Outlines environmental sustainability goals for 2012

Mar 12, 2009 10:56 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft, through the voice of Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer, has underlined the necessity for company-wide efforts designed to reduce its impact on the environment. Rob Bernard, Microsoft chief environmental strategist, applauded Ballmer for encouraging all the Redmond company’s employees to join in on the effort to make the software giant “greener.” The environmentally friendly initiatives announced by Steve Ballmer consist of dramatically dropping Microsoft’s carbon footprint in the next three years, as well as exploring the research and development of “green” technology.

“We understand that environmental action must begin at home,” Bernard stated. “Today, Steve announced to all employees that Microsoft has set a goal to reduce its carbon emissions per unit of revenue by at least 30% compared with 2007 levels by 2012. We’ll achieve this goal by improving energy use in our buildings and operations, reducing air travel, and increasing our use of renewable energy.”

In the email sent to all employees, Ballmer indicated that the vision of environmental sustainability would require consistent, company-wide efforts. Microsoft’s CEO asked all 90,000 workers across over 100 countries worldwide to chip in, from helping reduce carbon footprints to research innovative solutions, and develop software products capable of delivering an impact on energy consumption and climate change.

“As a technology company, we believe that our footprint goals will be met by leveraging software and technology. We will work to provide advances in our building operations, we will continue to expand our use of our Unified Communications tools (just last year we saved over $90 million on travel through the increased use of our UC tools), and will look for new ways to reduce our use of resources in our data centers by continuing to push the envelope on innovation in how data centers are designed, built and operated,” Bernard added.

Still, Microsoft is looking to deliver a heavier impact on the evolution of environmental sustainability, beyond the efforts on home ground. Bernard revealed that the Redmond company remained committed to delivering software as fundamental components of increasing computing capacity while also cutting down on energy consumption.