Microsoft will continue to buy enough renewable energy for all its needs
Microsoft has pledged to "keep buying enough renewable energy to meet all of its electricity needs" after meeting this goal for the first year. Tech giants are ramping up capital expenditures on an AI driven expansion of power hungry data centres.
Microsoft announced on Wednesday that they had met their 2025 goal of procuring 40 gigawatts through power purchase agreements, which are long-term contracts designed to help utilities bring forward new projects. Microsoft announced that 19 gigawatts of renewable energy have already been delivered to the grid. The rest will be supplied over the next 5 years, covering 26 countries.
Noelle Walsh, Microsoft's chief of cloud operations, said that the company would?maintain this 100%" at its sprawling West -Dublin campus. This is where the company built its first data center outside the United States back in 2009.
Melanie Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer at Microsoft, said that carbon-free energy, like the deal Microsoft signed with Constellation Energy in 2024 to restart a nucleus plant in Pennsylvania, will play a greater role in meeting the 100% match target up to?2030. By then, the Windows maker hopes to be carbon negative.
Microsoft announced separately that it is on track to invest $50 billion in the 'Global South' by 2030. The majority of this investment will be used to fund cloud data centres and AI.
Walsh said that a recent Irish Government move to lift a effective moratorium on "data centre grid connections" would allow Microsoft meet the "tremendous", pent-up, demand in the tech-rich nation.
Microsoft will move forward with proposals for a campus of data centres outside Dublin, once the'regulatory policy' requiring that new data centers?meet at least 80%?of?annual demand?with additional renewable energy begins to be implemented in the next month. Eoin Doherty is Microsoft’s cloud operations leader for EMEA.
In 2024, data centres will account for 22% (or more) of Ireland's electricity consumption. (Reporting and editing by Kirsty Donovan; Padraic Halpin)
(source: Reuters)
