New Microsoft solar project shows climate, racial equity are

Climate crises across the country — record heat waves, wildfires and flooding — have pushed climate to the forefront of corporate agendas. At the same time, companies are being held accountable for their actions to fix systemic racism at the community level. The two goals may seem distinct, but a new Microsoft renewable energy deal demonstrates that as the ESG industry develops, the environmental and social mandates shouldn’t stay in their siloes. Environmental injustice and racial injustice have always been connected in the real world, and should be in the realm of corporate ESG as well.

Microsoft announced in mid-July a solar energy partnership with Volt Energy, a Black-owned solar energy development firm, to supply Microsoft with 250 megawatts of solar power. It’s just one small power purchase agreement in the technology giant’s pledge of using 100% renewable energy by 2025, but it stands out not only for being done with a minority-led firm, but in being structured so that a portion of the profits are used to develop renewable energy sources in underserved communities across the United States.

The deal was Microsoft’s first utility-scale solar power purchase agreement with an African American energy solar development firm.

Microsoft is already a leader in environmental initiatives from waste elimination to carbon removal, joining Big Tech peers Apple and Alphabet and more recently Amazon who are all heavily invested in climate technology, whether to power their own energy-intensive data centers or for transportation needs, as in the case of Amazon.

Microsoft’s overarching climate pledge goes one step further than most corporations though, promising to not just become carbon neutral but remove all the carbon from the environment that the company has emitted either directly, or by electrical consumption, since it was founded in 1975, by 2050.

“This is another example of them continuing to push the boundaries of what environmental leadership and leadership overall looks like for companies,” said Alison Omens, chief strategy officer at JUST Capital, ESG research specialist, which ranked Microsoft No. 1 among corporations in 2021, a position it has consistently held in the rankings. “Microsoft is doing a good job of thinking about the connection point between equity and environmental justice,” she said. “We cannot think about these things in silos.”

“They’re not in this for charity,” said Nathanael Greene, a senior renewable energy advocate at the National Resource Defense…