Microsoft's Supply Chain Is Its Main Source of Emissions
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- Author: Sebastián Rodríguez
- Full Title: Microsoft's Supply Chain Is Its Main Source of Emissions
- Category: articles
- URL: https://jbdpbt92.r.us-east-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F23745933%2Fmicrosoft-fossil-fuels-suppy-chain-emissions-climate%3Futm_source=climateActionTech%26utm_medium=email%26utm_campaign=cat-newsletter-174-2023-06-11/1/01000188cdd0a3d2-054f8b82-9205-45b8-b37e-f4e285f5b1f7-000000/lmDD8ohdsdKGgjKLpuqId-nO_5g=326
Highlights
- one of Microsoft’s electronics suppliers, a Taiwan-based company called Chicony Electronics, opened a new factory in Thailand and expanded some of its plants in China. With the upgraded facilities, its production grew. In a sort of snowball effect, it had to buy more things, hire more services, and its footprint expanded. In fact, just in new services, Chicony reported a 230 percent increase in emissions in 2021. By the end of the year, its total CO2 emissions had gone through the roof, hitting an almost 700 percent increase from the previous year. (View Highlight)
- The Verge reviewed 27 emissions inventories selected at random from Microsoft’s list of top 100 suppliers, using voluntarily submitted data from the non-profit disclosure system CDP. While some of Microsoft’s suppliers were making progress in cleaning up their carbon footprint, most had actually increased their emissions since the company announced its big climate ambitions. (View Highlight)
- Between 2020 and 2021, Microsoft’s supply chain emissions grew 15 percent to reach 12,510,000 metric tons of CO2, an amount similar to the country of Panama’s entire footprint in 2021. In 2022, those emissions continued to grow at a slower rate. (View Highlight)
- Out of the top 10 ranked consumer electronics brands, only Apple had made significant progress in cleaning up its supply chain, the report said. The company achieved this by supporting some of its suppliers in reaching 100 percent renewable energy by 2030 and adding close to 16 GW of new power across its supply chain. (View Highlight)
- Microsoft has even made some progress reducing emissions from its direct activities. The company was one of the only three big tech companies analyzed by Greenpeace —alongside Apple and Google — that managed to go 100 percent renewable in their direct operations. However, these emissions are tiny (less than 5 percent of their total footprint) when compared to their supply chain’s footprint. (View Highlight)
- Microsoft’s value chain is messy and complicated, but it can be divided into five general stages: sourcing raw materials (basically, mining), processing the minerals, turning them into component parts, assembling components and, in the last stage, Microsoft’s finished products — the laptop, tablet or gaming console you directly buy. Then, emissions calculations also take into account the energy you consume when using those products up until their disposal. (View Highlight)
- Other large suppliers also said the pandemic led to a rise in emissions. Intel, the world’s second-largest chipmaker, reported an 11 percent emissions increase in 2021 from the previous year, mainly due to getting more sales. In a reply to The Verge, the company said emissions from its direct operations decreased 4 percent the following year, in part due to using a larger amount of renewables to power its plants. (View Highlight)
- To address its direct emissions, the company has purchased more than 13 GW of low-carbon energy and has also made a significant gamble on carbon removal. Microsoft already removes about 1.4 million metric tons of its CO2 emissions through carbon offsets. But its long-term ambitions are about five times greater, aiming to remove more than 5 million metric tons by 2030 — which is more carbon than all the CO2 absorbed by Costa Rica’s forests every year. (View Highlight)
- Most big tech companies have a similarly complex chain, but some have found effective ways to help suppliers decarbonize, Wu said. Apple, for example, created incentives for suppliers with 100 percent renewable energy targets and has mobilized more than 200 of them to use clean energy for their products. Still, the company’s code of conduct does not explicitly require them to reach 100 percent renewable energy. Microsoft has built new renewable energy into several countries’ national grids but does not have a similar program of incentives with suppliers. (View Highlight)