Microsoft picks a side, aims to make the business 'carbon-negative' by 2030

Microsoft has set itself the goal of being "carbon-negative" by 2030, nailing its colours to a so-called "moonshot" for worldwide removal and reduction of carbon. By 2050, it aims to have removed all the carbon it has emitted (either directly or through electrical consumption) since 1975. "Moonshot" is an unfortunate turn of …

[Khaptain]

Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

Considering the massive fortunes earned by these companies I would consider it almost illegal for them not to be doing a huge effort in reducing emissions.

If this is in fact a true desire to reduce emissions including that which was already emitted then hats of to MS for once. It might get the ball rolling for others too..

[Version 1.0]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

Sorry but it's a marketing ploy, they are announcing this the same week that they "retire" Windows 7 and are busy telling everyone that they need to buy a new Windows 10 compatible computer ... with more memory and disk space than the old Windows 7 box.

[alain williams]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

busy telling everyone that they need to buy a new Windows 10 compatible computer

Would it not be more friendly to the environment to keep the old computer and install something like Linux Mint - which will run quite happily on a smaller machine than is needed by Windows 10?

[MyffyW]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

By that measure our home computing experience has been environmentally friendly since 2011.

[msage]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

Given that Windows 10 will run on the same spec PC as windows 7, why would you chuck it out?

[Evil3eaver]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

Drivers is the reason, and almost always the reason.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Re: Given that Windows 10 will run on the same spec PC as windows 7, why would you chuck it out?

"And the best way to experience Windows 10 is on a new PC. While it is possible to install Windows 10 on your older device, it is not recommended."

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-7-end-of-life-support-information

[ITMA]

Re: Given that Windows 10 will run on the same spec PC as windows 7, why would you chuck it out?

Hammered home by not fixing blatant bugs in things such as WOL which worked perfectly on slightly older, but none the less amply capable hardware, under Windows 7 but mysteriously doesn't work under Windows 10. Because Windows 10 insists on powering down the NIC hardware even though it is told not to.

Making said older, but perfectly serviceable hardware much harder to manage in enterprise (and also SME) environments.

Could this be because it and its cohorts in the PC hardware industry would much, much rather you scrapped all those perfectly good machines and bought new ones.

Microsoft waving its "ECO Friendly" credentials? B***S**T!#

Fix WOL and you might have a chance of being taken seriously.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Re: Because Windows 10 insists on powering down the NIC hardware

Thank you for that heads up.

I have a SME customer that has round-the-clock presence where there is the necessity to "get into" their systems by as many paths as possible, in emergency, day or night. Usually it's things like the Leccy board digging up the road, or water in the telecomms ducting that start the ball rolling. WOL is a vital tool in those endeavours.

Does not MS realize that there are companies out there that, rightly or wrongly, try to run mission-critical systems utilising their operating systems?

[ITMA]

Re: Because Windows 10 insists on powering down the NIC hardware

Oh they do know.

I just don't think they care. Neither do Dell or Intel whose NICs, such as the 82579LM used in many slightly older Dell (Optiplex) PCs. They'd much rather sell you a new PC.

Frankly selling the idea of fitting cheap PCIe NICs (upon which WOL works under Windows 10) to every machine is a far, far easy sell to my FD than new PCs. It's a no-brainer of (for us) between several hundred pounds or several tens of thousands of pounds

And allows saving costs on both energy and downtime for maintenance by keeping that maintenance to outside of business hours.

I have two Optiplex 790's which I use at home (I'm writing this on one) on both of which WOL worked perfectly under Windows 7. Now that they are on Windows 10 Pro 1909, whatever BIOS settings and power management settings in Windows are used, as soon as I shut them down the NIC goes dead. No power, hence no WOL.

The same is true of several Optiplex 7010s on the estate I manage for work which have been upgraded. Shut them down and most of the time - but not always which is a bit weird - the NIC is shutdown and again no WOL.

I even have an ancient Dell Precision 470 (dual CPU) at home which also run Windows 10 Pro perfectly well. The ONLY problem it has under Windows 10 is WOL. Even then, very occasionally it will wake up. The rest of the time, the NIC has been powered down by Windows - no link or activity lights and no WOL.

[P. Lee]

Re: Because Windows 10 insists on powering down the NIC hardware

I think its time for a new PC chassis format. We should be able to insert cards like cartridges.

