12 ms·

There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1]. Eg do y

There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1]. Eg do you count secondary services your employees use, like food services or emissions from their commute? Do you count partner services, like shipping providers for physical product? These, along with your direct emissions, are categorized into three "scopes" of emissions. Do you include purchased offsets against emissions, and at what rate? This is what most companies (including MS, since 2012) use to be "carbon neutral". Companies are selective about which scopes they include, and they pay for the total in offsets. The point of the blog lost is to be clear (and holier-than-thou) about MS's announced goal: to remove more carbon than they produce in all three scopes each year by 2030 ("net negative"), and to remove all the carbon Microsoft has ever produced in all three scopes from the atmosphere by 2050. Actual carbon removal, not offsets. I have not read this article so I have no idea what google is or isn't claiming here. But I learned a lot from the MS blog post so I thought I'd share. [1] https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbon-negative-by-2030/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-b...

actuator 6y ago
> emissions from their commute Isn't stuff like this kind of out of their hand unless the state itself tries to fix this.
- boogies 6y ago
  No, they choose their location, and some tech companies provide transportation. Facebook is even building their own employee housing.
  - ape4 6y ago
    Look at the Apple spaceship. It will require tons of employee driving.
  - actuator 6y ago
    Companies do provide credits towards cycling and FB does this for even tube in London, but that will be still limited based on location. Though you are right about the location bit, they should force the hand of the state by speaking with their foot, I guess fear of losing talent opportunity scares them. > Facebook even builds their own employee housing. I wasn't aware about this, where are they building these?
    - boogies 6y ago
      Menlo Park, and apparently Google’s up to something similar in San Jose: https://levels.io/facebook-city/ https://levels.io/facebook-city/
      - iagovar 6y ago
        Isn't this the definitive cultural bubble? Jesus.
      - paconbork 6y ago
        Meh, if the tech workers lived in the city it would just be "gentrification". There's no winning.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Not really, for a couple reasons: 1) They have enough money to start initiatives, even geographically dispersed initiatives, independent from the state 2) They have a history of working hand-in-glove with the city of Seattle and the state of Washington; it can be hard to distinguish "What Microsoft is trying to do" from "What Washington state is trying to do" sometimes.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Google could provide electric vehicles from zero-carbon-emission sources, if they wanted to.
  - na85 6y ago
    No such vehicle exists. All vehicles require carbon-intensive processes in their manufacturing.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Isn't that better than petrol or diesel cars?
      - Spivak 6y ago
        The short answer is yes, the long answer is "it depends on your local electricity generation but probably still yes." There are some places in the world where gas wins out because they burn coal to produce electricity but it's rare.
        Qwertious 6y ago
        'There are some places in the world where gas wins out because they burn coal to produce electricity but it's rare.' This statement always throws me - did we just make a complete context-switch from talking about car emissions to talking about gas turbines? Or is "gas" being used to refer to petrol ("gasoline")? The subject of the previous post was clearly cars, but that sentence is talking about gas and coal, better re-read the entire statement several times to double-check the context! I don't want to be rude and shit on peoples' language, but FFS I hate the shortening slang-version of "gasoline" so much. THAT WORD IS TAKEN, IT MEANS VAPOUR.
        Spivak 6y ago
        It might be a US-ism? I've never heard anyone in casual conversion call it gasoline or petrol. You would get weird looks if you called it gasoline. "You fill up your gas tank at the gas station and get a gas can just in case you get low on gas before you can hit the next station to gas up."
- dkarl 6y ago
  Companies can help a lot by locating their offices in places that enable less carbon intensive commuting, lobbying local government, supporting initiatives that promote density, and supporting local transit initiatives (example: [0]). When businesses speak up and say, local business needs workers to be able to commute without a car, our competitiveness will suffer without it and we will fall behind, that speaks to a large number of voters who don't respond to environmental appeals. [0] https://www.kxan.com/news/downtown-austin-business-leaders-say-project-connect-is-a-critical-need/ https://www.kxan.com/news/downtown-austin-business-leaders-s...
