Microsoft

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Climate Pledges

In 2017, Microsoft pledged to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement[1] and reduce operational carbon emissions 75% (from a 2013 baseline) by 2030.[2]

Oil Industry Collaboration

Microsoft is working overtime to close deals with the world’s biggest oil companies to help them boost fossil fuel production using the latest information technology. For example, in February 2019 Microsoft and Exxon Mobil announced that they are partnering in the “largest-ever oil and gas” deal to use cloud computing, which the corporations say will boost production up to 50,000 barrels of oil per day by 2025.[5] This is despite the company's pledge to build a "clean and responsible cloud."[3]

Earlier, in October 2017, Chevron signed a seven-year deal with Microsoft in October worth hundreds of millions of dollars, using cloud computing to capture, store, and analyze terabytes of data for everything from underwater oil exploration to refineries.[4] Chevron plans to use the cloud to do everything from finding more oil to predicting needed maintenance on equipment to keep extraction operations running smoothly. The oil company is in the process of selling some of its data centers to Microsoft and plans to move the majority of its data and applications to the company. "This is happening, and it’s happening fast,” said Bill Braun, Chevron's Chief Information Officer.

In 2018, Equinor, the company formerly known as Statoil, announced last month it had signed a cloud contract with Microsoft for its operations worth hundreds of millions of dollars.[5][6] Despite joint marketing of their partnership around carbon capture and storage,[7] Equinor's profits are primarily driven by oil and gas,[8], and the company is still seeking new oil & gas drilling licenses in 2022.[9]

Climate Denial

Along with Google, Microsoft sponsored a conference in 2019 featuring climate denial groups.[10]