[ITMA]

Re: Because Windows 10 insists on powering down the NIC hardware

Finally! Found what Microsoft have done!

https://windowsreport.com/windows-8-wake-on-lan-problem/

"Fast Start Up".... Hmmm.. Well done Microsoft! Another thing which wasn't broken so you "fix" it anyway and break something else.

Will someone from Microsoft please explain WHY you have to disable Fast Start Up to stop Windows totally powering down the NIC and breaking WOL? That is really sensible NOT....

And Microsoft wonder why Windows 10 has been something of a "hard sell".

[P. Lee]

Re: Given that Windows 10 will run on the same spec PC as windows 7, why would you chuck it out?

Worse, Intel pre gen 8 chips are not "supported" on Win10 which means businesses which need to be security compliant (e.g. for regulatory reasons) can't risk running the old systems even if they work.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

"Given that Windows 10 Linux will run on the same spec PC as windows 7, why would you chuck it out?"

fixed it for ya!

[bombastic bob]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

"busy telling everyone that they need to buy a new Windows 10 compatible computer ... with more memory and disk space than the old Windows 7 box."

And put LINUX on it! I suggest Devuan with Mate desktop.

I recently did this for a "content consumer" relative, who LOVES the Linux. $30 for 500Gb hard drive, built it in a VM, swapped it in, a few UI and settings tweeks, and all good! Computer owner took a few minutes to get used to it, and lots of "thank you" replies. It solves MANY problems, actually. [it's a Vaio from 2008-ish that came with Vista on it].

[a_yank_lurker]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

Reducing expenses which energy costs are has a direct benefit to the bottom line. For every $1 saved you gain $1. So any halfway competently run company and even many mangled ones will be looking for ways to cut costs. While I have no problem with reducing energy usage; there are many good reasons to do it, I detest the preening about.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

of COURSE it is a marketing ploy.

a) humans are NOT causing climate change. But a lot of people *FEEL* and so MS is doing a MARKETING PLOY.

b) CO2 is NOT even a greenhouse gas! A greenhouse gas is supposed to trap heat that would otherwise radiate into space (black body radiation). CO2 really _sucks_ at doing that. Look at the IR absorption spectrum, compared to temperatures actually FOUND ON THE EARTH. G'head I _DARE_ you!

c) CO2 is less than 0.04% of the atmosphere. Compare that to water vapor, a *REAL* greenhouse gas, which can be as high as 8%. Yes that's 200 times as much as CO2. And is ANYONE trying to control WATER VAPOR? Of course not! The planet is FLOODED. That'd be even MORE laughable.

d) CO2 is at biological and chemical EQUILIBRIUM. You could double, or even TRIPLE, or even MORE increase in the production rate of CO2, and the reactions and biological factors would shift to match the depletion rate at a slightly (very slightly) higher concentration.

e) CO2 is used in greenhouses to MAKE PLANTS GROW. Increasing atmospheric CO2 would do that, too. And they'd deplete it faster.

In short, this is NOTHING MORE than "pure politics" MARKETING MANIPULATION of people's FEELINGS. And it's _NAUSEATING_.

I'd be MORE impressed if they invested $1Billion in FUSION RESEARCH, something that WOULD make a difference!!!

[cambsukguy]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

Wow, this is a truly terrifying post.

[John H Woods]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

BombASTIC Bob going for the Dunning Kruger, award I see.

Loads of stupid denialist points. Easiest one to refute, off the top of my head is d) the claim that CO2 is at equilibrium. Apart from the fact the statement is meaningless, CO2 was at 330ppm when I was at school and is now, what, 410?

A surfeit of capitals does not compensate for the lack of scientific capability or knowledge.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

" CO2 was at 330ppm when I was at school and is now, what, 410?"

is the water warmer also? You have to consider several physics and chemistry factors when making your claim, otherwise the conclusions you present are "less than accurate" (read: complete B.S.)

a) warmer water cannot hold as much gas in it, and so the gas is released from water. Result: like a soda going flat when it is warm, CO2 is released from warm water. Additionally, carbonates are dissolved and converted to CO2. This causes increased measured atmospheric CO2 levels, which are due to the equilibrium state. [study chemistry, you'll understand]

b) Additionally, underwater volcanoes are a major factor in water-borne CO2 release. if you measure atmospheric CO2 near an underwater volcano over time, you'll see "elevated levels". This happened a decade or two ago, skewed atmospheric CO2 levels at a particular measurement spot off of the coast of California, due to a nearby underwater volcano, and it was somewhat quietly covered up once the truth got out... even though the people presenting this were CLAIMING it as "evidence" for man-made CO2 climate-apocalypse-doom-gloom-disaster-whatever. (and your freedom and money MUST be given away, FOR DUH PLANUTZ)

I know that the enviro-wackos behind the CO2 nonsense won't publish the truth about it. There have been at least 2 major scandals with respect to "cooking the data" to get a RESULT, rather than STUDYING the data and formulating scientific conclusions. Yeah, they were in the news, even. So I call B.S. on your claim. Not because it wasn't measured "that way", but that you're leaving out important information that does not present the ENTIRE truth.