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    Or allowing work from home.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Work from home is useful, but there are real advantages to face to face conversation.
      - Qwertious 6y ago
        On the other hand, if people work from home then more people will focus on improving the "work-from-home experience" and making the business more suited for working from home.
  - syshum 6y ago
    >>supporting initiatives that promote density This is not going to help you with "speaks to a large number of voters who don't respond to environmental appeals" There is a MASSIVE over lab in people that do don't respond to (government regulation based) environmental appeals AND have no desire to live in densely populated cities. Speaking as one of those people, the idea of living in an area of high population density is a non-starter for me, my current area is about 2,000 people per square mile that that is FAR FAR too dense for me. living in Seattle or LA with a Population density of 4x time is something nightmares are made of, and NYC at about 13x that is just a total night terror....
- nend 6y ago
  Why would an employees commute be out of the hands of the employer? Companies already provide incentives to help employees with commutes: public transit benefits, wfh days, shuttle services. It seems especially obvious at the moment that companies could simply eliminate tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of commutes instantly by letting the vast majority of their employees wfh permanently (or much more frequently at least). Additionally it'd probably be pretty easy to brainstorm a dozen more less common ideas/incentives companies could start trialing: pay people to take public transit instead of just subsidizing partial costs, have more satellite offices or pay for wework type space, a welcome packet that includes an option for a bicycle and fitness trainer, additional shuttle services, long term plans such as working with the government to invest in bicycle/public transit infrastructure, etc etc
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Because I can just not use those services and take my car to work? Like large employers can dangle some pretty substantive carrots but I don't think courts would let them get away with any sticks.
    - nend 6y ago
      >Like large employers can dangle some pretty substantive carrots but I don't think courts would let them get away with any sticks. The courts already let them get away with it. There's nothing illegal about discriminating against people based on their commutes. The employer can do anything they want, up to and including termination (or refusal to hire someone in the first place). Commute discrimination already happens, here's one article detailing research on the topic: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/inner-city-job-applicants-have-an-advantage-in-d-c https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/inner-cit... Here's another article about it: https://www.boston.com/news/jobs/2018/03/26/no-offer-because-of-lengthy-commute https://www.boston.com/news/jobs/2018/03/26/no-offer-because...
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  The FAANG companies are so rich and so big that they’re now providing some of the commuting infrastructure for their employees in the form of buses. They certainly have quite a lot more control over their employees commuting impact than most companies, even if it isn’t total control.
- ohthehugemanate 6y ago
  Well, the model is not designed as a target for companies. It's designed as a way to categorize indirect emissions. It's 100% Microsoft's decision to take the broadest possible definition of their carbon footprint to target.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  Where a public transit alternative exists, employers can often create strong incentives by limiting or charging for parking and/or subsidizing public transit.
bawolff 6y ago
Even with all those caveats, its still an impressive milestone and a step in the right direction.
- soperj 6y ago
  Sure, but once you reach "zero" what's the incentive to improve now?
  - wutwutwutwut 6y ago
    If all their current customers die due to global warming their profit will be lower, regardless of who created the carbon footprint.
  - sp332 6y ago
    Offsets are better than nothing, but they're not sustainable. Low-hanging fruit will be used up at some point, and actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere is really expensive (most optimistic figure I've seen anywhere estimates $50/ton for the mid-to-long term). So the incentive is to push for actually zero emissions instead of net zero. And as sibling comment mentions, climate change is bad for business too, so that's the incentive for net-negative.
