A Microsoft data centre in Aldie, Virginia, US. Inside Microsoft, tension between longstanding climate pledges and the insatiable energy needs of AI left the sustainability teams mired in uncertainty, according to two former managers who left the company earlier this year. — Bloomberg
Weeks after ChatGPT was unleashed on the world in November 2022, sustainability executives at Microsoft Corp realised they had a big problem.
On the tech giant’s 500-acre campus in Redmond, Washington, teams began holding regular "triage” meetings to confront serious questions posed by the artificial intelligence boom: Where would the company find the gigawatts – just one gigawatt can power nearly 750,000 US homes – needed for data centres? And how could Microsoft possibly secure that extra energy while still making progress toward a long-standing goal of going carbon-negative?