There are those who understand chemistry, and those who don't. Those who DO understand it realize (I love saying it that way, using the left's leading question techniques against them) REALIZE that temperature alters the equilibrium constant. In 1970, the temperatures were at the bottom of a COLD cycle in the Northern Hemisphere. Not sure about Southern, they have different cycles. in any case, if the 300 ppm measurement was from, let's say, 1970, and the 410 was from, let's say, 2010-ish, you'd be measuring it at two peaks of a 70 year temperature cycle. You can expect the equilibrium levels to be different because the water temperature is different.

Those who UNDERSTAND basic chemistry REALIZE this.

[John H Woods]

Re: Truly hope this is not just a marketing ploy

The problem is not that I don't understand basic chemistry but that you don't understand that your understanding of chemistry is basic.

The only left and right that's relevant here is the the abscissa. This is a scientific issue, not a political one, and it's a simple fact that CO2 has been increasing steadily, it's not "two peaks of a 70 year cycle" you numpty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mildly depressing!

Depressing because a company that's about as digital and non 'smokestack' as they come is being lauded for promises its making in 2020. OK, if they deliver Carbon neutrality by 2030 and substantial negative emissions thereafter, that's good, but why is this commitment news? Everyone needs to be doing this if we are to have any hope of meeting targets, and that includes sectors like the vital Berlin airlift style transport of the middle classes to Newquay.

[alain williams]

Re: Mildly depressing!

Everyone does need to do it. However few will do so unless they see others doing it, so some high profile cheer leaders like Microsoft can only be a good thing - even if it is partly marketing led: eg promotion for Azure.

I am not a Microsoft fan boy but I do applaud them for this.

[msage]

Re: Mildly depressing!

Except for all the DCs they run for Azure, O365, etc... That's a pretty big smokestack

[Psmo]

Re: Mildly depressing!

I'm as cynical as most.

However, by running data centres off different power mixes the "smoke-stack" can be reduced.

Microsoft think it can be removed, and have given a list of ways they plan on attempting.

I await your White Paper with indicators to the contrary.

[Jeroen Braamhaar]

It's nice they plan to be emissions-negative of a beneficial addition to our atmosphere.

Perhaps then it'll be clear what damage they're doing ...

[Dr Scrum Master]

B... b... but what about Sahara regreening?

If we continue trying to stop global temperatures from rising, then how will we bring about re-greening of the Sahara?

It's only due to the relatively low temperatures that the trade winds blow away from the Sahara, rather than blowing warm, moist air towards the Sahara...

[Julz]

Re: B... b... but what about Sahara regreening?

I think you might also have to cut a chunk off the top off the Himalayas.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's money to be made!

In the early '80s a potential client made the comment, "There's money to be made in entertainment and energy"

At the time the internet was a tool for academics and techy nerds (Blighty only had 4 TV channels) and enregy was mainly burning stuff, with a bit nuclear to get you glowing and hydro in a few places.

Why does the great golden panda (politician! and TV reality "star") keep pushing 19th century energy ("Clean" coal) rather than going for the money (and jobs) that can be made out of new forms of energy?

[Rich 11]

Re: There's money to be made!

Why does the great golden panda (politician! and TV reality "star") keep pushing 19th century energy ("Clean" coal) rather than going for the money (and jobs) that can be made out of new forms of energy?

Because his backers make their money from fossil fuels, and anyway he's dead set on doing the opposite of anything Obama ever did.

[jelabarre59]

Moon...

Methane has also been fingered by boffins as a culprit in the whodunnit of climate change, and there is no doubt that Microsoft has spewed plenty of that of the years.

That might be the explanation for the term "Moonshot" then (as you picture the MS board of directors wiggling their butt-cheeks for the press cameras).

