A Study of Microsoft Corporation’s Decarbonization Efforts and Results

Abstract

In this paper, we focused on Microsoft Corporation, one of the earliest adopters of internal carbon pricing, to review the company's decarbonization efforts and analyze the status of its GHG emissions. Since adopting a carbon-neutral policy in FY 2013, the company has stepped up its efforts to decarbonize and has recently set a goal of becoming carbon-negative by 2030. As a mechanism to support these efforts, the company has been using an internal carbon fee model. This has allowed the company to fund company-wide decarbonization projects while encouraging individual divisions to decarbonize. The results of these decarbonization efforts were analyzed using the concept of decoupling. The results showed that the company achieved decoupling by increasing sales while reducing GHG emissions, while at the same time increasing the operating margin by reducing cost of sales and operating expenses. The key to the future will be reducing the company's scope 3 emissions and establishing technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.