14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has decided to leave the US lobbying group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) because of recent claims that the organization might oppose the development of renewable energy.
The company confirms in a statement that it has decided to leave the conservative public-policy lobbying group, explaining that it’s no longer contributing in any way to their activities.
Microsoft is not the only company that left ALEC this year, as American car manufacturer General Motors, Procter & Gamble, and Coca-Cola did the same thing pretty much because of the same dispute over renewables.
Bill Gates himself has been one of the supporters of the organization, but he decided to drop his financial contributions in 2012.
“In 2014 Microsoft decided to no longer participate in the American Legislative Exchange Council's Communications and Technology Task Force, which had been our only previous involvement with ALEC. With this decision, we no longer contribute any dues to ALEC...we are no longer members of ALEC and do not provide the organization with financial support of any kind,” Microsoft says.
As CNET reports, environmental agency Greenpeace has confirmed Microsoft’s retirement and praised the company for backing and investing in green energy.
“Microsoft deserves praise for living up to its sustainability values by ending its membership in ALEC, an organization which has attacked clean energy and climate policies in nearly all 50 states,” Greenpeace senior IT policy analyst Gary Cook is quoted as saying. “Microsoft has demonstrated a commitment in recent years to clean energy and climate action by introducing an internal carbon fee and purchasing large amounts of wind energy to power two of its data centers.”
Microsoft is aggressively pushing for green energy and the company is now investing in making its data centers more environmentally-friendly with new technology.
It’s a well-known fact that Microsoft is working to make its data centers greener and invest in renewable energy at every single office building.
In 2012, for example, the company debuted a new green energy program to make all its operations, including data centers, software development labs, and even office buildings, go carbon neutral.
Last year, Microsoft announced that it wanted to purchase the power produced by RES America’s 110 megawatt Keechi wind turbines in order to power its data center in San Antonio. The company signed a deal to receive all the power generated by the 55 turbines over a period of 20 years, just to make sure that its local data center stayed green, although it admitted that additional power may still be needed.