No word on warming through excessive corporate hot air though

That's what they will be using to generate electricity in the HQ from now on.

[Dwarf]

I call marketing bullshit

OK, so carbon negative for everything they ever made ...

So, how precisely will they calculate the amount of power they have wasted / used in areas like :

1. All their crappy code that flat lines CPU's and therefore burns power

2. The endless stream of downloaded patches that must be applied fixing all the bugs that come up. Consider all the intermediate systems between MS HQ and your PC

3. All the searching for solutions that customers have done to work around their buggy code and unexpected stability problems

4. All the machines sent to waste when the bloatware made the machines non-viable any more

5. All the wasted packaging around the products - Big plastic MS Office boxes that contained just a piece of cardboard with a licence key on it.

6. All the hot air from all the marketing speeches and trade conferences

Perhaps if they provided a bit more info on what they actually mean in terms of its scope, then this wild claim might be more believable. Now add on the claim to complete all of this in less than a decade.

Personally, I can't see how anything that consumes any power can be carbon neutral, since something had to happen to produce the power that its running on and that generally has to involve heat or chemistry.

I'm also wondering how people will feel about potato starch computer cases rather than aluminium ones

[Evil3eaver]

Re: I call marketing bullshit

Item 6 if not kept a close eye will destroy all life on this planet... 418 ppm will be more like 800ppm if we don't get a handle on them.

[bombastic bob]

Re: I call marketing bullshit

you can have CO2 concentrations as high as 2% without serious side effects. FYI.

(above that you start getting headaches, etc. and it becomes bad for animals)

I know because, when in the Navy, the sub constantly monitored air quality. The scrubbers would keep CO2 below 2%, but you needed consumable canisters to get it below 1%. Hovering between 1% and 2% was fine. And since CO2 doesn't really absorb or reflect IR energies for black body radiation [for temperatures actually found on earth] then it won't have an effect on temperature, either.

But it might rain more. And plants would grow WAY faster! And they'd deplete it all, and we'd be back to where we are now at < 0.04%. Equilibrium.

[cambsukguy]

Re: I call marketing bullshit

I am sure the extra CO2 will help put the Australian wildfires out too.

Win-Win all round, dunno what David Attenborough is worried about really.

[John H Woods]

Re: I call marketing bullshit

"And plants would grow WAY faster! And they'd deplete it all, and we'd be back to where we are now at < 0.04%. Equilibrium."

Hilarious. We're already over 0.04%, which is a 25% increase in the 40 years since I was at school. You have no idea what equilibrium is, stop using the word.

[Is AC used?]

Re: I call marketing bullshit

you can have CO2 concentrations as high as 2% without serious side effects. FYI.

-----

Except you can't in the wider world. The current level of CO2 is causing serious problems for our oceans right now. Ocean acidification is a genuine concern not just for the creatures that live there but for the one billion that rely upon it for food.

[karlkarl]

Easy

4 simple steps:

1) Turn off wasteful cloud and DRM servers and patch the software to work without them.

2) Avoid making locked down landfill devices such as WinRT, WinPhone

3) Release source and documentation on Windows 7 so older machines do not need replacing

4) Disable telemetry and anti-piracy software (Defender) to avoid excess power usage in Windows 10.

[Citizens untied]

Re: Easy

Was waiting for someone to point these things out. The claim that they could be carbon "negative" is a joke. This is the sound and fury of an establishment grasping to maintain its hold. Signifying nothing...

[ITMA]

Re: Easy

Items 3 and 4 can to an extent be mitigated by Microsoft simply fixing the WOL bug affecting many slightly older machines which have Intel or Realtek NICs (Dell Optiplex 790 and 7010 for instance).

WOL worked perfectly on these machines under Windows 7 and they are perfectly capable of and do run Windows 10 fine. Except Microsoft wants us to throw them all out and buy new hardware, or have to resort to leaving them on 24/7 so that out of hours maintenance tasks can be performed.

Simply because Microsoft don't want to fix the problem with WOL which would allow admins to do what they have done for a long time - remotely wake up machines, do the out of hours maintenance and shut them down again.

This also has security implications since not being able to wake up these machines limits one's ability to quickly deploy critical security patches out of hours and at weekends.

For many SMEs, explaining to the FD (financial director) that you have to throw out 50+ (or 500+) otherwise perfectly good PCs (which run Windows 10 fine) simply because Microsoft says you have to, goes down like the proverbial lead balloon.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Easy

Wake On LAN - a way for evil hackers (aka 'crackers') to take control of your computer while it's still plugged into the network (but otherwise 'off'). No thanks.

