. Microsoft is investing heavily to address this challenge. In January, we announced a new sustainability strategy focusing on carbon, water, waste and biodiversity. We have made one of the boldest climate commitments of any company: Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030 and will remove all the carbon we have emitted since our founding by 2050. In addition, through the AI for Earth initiative, we are leveraging the power of Azure to help solve global environment challenges. In April, as part of our focus on biodiversity, we committed to an ambitious program to aggregate environmental data from around the world and put it to work in a planetary computer platform. With today’s commitment and our own data contribution to the Climate Finance Foundation, we seek to help build a global and open Data Commons of sustainability data.

The ability to access high-quality and transparent data about corporate sustainability will be critical to enable the broader community to build accurate and reliable financial models about the impact of climate change. As highlighted by the Linux Foundation, this will require the efforts and the data of many to succeed and we hope additional community stakeholders will join.

In April, we launched an Open Data Campaign to work to close the “data divide” and ensure that every organization can benefit from AI and the data economy. As part of the campaign, we committed to participating in open data collaborations to tackle the major challenges of our time. While a lot remains to be done, we are excited to take a step towards this objective. We will also work to ensure that the outcomes of the collaboration stay open, usable and empowering, in alignment with Microsoft’s Data Collaboration Principles.

Tags: AI for Earth, climate change, Open Data, Open Data Campaign

Every year, more than 11 billion tons of waste are produced worldwide according to the United Nations Environment Programme. A byproduct of our daily lives and every sector of the world’s economies, the trash we discard pollutes our land, clogs our waterways, depletes our natural resources and contaminates the very air we breathe. We recognize the urgent need to protect the world’s ecosystems and reduce the carbon emissions that come from the creation, distribution and disposal of waste. That’s why we’re announcing today our goal to achieve zero waste for Microsoft’s direct operations, products and packaging by 2030.

Our zero waste goal is the third sprint in Microsoft’s broad environmental sustainability initiative launched earlier this year focusing on carbon, water, ecosystems and waste. We are setting ambitious goals for each and empowering our customers with the technology and our learnings to do the same.

To address our own waste creation, Microsoft will reduce nearly as much waste as we generate while reusing, repurposing or recycling our solid, compost, electronics, construction and demolition, and hazardous wastes. We’ll do this by building first-of-their-kind Microsoft Circular Centers to reuse and repurpose servers and hardware in our datacenters. We’ll also eliminate single-use plastics in our packaging and use technology to improve our waste accounting. We will make new investments in Closed Loop Partners’ funds. And finally, we’ll enlist our own employees to reduce their own waste footprints.

By 2030, we will divert at least 90 percent of the solid waste headed to landfills and incineration from our campuses and datacenters, manufacture 100 percent recyclable Surface devices, use 100 percent recyclable packaging (in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, countries), and achieve, at a minimum, 75 percent diversion of construction and demolition waste for all projects. This work builds on our ongoing waste reduction efforts that started in 2008 which resulted in the zero waste certifications of our Puget Sound Campus and our datacenters in Boydton, Virginia and Dublin, Ireland.

Microsoft Circular Centers

To meet the growing demand for our cloud services, our datacenter footprint – and the 3 million servers and related hardware that power it – must expand. Today, these servers have an average lifespan of five years and contribute to the world’s growing e-waste problem. To reduce this waste, we plan to repurpose and recycle these devices through new Microsoft Circular Centers, which will be located first on our new major datacenter campuses or regions, and eventually added to existing ones.

Using machine learning, we will process servers and hardware that are being decommissioned onsite. We’ll sort the pieces that can be reused and repurposed by us, our customers, or sold. We will use our learnings about reuse, disassembly, reassembly and recycling with design and supply chain teams to help improve the sustainability of future generations of equipment. Microsoft Circular Centers build on our earlier circular cloud initiatives to extend the lifecycle of our servers and minimize the waste sent to landfills.

In Amsterdam, our Microsoft Circular Center pilot reduced downtime at the datacenter and increased the availability of server and network parts for our own reuse and buy-back by our suppliers. It also reduced the cost of transporting and shipping servers and hardware to processing facilities, which lowered carbon emissions. We expect the Microsoft Circular Centers to increase the reuse of our servers and components by up to 90 percent by 2025.

Eliminating single-use plastics in packaging

Approximately 300 million metric tons of plastic are produced ever year, 50 percent of which is used one time. And, half of this plastic waste comes from packaging. The scale of this problem and its impact on our oceans, waterways and land requires bold action, which is why we are eliminating single-use plastics from our packaging by 2025. This includes plastic film, primary product packaging and our IT asset packaging in our datacenters.

Improving waste data

Today, there is no consistent, high-quality data about the amount of waste, the type and quality, where it is generated and where it goes. In addition, data differs considerably depending on the waste category. For example, data about hazardous waste and electronics is well accounted for and tracked due to regulations and robust management systems for both. However, data about construction and demolition waste does not have consistent measurements or reporting. Waste data needs a standardized methodology, better transparency and higher quality. Without more accurate data, it’s nearly impossible to understand the impact of operational decisions, what goals to set, and how to assess progress, as well as an industry standard for waste footprint methodology.

Since we can’t solve a problem that we don’t fully understand, we are investing to digitize waste data across the company to identify opportunities to improve waste data collection. This digital solutions for our operations will include technology to track and report on dashboard waste, Power BI platforms for e-waste chain-of-custody, and improving Microsoft Power Apps which helps us capture real-time waste data. As we gain clarity and confidence in our broader waste footprint we will include more precise waste data in our public reporting.