    - soperj 6y ago
      I get that, but they haven't actually arrived at zero. They've arrived at their version of zero, and thus have incentive to get to actual zero, since they're already at "zero".
      - sp332 6y ago
        Maintaining "net zero" takes a lot of work/money. It's not something you can do once. Every time you put carbon into the atmosphere, you have to go buy an offset. Over time those offsets get more expensive.
        6y ago
AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
> do you count secondary services your employees use No, you don't. If you pull the food service thread, you can go through the food wholesalers to farmers, then to John Deere, then to steel plants, then to miners, then to hard hats and eventually you'll end up in China where the game will be declared lost.
- torb-xyz 6y ago
  If you want to be realistic about your actual effect on the environment that's literally what you have to do. This is not some abstract game to be won. This making real changes in the real world. And no: when the stakes are this high, it being extremely difficult is no reason to just assume it's impossible.
- bluGill 6y ago
  It is commonly done. I work for John deere and we have a team dedicated to making sure that our products don't use conflict minerals, which if I understand correctly means mined with slave labor. I know for a fact that we have all of our suppliers traced 6 levels deep just to ensure that the whole chain is okay. We can put whatever want on the list, though we sometimes run into problems because we are too small to get any chip maker to care. (electronics are about the only thing that we are small players in, our list is in general common with the likes of GM so there is a lot of pressure potential suppliers for must stuff)
  - thu2111 6y ago
    That's not what conflict minerals means. That term means what it says: that the minerals come from a (civil) war zone where people are killing each other over the right to extract them. That extraction may well also include slavery in some places, but it's not exactly the same thing.
    - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
      While this is not exactly the same, the idea is very similar. I was very surprised to find out the corporations drill multiple levels down through the layers of contractors to promote ethical stuff. That's impressive. The credit must be given when it's due.
irrational 6y ago
> to remove all the carbon Microsoft has ever produced Does this include all carbon produced by all devices that have run MS OSes? All servers, computers, mobile devices, gaming platforms, etc.?
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  How would one even begin to track that?
  - irrational 6y ago
    I assume MS has records of how many licenses they've sold (not much they can do about pirated software). They could come up with an estimate of how long a particular OS was probably used on average and calculate how man licenses were sold times how long they were used and then convert that amount of energy use into carbon credits. It's not perfect, but probably good enough.
- ohthehugemanate 6y ago
  I Am Not A Climate Scientist, but here's the EPA's page explaining the three scopes model of emissions. https://www.epa.gov/greeningepa/greenhouse-gases-epa https://www.epa.gov/greeningepa/greenhouse-gases-epa (IMO the MS post does a better explanation but this is obviously a more reliable source) I doubt anyone counts indirect use of a general purpose tool, but hey read the link and you tell us.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
Reminds me of “I, Pencil”. Here’s Milton Friedman’s 2 minute video about it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws The sheer number of vendors google has makes it nearly impossible to be 100% carbon neutral.
- ohthehugemanate 6y ago
  If microsoft can do it, why not google? They have a vendor qualification process that includes a carbon assessment. Internal POs to the given vendor incur an extra "tax" based on the cost to remove (or offset, in Google's case) the calculated amount of carbon. Large vendors already offer the estimated carbon emissions of an order, and they certainly do when Microsoft or Google ask them to. Aside: the moral high bar MS sets here is being "net zero", which is quite different than carbon neutral.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    > If microsoft can do it, why not google? If you watch the two minute video or read the 5-page essay “I, Pencil”, you will see why. The vendors’ vendors’ vendor is not in the loop. They will not know that the raw materials they are mining in a 3rd world nation are being consumed ultimately by google.
air7 6y ago
