Carbon Footprint Calculation: Microsoft UK Ltd commissioned the Carbon Trust to do a full audit to calculate its carbon footprint.  As a result plans are now in place to address the largest areas of contribution to our carbon emissions which are business travel, energy consumption, and commuting. Globally our footprint stands at 938,000 million tonnes of CO2 in 2007. We have set a global carbon reduction goal of 30% based on this per unit of revenue by 2012.

Utilising technology to avoid travel: Microsoft actively encourages the usage of Microsoft Live Meetings internally and with customers. A pilot programme was introduced in 2009 to reduce the total number of meetings which staff either travel to themselves, or ask external parties to travel to Thames Valley Park, using our Unified Communications and Live Meetings technology is now in place.  The plan is to expand this scheme and mandate a higher usage of Live Meetings throughout the business.

We have now eradicated the supply of bottled water at Microsoft’s UK Reading, Chertsey and London offices. This initiative will save 2 million litres of water, 39 barrels of oil and 610,000kgs of greenhouse gases.  We will be introducing zip taps and personalised water bottles for all staff which provides filtered water instead.

New Microsoft buildings consume greater than 20 % less energy than existing traditional buildings. For example, From energy use and heating and lighting through to the plan of the workspace itself, Building 5 at Thames Valley Park has been designed and built to be as sustainable as possible. It is intended to be the model for all new Microsoft buildings in the UK.

Proximity printing: In early 2009 Microsoft UK introduced proximity printing at offices in Cardinal Place, London and TVP Reading.  A recent survey showed that up to 12% of all pages sent to printers were not retrieved, wasting 474,000 sheets of paper or the equivalent of 63 trees per year.  The introduction of this process means that staff will need to swipe their smartcard in order to retrieve a printing job and save all that paper.

Green energy: Microsoft UK leads the world as the first subsidiary to use 100% green energy for its offices in Reading, Chertsey and Edinburgh, which is purchased from hydroelectric sources. Meeting respected environmental standards: In 2008 Microsoft began the process of implementing the ISO 14001 as its Environmental Management System. The roll out of the first phase is due to be completed in the first half of 2009 and we are hoping to achieve accreditation for our Facilities in the third quarter of the year.

Incentivising environmental commuting choices: Providing a £1,200 reduction in lease rental over the term for company cars with CO2 less than 125 g/km. All cars available on the company car pool are restricted to 220 g/km or below as well as using fuel data to identify opportunities for more fuel efficient driving. In March 2009 we held an EcoDriving workshops at TVP to help staff understand how to drive their cars in a more sustainable way.

Partnership with Equipment Refurbishers: With the Microsoft Authorised Reseller and Digital Pipeline programmes, the life of older retired computers is extended through low-cost licenses for Microsoft software, so that computers destined for the landfill can continue to be used. In the UK, by partnering with RDC, Microsoft is helping extend the life of over 4 million  PCs in this way.

Helping to Drive Environmental Improvements for Others:

Microsoft’s latest client operating system, Windows Vista® has power management capabilities such as on-by-default sleep mode. To project potential energy savings when the PC is not in use, power savings can be calculated by comparing a PC left running constantly versus a PC running 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, and otherwise using the Sleep feature in Windows Vista while the PC is not in use.  To calculate these savings, only the non-working hours, or 14 hours out of 24, are considered.

All time outside work usage therefore uses us 791.46kWh per year.  By comparison, a machine using Vista’s built-in default sleep mode for those same unused hours per day would only consume 31.52 kWh per year, a saving of gCo2 of 760.14kWh per year, or 95% savings in energy consumption per PC. Windows Vista has more than 30 new power management features and according to the Natural Resources Defense Council those features can help eliminate 3 million tons of carbon emissions annually.

For Windows XP and other Microsoft Windows operating systems, there are third party tools such as Verdiem’s  Edison™ software product, a free energy monitoring application that allows eco-conscious consumers to actively control their PC's energy consumption - and their household's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Made for the Windows operating system, Edison enhances existing PC power settings and provides a consumer-friendly interface that is easy to set up and manage.  A study by Climate Savers Computing suggests use of sleep and power management can help save more than 1000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year for every 10000 PCs .

On the server side, tests for Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2008 reveal power savings of up to 10 percent over Windows Server 2003 at comparable levels of throughput.

Resource Optimization:  Windows Vista provides centralized Group Policy management and over 35 power management settings that enables IT administrators to create and enforce power consumption policies on individual groups of PCs across an enterprise.   

Reduce the number of physical machines without sacrificing performance using Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2008 Hyper-V feature.  Microsoft’s System Center software helps IT professionals proactively manage the energy consumption and environmental footprint of their physical and virtual IT environments.  With its seamless integration to Microsoft’s operating systems, System Center optimizes resources and reduces energy consumption through; Progressive Group Policy management; Virtualization for server consolidation; Centralized reporting and control.

The Environmental Sustainability Dashboard: The Microsoft Dynamics AX Environment Module helps customers to collect and assess data about their energy use and carbon footprint. This data can help businesses become aware of their impact on the environment so they can choose to implement environmentally sustainable business policies and practices.

Microsoft is investing in more sustainable use of power in Data Centres.  Data centres are responsible for almost 3% of electricity use in the UK and this is expected to double by 2020.  Microsoft is committed to take advantage of every opportunity to reduce the impact of its operations, indeed these new data centres consume around 50% of the power of a similar sized facility built just 3 years ago.  Microsoft is one of the first vendors to have agreed to sign up to the EU’s Code of Conduct for Data Centres which aims to save over 4 million tones of CO2 over the next 6 years. 

Microsoft’s Imagine Cup is an annual student competition focusing on finding technology solutions to real world issues.  In 2008 over 150,000 students have been challenged to “Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment”

The Clinton Foundation Project Two Degrees: Microsoft has partnered with The Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) to  launch Project 2°, an Internet-based Emissions Tracker application that provides cities with a set of tools to measure greenhouse gas emissions at the local council level.

Microsoft Research in Cambridge has a Computational Ecology and Environmental Science Group which focuses on developing novel computational tools and methods to predict and mitigate changes occurring in the earth’s life support systems. They have produced a number of papers and help to predict and mitigate the rapid changes that are occurring in these systems due to human activities.