How about just make Windows not so INTRUSIVE with respect to "updates", get the code right the FIRST time by PROPERLY TESTING IT [instead of having end-users be the QA department], and allow PARTIAL updates rather than "We take over your machine for 4 hours so UPDATING becomes its primary function, too bad YOU wanted to do WORK or PLAY A GAME, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!"

WOL does NOT fix the inherent problems with Win-10-nic, and its constant NEED for "updates".

[I fixed that recently by upgrading an old Vista laptop to DEVUAN with MATE - and the owner is VERY happy with it!]

[ITMA]

Re: Easy

Perhaps you should leave such things as running and maintaining entire networks of PCs to us adults then...

Meanwhile perhaps you could explain to my users how they are meant to do their jobs (and our company meant to function) when the horrendously expensive CAD and optical modelling software they need is for the most part NOT available for Linux.

No, Linux just isn't a workable solution for many. The OS is just a tool to run applications. No point in having any particular OS if the apps you need don't run on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively

Killing 30,000 people (assuming first/second world countries - it increases to ~150,000 people for third world countries...) is the equivalent of planting 20 million trees.

Just an idea...

Note: based on the "average" tree soaking up 30Kg of CO2 a year and the average person in a first/second world country causing the creation of 20 tonnes of CO2/year (third world countries tend to be around 4 tonnes per person per year). YMMV. Please consider environmentally friendly methods of murder and disposal of bodies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Alternatively

Could they start with the Management idiots who thought getting rid of the original Start Menu was a Great Idea? Then, perhaps, the ones who decided that menus aren't hip anymore and everything is a Ribbon. Moving on - the group who made Cortana such a PITA, followed by the group who championed forced Windows Updates, then perhaps the bastards who designed the new Admin interface for Office365.

Yes, that's a bit harsh, but if they're TRULY about change, it should hurt a little more than just on paper.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they count the forced upgrades of all clients ...

They will be way no matter how they try to look.... I wouldn't be surprised that Microsoft alone accounts for 10% of all "anthropogenic" carbon on the planet by them self. Think how many customers have been told over the last 30 years "that feature is supported in the next version" line from some sales rep.

Think about it, how often does a Microsoft software "Upgrade" not include new hardware in the mix.... how about the whole carbon footprint calculated from the dredging of the open air mines to a finished product also including shipping of these materials at every stage of refinement and manufacturing....

They some big claims and I 100% guarantee that they will be order of magnitude off from what ever they claim. Another lie by one of the biggest liars of all time.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Just think of all that Carbon used in migrating...

Lotus 123 and WordPerfect to Excel and Word respectively.

I'm sure someone can come up with a metric for the number of times if/then/else code is executed on an average website which determines whether or not to render it in an IE compatible format. The amount of code, cost of code maintenance, speed of access, the number of visits per day where such a metric would apply.

[Sproggit]

Start with Code Efficiency

It is not without reason that certain Microsoft products have become known as, ahem, "bloatware". Whilst it's easy to point the finger their way (Clippy, anyone), one of the trends we've seen from Microsoft as they seek to justify upgrades to new products is to add "features" such as "animated toolbars" which provide zero productivity benefits, but take much more resource [disk for the code, electricity to execute] to provide the same functionality to the user.

So I'm going to applaud Microsoft for making this commitment, but they need to be very clear what the world expects from them in return. They need to remove the faff and bloat from their products.

In fairness, to Redmond, Microsoft are not the only culprits who need to get that memo.

As my works laptop gets a bit long in the tooth, it is becoming more and more useful for sniffing out bloatware: anything that wastes CPU cycles typically forces the cooling fan to kick it up a gear. Chief culprit? Google Chrome [have no choice: mandated by Corporate - we have to use it]. That software is a pile of utter garbage: slow, a ridiculous resource hog for both member and CPU... but it doesn't render pages any faster or more accurately than, say, Firefox.

So yes: well done Microsoft... keep up the good work. Oh but by good work, we mean carry on stripping out the needless bloatware and give us something that just works.

What's that you say? Someone has already done that? Splendid. Ah, right. LibreOffice on Linux Mint. Right you are.*

* Simply the best platform... and if you don't like Mint's Cinnamon or Mate desktops because they are too "resource hungry" for you, by all means just use xfce or fluxbox. Simples.