The convergence of sustainability and technology

As a member of the vanguard in the journey toward sustainability, Microsoft believes that it must share its learnings. Further, it is a strong voice advocating for a common data model for carbon, water, and waste that will allow companies to share and aggregate their data. Any company on a sustainability journey should incorporate technology that allows cross-company learnings and data sharing.

Crafting sustainability policy and goals cannot simply focus on taking care of your own emissions as a company, but what can you do with the help of the rest of the world. Mark observed that Microsoft’s strong focus on sustainability is both idealistic and pragmatic.

The former is rooted in Microsoft’s view of itself as a world citizen, embedded in most countries of the world. In that role, the company has a responsibility both to take care of its own environmental impact and to do what it can to help other companies make progress. Pragmatically, the company recognized that if customers, suppliers, and governments are not making progress toward sustainability, over time Microsoft will not do well. The world must do well for the company to do well.

You can’t track what you can’t measure. Tracking Scope 3 emissions shines a strong spotlight on the data issues surrounding sustainability programs. These issues fall into two categories.

First is low data quality. Most data is derived from estimates from invoices and post facto spend data. Second is the distributed nature and divergent formats of the data that needs to be collected—e.g., departmental silos and offline spreadsheets—up and down the supply chain. Collecting all that data into a single location is a big challenge.

Technology is a key enabler of sustainability on several fronts. One is in the products a company sells. Product design can include sustainability targets. As an example, Mark shared that Microsoft Is trying to use software to empower customers to reduce their footprint.

Another participant shared that their CPG company is closely considering the ingredients in their food products in the context of sustainability. Another front is the IT department itself. Moving from data center to cloud can result in a significantly lower carbon footprint. The competition between Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to claim the greenest cloud is a win for their customers.

Finally, IT is the key to improving and aggregating data. Microsoft’s Cloud for Sustainability can be a valuable tool. The fundamental tenet of the platform is to have a common data model based on either your own enterprise data lake or Microsoft’s lake.

Cloud for Sustainability can take a range of data types, cleanse and conform them, and deliver everything in a common data model. Technology’s role in achieving sustainability will continue to grow as companies master today’s challenges.

Accomplishing a unified, global approach to sustainability takes agreement by all parties in a number of areas. Mark shared Microsoft’s view of what’s needed to get to agreement, defined as the 3 Ms:

• The meaning of net zero, that is a consistent global definition of what the terms means.
• Measurement of net zero, which is what Microsoft’s Cloud for Sustainability accomplishes.
• The nascent market for durable carbon removal must scale exponentially; while offsetting is essential, it alone is not enough.

The 5 Rs are a simple model that characterizes progress in a sustainability program. It can be a useful roadmap to determine what actions are needed:

• Record (data capture)
• Report (gain insights from the aggregated data and analytics)
• Reduce/Remove/Replace (take appropriate actions based on insights)

These operate in a cycle as more data is captured, further insights are gained, more actions are taken, and so on.

At the conclusion of the discussion, Mark offered this observation: Unless we can decouple emissions reductions from business growth, we'll never get there. In the case of Microsoft and hopefully many other companies, by 2030, we're going to have to reduce the carbon intensity of every electron that come and flows to our system anywhere, by 90%.

That means massive innovation everywhere, because each thing that happens, each workload at the server level, each amount of electricity anywhere, has got to be 90% more efficient. Ultimately, until we can reduce the carbon intensity of every electron by 90% and figure out how to remove, at scale, we’re not going to get there.