Microsoft Makes Ambitious Carbon Neutral Pledge 178
Qedward writes "Chief operating officer Kevin Turner says Microsoft will be 'carbon neutral across all our direct operations including data centers, software development labs, air travel, and office buildings' from July 1, the start of the 2012 fiscal year. Turner added: 'We are hopeful that our decision will encourage other companies, large and small, to look at what they can do to address this important issue."
Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
On top of that Microsoft's founder Bill Gates has spent most of his fortune [wikipedia.org] to help the world, especially for healthcare and making the poor countries better. Even if you don't like MS products you have to have deep respect for them for this reason. Compare this to Google CEO's who spend their money on luxury yachts [dailymail.co.uk].
Re:I don't see how this is possible. (Score:4, Informative)
They use a lot of electricity. Unless Microsoft is planning to buy "carbon offset" credits, so they can pollute and yet just handwave it away.
That's exactly what they're doing. They're touting their effort to reduce their energy usage and their purchase of carbon offsets to cover the energy that they can't avoid using.
Err... Google Carbon Neutral since 2007 (Score:5, Informative)
Great that Microsoft is going carbon-neutral, that they're "hopeful that our decision will encourage other companies, large and small, to look at what they can do to address this important issue," but Google's been carbon neutral since 2007:
http://www.industryleadersmagazine.com/how-has-google-managed-to-be-a-carbon-neutral-company-since-2007/ [industryle...gazine.com]
Dell has been carbon neutral since 2008:
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/dell-reaches-carbon-neutrality-goals-5-months-ahead-of-schedule.html [treehugger.com]
If anything, Microsoft is a bit late to the party. Still, good work.
Re:I don't see how this is possible. (Score:5, Informative)
They use a lot of electricity
I don't know about all operations, but the bulk of development work, and most internal servers and such, are in Redmond, and elsewhere in Puget Sound area. Most electricity generated there comes from hydro - about 75% - and you can actually get 100% renewable sourcing for your own power bill if you're willing to pay extra to the power distribution company (they'll basically buy more kWh from "green" provides with that money, even if their prices are higher).
I'd prefer they take a pledge to be megabyte neutral, and learn to develop a new OS that doesn't use any more megabytes of RAM (or virtual ram) then Windows 7
This is essentially what the bar is for Win8 - it should run on any PC that runs Win7 today, which in practice means same or lower RAM usage. It's actually lower overall, because of all optimizations that had to be done to squeeze it onto tablets (for the ARM edition especially), which still have an effect on desktop machines.
Re:Charge less (Score:4, Informative)
I find amusing that while everybody claims to know how capitalism works, they still get wrong.
Repeat with me:
The only relationships between costs and price is that, IF MY PRICE GOES BELOW MY COSTS, I GO BROKE.
If I get a product for free, I can sell it for $1 or $1.000.000. The decission will be based in which price gives me more profits (perhaps at $1 I get so many customers that it offsets the lower prices, in the other hand it will mean that I will have bigger production/distribution costs). With many products, market share is very affected by price, but that is not universal (you only get one dose of a vaccine, no matter how cheap the second one is; no matter how expensive is it, you will a bottle of water if you are in the middle of the desert).
The theory says that if I get a big difference between price and cost (-> profit) then other bussinesmen will catch up and enter my bussiness, leading to competition and eventually lowering prices. Of course, what is not usually said is the long list of "exceptions":
*) My product is unique -let it be by its properties, by copyright or even by marketing/branding-; nobody can copy it.
*) Time to market is big: even if the other bussinesmen begin trying to catch me today, they will spend years until they get a product ready (think of designing a car, or a full new OS).
*) Investment is big: bussinesmen do not have enough capital to invest as they should in this market, if they ask for loans the interest to pay will be a significant disavantage against me. And when if they finally get to do it, I am in a good position to dump prices so they can not recoup their investments, let alone get benefits (this one works better when coupled with the previous ones, see nuclear electricity).
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:5, Informative)
So I just started working for M$ this year.
They're a big proponent of alternative commutes, so there's lots of incentive to bike to work, carpool, etc. http://www.gortrip.com/ [gortrip.com] . Everyone gets a free bus pass. (yeah, I know everyone can write off ~$120 a month in taxes for using public transit, but not every company bothers with it).
They also run a pretty generous on-demand shuttle service around their campus and surrounding facilities. (I know Google does the same, but we never hear about the M$ one.) They also have a special bus that ferrys like 12 bikes at a time across the 520 bridge, since the city busses can only 3 at a time.
Also, most of their cafeteria stuff is compostable, which leads to some hilarity because all their compostable plastic utensils melt in hot food / drinks. But it's great fun using that to demonstrate to visitors how strong the coffee is.