Microsoft Announces New 100/100/0 Commitment By 2030

(Credit: Vattenfall)

Microsoft has announced that by 2030 the company will have 100% of its electricity consumption, 100% of the time, matched by zero carbon energy purchases. The move extends Microsoft’s existing commitment to execute power purchase agreements equivalent to 100% of its energy needs by 2025.

Over the last 12 months, Microsoft has signed new purchase agreements for approximately 5.8 GW of renewable energy across 10 countries. This includes over 35 individual deals, including over 15 in Europe, bringing the company’s operating and contracted renewable energy projects to 7.8 GW globally.

Moving forward, to rebalance the carbon intensity of any grid on which the company operates, Microsoft will match purchasing of zero carbon energy with consumption on an hourly basis on the same grid systems into which the company is already connected.

“At Microsoft we have a long-term vision that we refer to as 100/100/0 – that on all the world’s grids, 100 percent of electrons, 100 percent of the time, are generated from zero carbon sources,” said Lucas Joppa, Microsoft Chief Environmental Officer, in a company blog post. “While we can’t control how our energy is made, we can influence the way that we purchase our energy,” he added.

(Credit: Microsoft)

This commitment builds upon the work Microsoft already has underway:

• Temporal matching: In November 2020, Microsoft announced the availability of the first commercial 24/7 hourly energy-matching solution, with partner Vattenfall, to monitor energy use and zero carbon energy matching for Swedish data centers. The company has also initiated a new 24/7 pilot in the Netherlands with energy provider Eneco and FlexiDAO, a technology supplier, which will match one of Microsoft’s Amsterdam data center’s hourly energy consumption with Dutch offshore wind farm Borssele.
• Spatial matching: Enabling more granular measurement with data called Locational Marginal Emissions (LMEs), which considers the condition of the power grid at the time and location that the clean energy was produced. Microsoft partnered with REsurety to create an LME tool on Azure that calculates the decarbonization impact of renewable energy supply with greater accuracy.
• Purchasing partnerships: Microsoft has executed over 35 power purchase agreements across the globe with energy partners, including Volt Energy, BP, Invenergy, AEP Energy and Shell.