One year on from Microsoft's carbon negative pledge

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https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22254483/microsoft-climate-change-pledge-update-carbon-dioxide-removal

One year after pledging to remove all of its historic and future planet-heating emissions within a few decades, Microsoft says it has already slashed its carbon footprint by 6 percent. It’s an incremental change that’s in line with what’s needed globally to address the climate crisis, but there is a whole lot of work left for Microsoft to do.

Now, we’re beginning to get a glimpse of what’s actually feasible for Microsoft to achieve.

What it actually means..

When companies set goals to become carbon neutral, or carbon negative in Microsoft’s case, the company isn’t saying it will stop pumping out greenhouse gases altogether. What it will do is cancel out some portion of its greenhouse gases by paying other companies and nonprofit organizations to trap and store carbon dioxide. The tricky part of these corporate sustainability pledges is that it’s not usually clear how much carbon dioxide the company plans to cut altogether versus how much it will continue to pollute and then pay to remove from the atmosphere.

Read more: Microsoft made a giant climate pledge one year ago — here’s where it’s at now