After announcing our carbon neutrality commitment in May, Microsoft’s internal carbon fee—the cornerstone of our commitment to neutrality—went into effect last week with the beginning of our 2013 fiscal year.
Moving forward, every flight that a Microsoft employee takes will include a carbon fee that will offset the emissions of that flight. Each business group in over 100 countries around the world is including the carbon fee in their budgets for this fiscal year. That means that every Microsoft office, every data center and every Microsoft lab will factor the cost of carbon emissions into their budgets. We expect that our carbon chargeback model, which makes everyone at Microsoft responsible for their carbon emissions, will incent carbon reduction through efficiency measures and encourage the usage of renewable sources of energy. It’s the most important part of Microsoft’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality.
We’ll have more to say over the next few months as the carbon price changes the way we do business at Microsoft. You can learn more about our carbon neutrality commitment by reading the whitepaper we published in early May and in this infographic that illustrates our environmental footprint. In the meantime, keep watching here for more details as we share what we’re learning about bringing the principles of sustainability into Microsoft’s bottom line.