In Microsoft’s own words on climate change, “those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so.” So why is Microsoft going backwards?
No matter how we vote, what generation we belong to, or what part of the world we live in, many of us have sweltered this summer. During one week in June, the world broke 1,400 temperature records—with 1,300 people dying in the Hajj heatwave alone. That should remind us of our shared reality: Climate issues are among our most urgent challenges worldwide.
I am a Seattle-based, 32-year-old, plant-powered mountain athlete and climate activist who resigned earlier this year from Microsoft, a company hailed by one media outlet as the best ESG company of 2023. Now, I am co-leading a campaign to advocate for effective policy, inform standards, and build a cross-industry coalition to drive change. Before you dismiss me as an idealist tech worker disconnected from our oil-dependent economy, I want you to hear the backstory.
Leaving Microsoft—over principles
I painfully quit a job I loved leading multiple global sustainability programs primarily because, after years of organizing internally to make change, I could no longer reconcile Microsoft’s strong public environmental sustainability stance with its assistance to the oil and gas industry—a partnership that was dramatically increasing global emissions. I realized that internal pressure alone wasn’t going to shift the incentives; the public and shareholders needed to know what was happening.
Corporations play a role in many of the greatest challenges of our time, and many have made strong pledges around labor and human rights, conflict minerals, or privacy. Over almost a decade at Microsoft, the challenge I devoted my career to was environmental sustainability. I was in good company, with Microsoft’s laudable sustainability commitments backed by thousands of world-class employees and programs.
Microsoft is extremely outspoken on the ethics of technology and sustainability. President Brad Smith has ardently emphasized the need to control whether technology is used ”for good or ill,” and has made strong statements on Microsoft’s role in climate change. Similarly, CEO Satya Nadella has stated to shareholders, ”As we pursue our mission, we also recognize our enormous responsibility to ensure the technology we build benefits everyone on the planet, including the planet itself.”
I’m proud that the employee group I cofounded played a part in strengthening Microsoft’s environmental pledges. But even as the tech giant promulgates the urgency to act on climate for “a shared future,” its core business activities directly contribute to the climate crisis.
The leader in ‘responsible AI’ is acting irresponsibly
As outlined in an explosive new article in the Atlantic, in truth, Microsoft’s advanced technology is enabling a substantial increase in global emissions. The company dominates as the largest cloud provider of advanced technology (e.g. AI) to the fossil fuel industry, surpassing all other vendors combined. Its digital technology is contributing to staggering fossil fuel industry profits, with companies like Chevron last year producing “more oil and natural gas than any year in the company’s history.”
Between 2018-19, Microsoft publicized explicit goals—including “expand production” with Exxon, “generate new exploration opportunities” with Chevron, and accelerate “extracted and refined” hydrocarbons with BP. In one Microsoft customer case study, Staale Gjervik, president of ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy, revealed, “Over the coming decade, we plan to drill thousands of new wells and build dozens of new facilities. It’s challenging to keep up with that pace, but with [Microsoft] Azure, we have the digital technology to help support our growth…”
In 2020, following Microsoft’s major carbon announcements and scrutiny from Greenpeace’s “Oil in the Cloud” report, the company shifted the tone of its public communications, largely omitting such references from its public-facing materials. However, inside the company, the focus on increasing extraction flourished. Over the past four years, fossil fuel companies became among the top consumers of Microsoft’s cloud and AI services—and now, generative AI has supercharged the problem.
Analyst reports suggest that advanced technologies—such as AI or machine learning (ML)—have the potential to increase fossil fuel yield by 15%, contributing to a resurgence of oil and potentially delaying the global transition to renewable energy. The real-world impacts are staggering: A single such deal between Microsoft and ExxonMobil could generate emissions that exceed Microsoft’s 2020 annual carbon removal commitments by over 600%. I saw dozens of such deals during the time I was employed at Microsoft.
Internally, discussions highlighted the most significant application of generative AI for the oil and gas industry: optimizing exploration activities. AI was celebrated as a “game changer” and the key for the fossil fuel industry to continue to be competitive.
Microsoft makes billions of dollars from helping fossil fuel companies accelerate all phases of oil and gas production. This makes their claims of facilitating the transition to a decarbonized economy and establishing AI guardrails toward a “nature-positive future” seem to me to be misleading for shareholders, employees, and customers who trust and invest in Microsoft due to its strong sustainability reputation. While Microsoft’s public statements and reports highlight the beneficial applications of AI for sustainability, they crucially omit the fact that a substantial part of Microsoft’s business is providing technology to fossil fuel companies to increase production.
Even if AI reduces emissions per barrel, its role in boosting overall production leads to a net increase in global emissions. Enhanced efficiency translates into more drilling, which undermines the transition to renewables, as the additional fossil fuels brought to market far outweigh any modest extraction-related emission cuts.
Microsoft’s dual approach—promoting sustainability publicly while aiding fossil fuel expansion privately—creates a misleading narrative that can obscure the true environmental impact of their business practices.
What needs to change
To be clear: While we were at Microsoft, my colleagues and I never advocated for the company to sever its ties with the fossil fuel industry; we understood we were still operating in a world dependent on oil. But we did argue that Microsoft needed to align its AI policies with broader global climate aims. The company needed to work to change the system, not capitulate to it.
Microsoft, and other AI companies, can do this by ensuring they are aligning their work in a way that supports climate policies. They can conduct audits of their impact, disclose the climate risks the application of their technologies pose, and actively shift revenue to renewable energy. Most importantly, doing these things and being transparent about the progress they are making—and the challenges they are facing—will encourage competitors to follow.
Relying on fossil-fuel companies to lead the clean-energy transition is risky, as their interests fundamentally remain tied to high-carbon activities. We can leverage their expertise without supporting their entire business, while public investment and green innovators drive the real shift to sustainable infrastructure.
Microsoft’s influence can reshape market dynamics and set an industry precedent, akin to its decisions on facial recognition and Google’s moratorium on custom AI for the oil and gas sector. As stated by Microsoft, “If the world is going to meet net zero goals by 2050, companies need to use their entire ecosystem and all of their positions of influence.” But this will only happen if they are transparent with the public about the progress they are making.
We presented these carefully considered recommendations to top Microsoft leadership, who enthusiastically agreed with us, but failed to follow through with implementation.
Microsoft has the capacity to do better than unfulfilled promises to employees and energy principles—their response to our internal pressure—that fail to address the core issues. Microsoft, and the tech industry at large, must take responsibility for the emissions enabled by their technology and lead the way toward a truly sustainable future for all.
(Microsoft had no comment when contacted by Fortune.)
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