AS companies fall over themselves to show their climate wokeness, one giant firm isn’t greenwashing: Microsoft.

The $1.3 trillion software group has pledged to remove all carbon ever directly or indirectly produced over its lifespan, and has provided details, methods and a deadline of 2050.

This sets a new bar for rivals who say they are concerned about climate change. The only way Microsoft could easily improve this plan is by ditching its dirtiest customers.

Microsoft says it is responsible for about 16 million metric tons of carbon produced each year. About 25 per cent comes from things the company does, such as driving vehicles and using electricity. Pledging to offset or eliminate such emissions is old hat. Pledging to get rid of indirect sources for example, carbon produced when customers use electricity to run software is not, and is meaningful because that portion represents three times as much pollution.

The other way Satya Nadella’s firm is throwing shade on rivals green rhetoric is by aiming to eliminate all carbon the company has ever produced. That will involve taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Whether this nascent technology can be done at scale at commercially attractive rates is unclear.

Yet, costs of green technologies such as wind turbines, solar power and electricity storage have plummeted as research-and-development budgets and production have increased. The price of unsubsidised utility-scale solar energy has dropped about 90pc in a decade according to Lazard, and now ranks among the cheapest sources. Funding is also hardest to find when a technology is unproven, so this R&D spending could help jump-start a new industry.

Cutting emissions is a challenging goal for Amazon, which delivers about 10 billion items a year and has a massive transportation and data centre footprint

It might seem mean to ask Microsoft for more when others are doing so much less, but there is one way to go even further. Microsoft’s services enable numerous companies whose emissions put a sooty smear on attempts to keep the rising climate in check. Exxon Mobil is one. The US oil producer said last year its partnership with Microsoft was the biggest shale patch deal involving cloud computing. Now it’s also the biggest cloud over Microsoft’s noble intentions.

Big Tech and their carbon pledges: Apart from Microsoft, below is a snapshot of the promises and achievements US West Coast tech companies have made in the area:

APPLE INC: The iPhone maker last March said that it had reduced carbon emissions by 64pc since 2011, preventing 2.8 million metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.

It also said it had doubled the number of suppliers using only clean energy for production and was on track to add 4 gigawatts of renewable energy to the power used by its supply chain by 2020.

However, in October Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in a speech that the company was on track to add 6 gigawatts of renewable power with its suppliers by 2020, raising its previous goal.

In December, Apple bought the first-ever commercial batch of carbon-free aluminium from a joint venture between aluminium suppliers Alcoa Corp and Rio Tinto, to be used in Apple products.

Apple’s global facilities, including retail stores, offices and data centres across 43 countries use 100pc renewable energy, it had said in 2018.

AMAZON.COM INC: Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos has pledged to make the e-commerce giant net carbon neutral by 2040 and has said it will buy 100,000 electric delivery vans from US start-up Rivian.

Cutting emissions is a challenging goal for Amazon, which delivers about 10 billion items a year and has a massive transportation and data centre footprint.

In September, Bezos said that Amazon would use 100pc clean energy by 2030, up from 40pc.

ALPHABET INC: Alphabet Inc’s Google has vowed to neutralise carbon emissions from delivering consumer hardware by 2020 and include recycled plastic in each of its products by 2022.

The search giant said in August its transport-related carbon emissions per unit fell 40pc in 2018 compared to 2017 by relying more on ships instead of planes to move hardware from factories.

In September, the company said it reduced its greenhouse gas emission by 3.7 million tons to 750,000 tons of CO2 in 2018. The company says it has cut carbon emission by 52pc since 2011.

Google bought enough renewable energy to match 100pc of its global annual electricity use in 2017 and 2018, it said last year.

FACEBOOK INC: Facebook Inc said last year it was committed to reducing its greenhouse gas footprint by 75pc from 2017 levels next year and to using 100pc renewable energy in 2020.

A report by the social network shows that it has reduced green house gas emissions by 23pc to 339,000 metric tons in the four years since 2014.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, January 20th, 2020