Honesty Matters: What Business Leaders Can Learn from Microsoft’s Latest Report

A Roadmap for Every Company That Has Made Climate Commitments

By Barclay Rogers, Graphyte CEO

Microsoft just did something important: it gave an honest assessment of its progress towards its 2030 goals. More than 10,000 companies have made climate commitments through the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), with many such pledges having initial target dates of 2030. Most companies’ sustainability reports are full of non-committal, corporate speak with no real assessment of progress towards the goal. Microsoft’s 2025 Environmental Sustainability Report is not that; instead, it’s a realistic assessment of progress along the carbon neutral journey and what needs to happen to reach the goal.

Microsoft has pledged to cut its emissions by half, compared to 2020, and to remove more carbon than it emits by 2030. Microsoft emitted roughly 12 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2020 and has seen its emissions grow to around 15 million in 2024, largely due to growth in artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing. Encouragingly, Microsoft has not shied away from its goals notwithstanding these challenges; instead, it has doubled down on achieving its targets acknowledging that “our journey towards being carbon negative is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Microsoft's Carbon Table

Having owned up to the challenges, Microsoft then sets out what it’s going to take to overcome them to reach its goal:

• Using carbon-free electricity

• Transforming AI data center and campus construction

• Accelerating carbon removal initiatives

• Improving operational efficiency and logistics

The most important thing is that Microsoft has been acting on these initiatives, creating a roadmap for the many other companies staring down climate commitment deadlines:

• Enroll Vendors & Suppliers: Large-scale suppliers to Microsoft are required to transition to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030. As an example, Microsoft entered into a power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy in October 2024 to re-start a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island.

• Switch to Low-Carbon Materials: Microsoft has begun using low-carbon building materials in data centers and campuses.  They started to use “mass timber” and low-carbon cement in data center construction and geothermal energy at its Puget Sound headquarters earning the distinction of the “Project of the Year” by Engineering News Record.

• Ditch Questionable Credits: Microsoft is the undisputed leader in the high-quality carbon removal market, having abandoned procurement of questionable carbon credits in 2020 to focus exclusively on high-quality carbon removals.  Microsoft began with an initial purchase of 10,000 tons from Climeworks in 2022 and have now grown their carbon removal portfolio to almost 22 million tons.

• Not Every Action Needs to be Big: Microsoft is doing things big and small to reduce carbon emissions associated with operations and logistics. For example, it uses electric vehicles and biofuels for its transport and backup electricity generators and invests in companies that are bringing low-carbon technologies to market.

Regardless of size or industry, business leaders at the helm of companies who have made climate pledges can mirror Microsoft’s transparency in reporting and its blueprint for action to meet their commitments. I sincerely hope that the other companies with climate goals follow their lead. The world is depending on it.