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Reporting Back: Microsoft at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference
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Posted by Rob Bernard
Chief Environmental Strategist
Two weeks ago, I laid out some of the reasons I and a team of technology and issue experts from Microsoft were traveling to Copenhagen to support the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15).
We’ve recently returned to Seattle, and we’re hopeful that reports that world leaders have finalized a climate change agreement as COP15 will ensure that countries act quickly and meaningfully to secure our climate future.
As I noted before the conference, and as I’m even more convinced today, the world needs to quickly establish emissions-reduction frameworks to address climate change on a global scale.
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Partnering With Customers – and Competitors - on Green IT
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Posted by Steve Lippman
Director, Environmental Engagement Strategy
As part of our capacity-building efforts with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and non-profits, Microsoft recently partnered with TechSoup Global to present a set of webinars with green technology guidance specifically tailored to small and large NGOs. These webinars are one small part of a larger proactive campaign to help all our customers—large and small businesses, government agencies and others—optimize the energy efficiency and environmental sustainability of their information technology.
Advances in both hardware and software have dramatically increased the energy efficiency of computing. The leading energy-efficient laptops now entering the market use less energy than a single compact fluorescent light bulb. However, with more than 1 billion computers on the planet and 250 million new laptops, desktops and servers deployed each year, the IT industry must continue improving the energy efficiency of its products.
We have improved the efficiency of the Windows operating system with increasingly sophisticated energy-saving features and are building new energy efficiency requirements into our design process for future operating systems.
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Embracing Disruption and Standards for the Sake of a Smart Grid
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Posted by Mark Ryland
National Standards Officer (USA)
Today is World Standards Day, a celebration whose theme this year is “Tackling climate change through standards.” I can’t help but think back a few days to a nondescript hotel conference room in a suburb of Washington, D.C. About 45 intelligent, opinionated, intense people from many industries gathered at the “invitation” (as in, “be there or else!”) of NIST, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. Our job: work on the roadmap for the creation and evolution of a bunch of technical standards, very quickly, for the Smart Grid, the widely-anticipated computerized energy system of the future.
The Smart Grid is a vision of a secure, information-driven electrical system in which every device reports on and coordinates its power use and the system uses electric power from anywhere, including home solar panels and idle hybrid vehicles that sell extra battery power back to the grid. Realizing this vision could lower costs and increase energy efficiency. That’s why it’s not (just) a gee-whiz futuristic scenario but a major policy objective of the Obama Administration. Federal and state governments want the Smart Grid to become real really fast.
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Technology Is Enabling a Green Business Revolution in Europe
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Posted by John Vassallo
Vice President, EU Affairs 
This week I have been lucky to be one of a handful of business executives speaking at the European Union’s Green Week conference in Brussels. A recurring theme among all attendees, whether from business, politics, science or non-governmental organizations, has been that technology has a major role to play in solving vexing environmental problems such as climate change.
Information technology will be one of the principal enablers of environmental innovations, and Microsoft is devoting a lot of time, hard work and investment to advancing green technologies. We are increasing our R&D spending by over 15 percent this year, to $9.4 billion, including spending on several promising environmental applications.
I took part in Green Week previously when I worked for GE, which produces equipment used in several environmental sectors, from water desalination to vehicle fleet management systems. I was not fully aware at the time how much of the equipment actually was made up of software and information technology (IT) systems. It is the IT embedded in products that enables much of the energy savings, emissions reductions and carbon capture that society and the environment need.
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Reducing Microsoft’s Carbon Footprint
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Posted by Rob Bernard
Chief Environmental Strategist
(Re-posted from Software Enabled Earth, Microsoft’s environmental sustainability blog)
Today, our CEO Steve Ballmer sent an e-mail to all Microsoft employees about Microsoft’s long-term commitment to increase our focus around environmental sustainability. As Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, I’m humbled and excited that Steve has asked our more than 90,000 Microsoft employees in over 100 countries around the world to help accelerate the development of software solutions and advance scientific research to address some of the most pressing issues of our time -- energy and climate change. We also announced our goal to reduce Microsoft’s own environmental footprint.
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Corporate Citizenship, in Good Times and Bad
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Posted by Pamela Passman
Corporate Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs
Corporate Citizenship means different things to different people. At Microsoft, it means doing business in a way that both creates business value and benefits society. In the same way that we push ourselves to create new technologies and breakthrough products and services, we also strive to find innovative means to fulfill our citizenship goals. Our 2009 Corporate Citizenship Report details many of the creative ways we are working, both alone and with others, to address societal needs in communities around the world.
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