> do you count secondary services your employees use I find this question to be a classic ridiculous slippery slope. For example: Do you count the foot print of the plane that takes employees on vacation bought using the company's salary? Or the foot print of the extra child they decided to bear thanks to the finical stability the company offers? I feel these type of claims should not be taken literally but rather as "We made a substantial dent in our footprint".
- ewidar 6y ago
  It does not need to be a slippery slope though. I would expect companies to count plane emissions when their employees go on business trips, but not on holidays. I would also expect companies to count emissions produced by their employees when they work remotely, which should be a part of the total emissions of their home. Sure, they may not be able to get an exact number, and it will be lots of estimates, but it does not mean that we should accept some approximate statement such as "We're trying our best"
  - wolco 6y ago
    If they didn't receive those high salaries they wouldn't be able to take those personal trips. The more employees the higher the multiplier. So what are we exactly offsetting.
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      But it makes no sense to attribute the personal decision of the employee into the carbon footprint. Because paying a high salary does not require that the person take airplane vacations. Some don't. And for those that do, they would have the option to pay to reverse or offset those emissions. Should the company also reduce their carbon footprint calculations since paying employees more will make then more likely to own a tesla or other electric?
      - perl4ever 6y ago
        On average though, a reasonable very rough assumption is 0.5 kg CO2 / dollar (from what I read). You could make a complex model, but simply saying money = consumption = CO2 is a straightforward starting point. A given employee might or might not fly or whatever. But statistically, the average is going to be pretty predictable, and it's not intellectually honest to pretend that because one doesn't know individual behavior, the average could be anything.
trolololooo 6y ago
Right. Just considering how Chrome uses energy on my Mac, I think they might have further to go before they are truly mitigating their own impact and reaching carbon neutral.
paul_f 6y ago
Sorry, buts carbon offsets are utter BS. Google has a 500,000 square foot office in Los Angeles. The City of Los Angeles gets 20% of its electricity from a coal plant in Utah. Power is fungible, you cannot select the source for your power if on the city's grid. Therefore, Google's electricity comes from burning coal. Seriously, you cannot just cut a deal with the building next door and say, I'll give you a bunch of cash if you claim you're using the coal power so I can claim I am using the solar power. And then pretend to be carbon free.
- the8472 6y ago
  Power may be fungible, but purchase agreements are less so. Someone has to contract with that coal plant. If nobody is buying from them they have to close. And if there's a lot of companies that want to give themselves a grain paint then there'll also be more demand for renewables than supply and more will have to be built. That is of course entirely dependent on the accounting being done correctly.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  > carbon offsets are utter BS You seem to be mixing green energy and carbon offsets. I'm not convinced that offsets are complete BS, even though a lot of bullshitting and optimistic metrics are likely involved. "Additionality" and accurate measurement are usually the big questions. I'm pretty sure many "offsets" are just getting extra money from credit-selling for measures that would be taken anyways because they make economic sense, but in theory, additionality (e.g. by pushing something that wouldn't make economic sense into economic feasibility through the added reward from selling credit) is a requirement for offsets (or at least "high-quality" offsets). Let's say you go to a third world country where people are cooking with wood on open fireplaces, and start handing out stoves that need 1/3rd of the fuel. (This is actually a real offsetting effort). You've not only improved the lives of those people, but you've also reduced the amount of wood that will be burned (and potentially forest that will be cut for it), which creates a calculable impact. At least that's the theory. The carbon savings from all of these projects are estimated, and of course everyone involved is incentivized to make the project look successful by overestimating. For example, the cookstove projects' effects are disputed: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/08/10/are-carbon-market-financed-cookstoves-really-clean/ https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/08/10/are-carbon-mark...
Viliam1234 6y ago
> I have not read this article Technically, this is also a small contribution towards reducing the carbon footprint.

