Microsoft plans to buy 2.5 gigawatts of solar power • The Register

With simply seven years left to realize its one hundred pc renewable power targets, Microsoft stated it will add as a lot as 2.5 gigawatts of solar energy to its operations underneath a partnership with South Korea’s Hanwha Qcells.

Microsoft has an enormous power footprint with greater than 200 workplaces and 60 cloud areas; many of those services devour tens of tens of millions of watts of energy each hour because the racks of servers churn by means of petabytes of information.

It is not uncommon for a cloud area to have 50MW or 60MW of capability. And with hotter, greater wattage CPUs and GPUs starting to hit the market, energy consumption in lots of of those services will little doubt enhance, as cloud suppliers, like Microsoft, transition to greater rack densities.

Underneath the settlement announced right this moment, Microsoft stated it will work with Qcells to engineer, procure, and assemble solar energy installations utilizing energy buy agreements. PPAs are a mechanism for firms and establishments to fund renewable or clear power manufacturing inside a area. Underneath these PPAs, clients agree to purchase the ability generated by these services or installations at a set worth over the course of a decade or two.

Microsoft has used PPAs extensively because it has labored to finish its reliance on fossil fuels and different nonrenewable power sources. Nevertheless, Microsoft’s technique for offsetting its carbon footprint has developed over the previous few years. In 2012, the Home windows titan stated it bought sufficient renewable power credit (REC) to offset the greenhouse gasoline emissions generated by its services.

However Redmond later moved away from RECs in favor of PPAs. In keeping with Microsoft, PPAs are preferable as a result of RECs cannot reliably assure the renewable power is generated on the identical grid as the place it is consumed.

As of final November, the software program big claims it has signed PPAs for greater than 10 gigawatts of renewable power capability together with 900MW of capability for services in Eire.

Whereas Microsoft’s plan to finish its reliance on non-renewable power is commendable, it is value mentioning solely a fraction of the mega-corp’s greenhouse gasoline emissions are attributable to both scope 1 or scope 2 sources. Scope 1 being emissions immediately ensuing from a company’s operations, and scope 2 being emissions an organization not directly causes by having power produced for it.

In different phrases, solely a fraction of its emissions are immediately generated by Microsoft services and automobiles, or are generated by the utilities that present energy to them.

In keeping with the company’s newest sustainability report [PDF], the overwhelming majority of Microsoft’s emissions — 13.7 million metric tons of CO2 as of 2021 — are attributable to emissions from the acquisition or sale of products and companies, the transportation of these companies, and using these merchandise over their lifetimes.

Whereas Microsoft says its main emissions fell 16.9 p.c in 2021, the enterprise’s general emissions really elevated nearly 23 p.c. In keeping with Redmond, this enhance was pushed by the expansion of its cloud companies enterprise and a progress in gross sales. So, it is secure to say the Home windows goliath has an extended approach to go to realize its objective of going carbon impartial by 2030. ®