Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer revealed that Microsoft is nothing short of on the leading edge of "green" when it comes down to the strategy implemented to address environmental and sustainability problems. In the Q&A round of his keynote at Convergence 2008, on March 12, Ballmer stated that he considered Microsoft to be at the forefront of driving environmental initiatives, from introducing solar-powered facilities to offering bus transportation options for employees.

But Microsoft is not just "cleaning up" its own backyard. The company is also looking ahead when producing environmentally friendly products. "We're a hardware company, and we're trying to be leading edge in terms of the way we think about products like Xbox, et cetera, and their recycleability, and sustainability. We've got an amazing program that is leading to good results," Ballmer added.

Microsoft's CEO referred next to the core business of the company, its software products. Even as soon as the advent of Windows Vista, Microsoft has placed a strong focus on the power-saving capabilities of the operating system. And just as Vista is green, so is Windows Server 2008. Both products have been designed in order to decrease power consumption in comparison with their predecessors.

"We have more we can do, but it's quite strong," Ballmer said. "We are an operator of data centers, and we are being very environmentally smart about the way we build those, and where we build them. We put them near cheap, renewable power, and we build them in a way and actually measure very carefully how much total power gets lost or dissipated through the data center, and are pioneering new data center techniques for sustainability."

But in the end, Ballmer explained that it's not about initiatives set up to conserve, it's about continuing to drive innovation to resolve ecological issues. "And last, but certainly not least, in the longest of runs, the answer to most of our environmental and sustainability issues, I think, is new science. It's not just conservation. We do need new science that gives us new sources of energy that are far more environmentally sound. And we have major initiatives in our product line to continue to extend our tools to support the biological, the chemical, the physical sciences so the scientists who will really solve these problems can drive that scientific research even faster," he concluded.