actuator 6y ago

> emissions from their commute Isn't stuff like this kind of out of their hand unless the state itself tries to fix this.

boogies 6y ago
No, they choose their location, and some tech companies provide transportation. Facebook is even building their own employee housing.
- ape4 6y ago
  Look at the Apple spaceship. It will require tons of employee driving.
- actuator 6y ago
  Companies do provide credits towards cycling and FB does this for even tube in London, but that will be still limited based on location. Though you are right about the location bit, they should force the hand of the state by speaking with their foot, I guess fear of losing talent opportunity scares them. > Facebook even builds their own employee housing. I wasn't aware about this, where are they building these?
  - boogies 6y ago
    Menlo Park, and apparently Google’s up to something similar in San Jose: https://levels.io/facebook-city/ https://levels.io/facebook-city/
    - iagovar 6y ago
      Isn't this the definitive cultural bubble? Jesus.
    - paconbork 6y ago
      Meh, if the tech workers lived in the city it would just be "gentrification". There's no winning.
shadowgovt 6y ago
Not really, for a couple reasons: 1) They have enough money to start initiatives, even geographically dispersed initiatives, independent from the state 2) They have a history of working hand-in-glove with the city of Seattle and the state of Washington; it can be hard to distinguish "What Microsoft is trying to do" from "What Washington state is trying to do" sometimes.
chrisseaton 6y ago
Google could provide electric vehicles from zero-carbon-emission sources, if they wanted to.
- na85 6y ago
  No such vehicle exists. All vehicles require carbon-intensive processes in their manufacturing.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Isn't that better than petrol or diesel cars?
    - Spivak 6y ago
      The short answer is yes, the long answer is "it depends on your local electricity generation but probably still yes." There are some places in the world where gas wins out because they burn coal to produce electricity but it's rare.
      - Qwertious 6y ago
        'There are some places in the world where gas wins out because they burn coal to produce electricity but it's rare.' This statement always throws me - did we just make a complete context-switch from talking about car emissions to talking about gas turbines? Or is "gas" being used to refer to petrol ("gasoline")? The subject of the previous post was clearly cars, but that sentence is talking about gas and coal, better re-read the entire statement several times to double-check the context! I don't want to be rude and shit on peoples' language, but FFS I hate the shortening slang-version of "gasoline" so much. THAT WORD IS TAKEN, IT MEANS VAPOUR.
        Spivak 6y ago
        It might be a US-ism? I've never heard anyone in casual conversion call it gasoline or petrol. You would get weird looks if you called it gasoline. "You fill up your gas tank at the gas station and get a gas can just in case you get low on gas before you can hit the next station to gas up."
dkarl 6y ago
Companies can help a lot by locating their offices in places that enable less carbon intensive commuting, lobbying local government, supporting initiatives that promote density, and supporting local transit initiatives (example: [0]). When businesses speak up and say, local business needs workers to be able to commute without a car, our competitiveness will suffer without it and we will fall behind, that speaks to a large number of voters who don't respond to environmental appeals. [0] https://www.kxan.com/news/downtown-austin-business-leaders-say-project-connect-is-a-critical-need/ https://www.kxan.com/news/downtown-austin-business-leaders-s...
- globular-toast 6y ago
  Or allowing work from home.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Work from home is useful, but there are real advantages to face to face conversation.
    - Qwertious 6y ago
      On the other hand, if people work from home then more people will focus on improving the "work-from-home experience" and making the business more suited for working from home.
- syshum 6y ago
  >>supporting initiatives that promote density This is not going to help you with "speaks to a large number of voters who don't respond to environmental appeals" There is a MASSIVE over lab in people that do don't respond to (government regulation based) environmental appeals AND have no desire to live in densely populated cities. Speaking as one of those people, the idea of living in an area of high population density is a non-starter for me, my current area is about 2,000 people per square mile that that is FAR FAR too dense for me. living in Seattle or LA with a Population density of 4x time is something nightmares are made of, and NYC at about 13x that is just a total night terror....
nend 6y ago
Why would an employees commute be out of the hands of the employer? Companies already provide incentives to help employees with commutes: public transit benefits, wfh days, shuttle services. It seems especially obvious at the moment that companies could simply eliminate tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of commutes instantly by letting the vast majority of their employees wfh permanently (or much more frequently at least). Additionally it'd probably be pretty easy to brainstorm a dozen more less common ideas/incentives companies could start trialing: pay people to take public transit instead of just subsidizing partial costs, have more satellite offices or pay for wework type space, a welcome packet that includes an option for a bicycle and fitness trainer, additional shuttle services, long term plans such as working with the government to invest in bicycle/public transit infrastructure, etc etc
- Spivak 6y ago
  Because I can just not use those services and take my car to work? Like large employers can dangle some pretty substantive carrots but I don't think courts would let them get away with any sticks.
  - nend 6y ago
    >Like large employers can dangle some pretty substantive carrots but I don't think courts would let them get away with any sticks. The courts already let them get away with it. There's nothing illegal about discriminating against people based on their commutes. The employer can do anything they want, up to and including termination (or refusal to hire someone in the first place). Commute discrimination already happens, here's one article detailing research on the topic: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/inner-city-job-applicants-have-an-advantage-in-d-c https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/inner-cit... Here's another article about it: https://www.boston.com/news/jobs/2018/03/26/no-offer-because-of-lengthy-commute https://www.boston.com/news/jobs/2018/03/26/no-offer-because...
ashtonkem 6y ago
The FAANG companies are so rich and so big that they’re now providing some of the commuting infrastructure for their employees in the form of buses. They certainly have quite a lot more control over their employees commuting impact than most companies, even if it isn’t total control.
ohthehugemanate 6y ago
Well, the model is not designed as a target for companies. It's designed as a way to categorize indirect emissions. It's 100% Microsoft's decision to take the broadest possible definition of their carbon footprint to target.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
Where a public transit alternative exists, employers can often create strong incentives by limiting or charging for parking and/or subsidizing public transit.