Climate Innovation Fund investment: Closed Loop Partners

We’re investing $30 million in Closed Loop Partners’ funds to help accelerate the infrastructure, innovation and business models for supply chain digitization, e-waste collection, food waste reduction, and recycling industry products to build a more circular economy at scale. Closed Loop Partners is a pioneering investor in circular economy innovation with a track record of working with corporate partners to pilot new solutions. In addition to benefiting from the technologies that are being developed, we plan to use learnings from our partnership to inform Microsoft’s circular economy initiatives in our devices and cloud value chains, specifically packaging, e-waste and waste diversion from landfills.

Empowering our customers

We will share our learning from our own zero waste journey with our customers, who are already using our technology to better understand, measure and reduce their own waste footprint. In 2019, Microsoft partnered with H&M, Target, PVH Corp. and others to explore the need and to formulate a suggestion of global standard powered by Azure called Circular ID. This platform tracks a garment in an effort to create a more sustainable fashion economy by reusing clothing through rental, resale or recycle, rather than being destroyed.

Dutch nonprofit Madaster Foundation is also using digital identities to eliminate waste. Madaster’s platform tags materials with an identity, so they can be recycled, resold and reused, driving more sustainable construction decisions. Vancouver-based SPUD, an online organic food delivery company, built a logistics platform on Microsoft Dynamics 365 that uses AI to lower food waste. In one year, SPUD diverted 265,971 kilograms of waste from the landfill, preventing 444 tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere, and saved 3,564,275 liters of water.

Of course, recycling and reusing materials to divert them from landfills is key to reducing waste. Colchester Borough Council in the U.K. provide services to 192,500 residents, from licensing to recycling. The council is moving function-specific systems to Dynamics 365, unifying its data across intelligent business applications. The recycling tracking system provides reporting via Microsoft Power BI, showing data like heatmaps of problem spots for collections or where residents need more encouragement to recycle.

Enlisting our employees

Our employees play an important role in our company’s waste footprint. As we did with our carbon and ecosystems announcement, we are inviting our employees to participate in our waste reduction efforts. To show employees the impact of their actions and how much waste they generate, we are developing an internal Power BI waste data dashboard. This will be available starting with employees based at the Puget Sound campus and expand to campuses around the world. The dashboard will display the average waste generated per employee and can be used to test effectiveness of waste reduction campaigns, implementation of a waste prevention initiatives and more.

In addition, we will launch our first waste reduction challenge, a month-long, online challenge connecting individual action to collective impact later this year. Our employees will have the opportunity to learn how they can participate in Microsoft’s corporate waste program and commit to taking impactful action in their daily lives. The challenge will focus on actions employees can take at home during the global health crisis. These challenges will incorporate themes of waste prevention, material reuse, circular economy and waste equity. We will also create more opportunities for our employees to become actively involved, both in company-wide activities, like our annual weeklong hackathon that will include a call for proposals on waste reduction.

Our collective challenge

No one person or organization can solve the global waste problem. It will take all of us doing our part, including using better data to understand the problem and make smart waste policy decisions.

Zero waste is an ambitious goal, but minimizing our own waste footprint is essential to preserving  the natural resources and reducing waste-associated carbon emissions to ensure our economies and societies around the world thrive for generations to come.

Tags: Brad Smith, Environment, sustainability, zero waste

Dan Morris, AI for Earth program director, says the most important result from the hackathon was that AI for Earth taught The Ocean Cleanup a lot about machine learning. “The real value was teaching them through interaction with data scientists and engineers at Microsoft,” he says.

This year, The Ocean Cleanup was named an AI for Earth grantee for its work.

“Using the AI for Earth grant, we’ve been able to set up and run the machine learning models,” De Vries says. “Having the resources at our fingertips has greatly accelerated the technical progress, by taking away practical concerns and letting us focus on the development.

“It allowed us to develop the vision that this is something we can do, not just for one river, but eventually for rivers across the globe.”

The Ocean Cleanup is highly admired, particularly in the Netherlands, where the organization has been a symbol of pride for years, even before they became more well-known internationally, says Harry van Geijn, a digital adviser for Microsoft in the Netherlands. Van Geijn is among the Microsoft staffers there who have volunteered to help The Ocean Cleanup when it comes to computer and related support.

While its staff is relatively small with around 100 employees, “they have this cause that they pursue with great tenacity and in an extremely professional way,” van Geijn says. So much so that “When I ask around for someone at Microsoft Netherlands to do something for The Ocean Cleanup, half the company raises their hand to say, ‘I want to volunteer for that.’”

Wilkinson, who grew up in the hot, dry climate of the Arizona desert, spent time at sea as a volunteer for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a nonprofit, marine wildlife conservation organization.

In 2018 at Microsoft, he and another coworker started an employee group, Microsoft’s Worldwide Sustainability Community, which has grown to more than 3,000 members globally. The group focuses on ways employees can help the company be more environmentally sustainable. Wilkinson now is a community program manager for the Worldwide Communities Program, which includes the employee group he co-founded.

Wilkinson sees the issue of plastics in the ocean as a pretty solvable problem and is excited about the work that has been done, the work that he spurred with an email.

“I’m not a scientist, but it doesn’t take a lot of science to understand that our fate on the land is very much tied to the ocean,” he says. “The ocean is the planet’s life support system. Without a healthy ocean, we don’t stand a chance either.”

Top image: Some of the plastic and trash picked up onto the conveyor belt of The Ocean Cleanup’s Interceptor 002 on the Klang River in Malaysia. Photo credit: The Ocean Cleanup.