Microsoft Recognized by EPA as Leading Green Power Purchaser

This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a list of the Top 50 Green Power Partnership organizations, listing Microsoft as the third largest purchaser of green power. The EPA evaluates organizations voluntarily using clean, renewable electricity from resources such as solar, wind, and low-impact hydropower. As Robert Bernard, Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, details in his environmental sustainability blog post, ‘Microsoft earned this recognition by purchasing more than 1.1 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power annually. This is enough green power to meet 46 percent of Microsoft’s electricity use and is the annual equivalent to taking more than 150,000 passenger vehicles off the road’.

As Microsoft continues to invest in and explore opportunities for renewable power and greater efficiencies across our infrastructure, our data center will play a large role. As I noted in my recent blog post, the
necessity for clean, renewable, reliable, and low cost power will increase exponentially in the near future. This has led us to look at how we can power the cloud infrastructure off the grid through the integration
of power plants and data centers.   

As we continue to make strides towards the Disappearance of the Data Center and reducing our carbon footprint, we are pleased to be honored by the EPA for our work in this area and look forward to reporting on future advances.

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//cb