bawolff 6y ago

Even with all those caveats, its still an impressive milestone and a step in the right direction.

soperj 6y ago
Sure, but once you reach "zero" what's the incentive to improve now?
- wutwutwutwut 6y ago
  If all their current customers die due to global warming their profit will be lower, regardless of who created the carbon footprint.
- sp332 6y ago
  Offsets are better than nothing, but they're not sustainable. Low-hanging fruit will be used up at some point, and actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere is really expensive (most optimistic figure I've seen anywhere estimates $50/ton for the mid-to-long term). So the incentive is to push for actually zero emissions instead of net zero. And as sibling comment mentions, climate change is bad for business too, so that's the incentive for net-negative.
  - soperj 6y ago
    I get that, but they haven't actually arrived at zero. They've arrived at their version of zero, and thus have incentive to get to actual zero, since they're already at "zero".
    - sp332 6y ago
      Maintaining "net zero" takes a lot of work/money. It's not something you can do once. Every time you put carbon into the atmosphere, you have to go buy an offset. Over time those offsets get more expensive.
      - 6y ago

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago

> do you count secondary services your employees use No, you don't. If you pull the food service thread, you can go through the food wholesalers to farmers, then to John Deere, then to steel plants, then to miners, then to hard hats and eventually you'll end up in China where the game will be declared lost.

torb-xyz 6y ago
If you want to be realistic about your actual effect on the environment that's literally what you have to do. This is not some abstract game to be won. This making real changes in the real world. And no: when the stakes are this high, it being extremely difficult is no reason to just assume it's impossible.
bluGill 6y ago
It is commonly done. I work for John deere and we have a team dedicated to making sure that our products don't use conflict minerals, which if I understand correctly means mined with slave labor. I know for a fact that we have all of our suppliers traced 6 levels deep just to ensure that the whole chain is okay. We can put whatever want on the list, though we sometimes run into problems because we are too small to get any chip maker to care. (electronics are about the only thing that we are small players in, our list is in general common with the likes of GM so there is a lot of pressure potential suppliers for must stuff)
- thu2111 6y ago
  That's not what conflict minerals means. That term means what it says: that the minerals come from a (civil) war zone where people are killing each other over the right to extract them. That extraction may well also include slavery in some places, but it's not exactly the same thing.
  - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
    While this is not exactly the same, the idea is very similar. I was very surprised to find out the corporations drill multiple levels down through the layers of contractors to promote ethical stuff. That's impressive. The credit must be given when it's due.

irrational 6y ago

> to remove all the carbon Microsoft has ever produced Does this include all carbon produced by all devices that have run MS OSes? All servers, computers, mobile devices, gaming platforms, etc.?

bobthepanda 6y ago
How would one even begin to track that?
- irrational 6y ago
  I assume MS has records of how many licenses they've sold (not much they can do about pirated software). They could come up with an estimate of how long a particular OS was probably used on average and calculate how man licenses were sold times how long they were used and then convert that amount of energy use into carbon credits. It's not perfect, but probably good enough.
ohthehugemanate 6y ago
I Am Not A Climate Scientist, but here's the EPA's page explaining the three scopes model of emissions. https://www.epa.gov/greeningepa/greenhouse-gases-epa https://www.epa.gov/greeningepa/greenhouse-gases-epa (IMO the MS post does a better explanation but this is obviously a more reliable source) I doubt anyone counts indirect use of a general purpose tool, but hey read the link and you tell us.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

Reminds me of “I, Pencil”. Here’s Milton Friedman’s 2 minute video about it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws The sheer number of vendors google has makes it nearly impossible to be 100% carbon neutral.

ohthehugemanate 6y ago
If microsoft can do it, why not google? They have a vendor qualification process that includes a carbon assessment. Internal POs to the given vendor incur an extra "tax" based on the cost to remove (or offset, in Google's case) the calculated amount of carbon. Large vendors already offer the estimated carbon emissions of an order, and they certainly do when Microsoft or Google ask them to. Aside: the moral high bar MS sets here is being "net zero", which is quite different than carbon neutral.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  > If microsoft can do it, why not google? If you watch the two minute video or read the 5-page essay “I, Pencil”, you will see why. The vendors’ vendors’ vendor is not in the loop. They will not know that the raw materials they are mining in a 3rd world nation are being consumed ultimately by google.

air7 6y ago

> do you count secondary services your employees use I find this question to be a classic ridiculous slippery slope. For example: Do you count the foot print of the plane that takes employees on vacation bought using the company's salary? Or the foot print of the extra child they decided to bear thanks to the finical stability the company offers? I feel these type of claims should not be taken literally but rather as "We made a substantial dent in our footprint".

ewidar 6y ago
It does not need to be a slippery slope though. I would expect companies to count plane emissions when their employees go on business trips, but not on holidays. I would also expect companies to count emissions produced by their employees when they work remotely, which should be a part of the total emissions of their home. Sure, they may not be able to get an exact number, and it will be lots of estimates, but it does not mean that we should accept some approximate statement such as "We're trying our best"
- wolco 6y ago
  If they didn't receive those high salaries they wouldn't be able to take those personal trips. The more employees the higher the multiplier. So what are we exactly offsetting.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    But it makes no sense to attribute the personal decision of the employee into the carbon footprint. Because paying a high salary does not require that the person take airplane vacations. Some don't. And for those that do, they would have the option to pay to reverse or offset those emissions. Should the company also reduce their carbon footprint calculations since paying employees more will make then more likely to own a tesla or other electric?
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      On average though, a reasonable very rough assumption is 0.5 kg CO2 / dollar (from what I read). You could make a complex model, but simply saying money = consumption = CO2 is a straightforward starting point. A given employee might or might not fly or whatever. But statistically, the average is going to be pretty predictable, and it's not intellectually honest to pretend that because one doesn't know individual behavior, the average could be anything.

trolololooo 6y ago

Right. Just considering how Chrome uses energy on my Mac, I think they might have further to go before they are truly mitigating their own impact and reaching carbon neutral.

paul_f 6y ago

Sorry, buts carbon offsets are utter BS. Google has a 500,000 square foot office in Los Angeles. The City of Los Angeles gets 20% of its electricity from a coal plant in Utah. Power is fungible, you cannot select the source for your power if on the city's grid. Therefore, Google's electricity comes from burning coal. Seriously, you cannot just cut a deal with the building next door and say, I'll give you a bunch of cash if you claim you're using the coal power so I can claim I am using the solar power. And then pretend to be carbon free.

the8472 6y ago
Power may be fungible, but purchase agreements are less so. Someone has to contract with that coal plant. If nobody is buying from them they have to close. And if there's a lot of companies that want to give themselves a grain paint then there'll also be more demand for renewables than supply and more will have to be built. That is of course entirely dependent on the accounting being done correctly.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
> carbon offsets are utter BS You seem to be mixing green energy and carbon offsets. I'm not convinced that offsets are complete BS, even though a lot of bullshitting and optimistic metrics are likely involved. "Additionality" and accurate measurement are usually the big questions. I'm pretty sure many "offsets" are just getting extra money from credit-selling for measures that would be taken anyways because they make economic sense, but in theory, additionality (e.g. by pushing something that wouldn't make economic sense into economic feasibility through the added reward from selling credit) is a requirement for offsets (or at least "high-quality" offsets). Let's say you go to a third world country where people are cooking with wood on open fireplaces, and start handing out stoves that need 1/3rd of the fuel. (This is actually a real offsetting effort). You've not only improved the lives of those people, but you've also reduced the amount of wood that will be burned (and potentially forest that will be cut for it), which creates a calculable impact. At least that's the theory. The carbon savings from all of these projects are estimated, and of course everyone involved is incentivized to make the project look successful by overestimating. For example, the cookstove projects' effects are disputed: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/08/10/are-carbon-market-financed-cookstoves-really-clean/ https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/08/10/are-carbon-mark...

Viliam1234 6y ago

> I have not read this article Technically, this is also a small contribution towards reducing the carbon footprint.