In its most recent operations, Microsoft has attempted to become carbon neutral, but it has done this largely through the purchase of carbon offsets. But offsets don’t do anything to decrease the actual carbon output of the business. The strategy going forward, however, will be emission removal. This bold policy decision is one to applaud but for the company to achieve it will require a far more holistic approach to its business and the ecosystem that supports it.

Currently, the Microsoft ecosystem is responsible for 16 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually of which 1 million comes from transportation, 4 million from energy usage, and 12 million from all other activities throughout all other business operations including the supply chain.

So how does the company go about tackling the 16 million? In its announcement, Microsoft has laid out a series of policies and milestones. Here is a summary of what the company intends to do to get to be carbon negative and to draw down on its historic greenhouse gas contributions.

1. The company pledges to be carbon transparent going forward providing reporting on its carbon footprint and environmental performance.
2. The company is signing the 1.5 Celsius Business Ambition Pledge issued by the United Nations and will encourage its customers and suppliers to do the same.
3. The company will use its voice to advance research on carbon and new technologies aimed at produced net-zero global emissions, to achieve the removal of regulatory barriers to enable carbon-reduction technologies to scale more quickly, to use and support market mechanisms to make people and businesses more aware and informed about the carbon content of the goods and services purchased.
4. The company will drive down emissions from direct activities such as transportation, and indirect emissions from energy usage. To do this will require the company:
   • By 2025, to shift to 100% renewable energy for all data centers, buildings, and campuses.
   • To electrify the global vehicle fleet by 2030.
   • To pursue International Living Future Institute Zero Carbon certification and LEED Platinum certification for the Silicon Valley Campus and Puget Sound Campus.
5.  The company will address indirect emissions from all other activities including the emissions associated with the food produced for staff, the manufacturing of the products sold, the emission sources for all aspects of operations across the entire supply chain, the materials in buildings, the business travel of employees, and the full life cycle of its products, including the electricity customers consume when using these products. To do this will require:
   • By July 2020, it will start phasing in its current internal carbon tax of $15 USD per metric ton to cover both direct and indirect emissions which will be paid by each division based on the amount of carbon emissions produced. The funds collected will go to sustainability improvements.
   • All business divisions starting in July 2020 will pay an internal carbon fee for indirect emissions. This additional fee will be lower than the $15 price per ton but will increase over time. The money raised will be used to invest in carbon removal activities.
   • By July of 2021, the company will begin to implement new procurement processes and tools to enable and incent suppliers to reduce their direct and indirect emissions. The company will work with its suppliers to implement consistent and accurate reporting and pursue effective steps to make progress against scientifically based targets.
6. By 2030 Microsoft will remove more carbon than it emits, setting us on a path by 2050 to remove all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since its founding. This will be achieved through a portfolio of negative emission technologies including afforestation and reforestation, soil carbon sequestration, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and direct air capture carbon sequestration.

The company hopes to lead by example while creating the tools necessary to measure its carbon contributions. This week it launched the Microsoft Sustainability Calculator to not only help with its internal tracking of emissions but also to help customers address their carbon impacts. The company promises to produce additional tools and methodologies which it will share with its customers so that they can also develop a carbon-negative profile.

The company issued a call to action to every person and organization on the planet to achieve a net-zero carbon future while improving the living and working standards for all the people on Earth.

In its announcement, Microsoft called reducing carbon “the world’s next moonshot.” It would like the rest of the world to join this moonshot effort, the right commitment for the times, and an achievable goal.

DeLisi describes how difficult it is for Developing World countries seeking to improve their peoples’ lives by increasing energy capacity, to avoid using fossil fuels, particularly coal. And he notes how the Developed World is reluctant to end its dependence on natural gas, or implement policies with teeth aimed to regulate carbon emissions. As a result, he argues that meeting Paris climate targets globally because the above remains highly unlikely.

A number of industrial carbon sequestration projects have been built to-date, representing efforts to remove atmospheric carbon and permanently store it. They are expensive and time-consuming to engineer, and we would need thousands of them to be built to begin drawing down atmospheric CO2 in sufficient quantity to alter our current path to temperatures well above 2 Celsius by century end.

Because of this DeLisi believes that SSB involving genetically modifying plants, and in particular trees, to alter the natural carbon cycle could prove effective. He writes, “some 120 gigatons of carbon are removed from the atmosphere by terrestrial photosynthesis, and every year essentially the same amount is returned by plant and microbial respiration.” But with a small reduction in the return step he believes we could “substantially reduce atmospheric carbon.”

How could this be done?

1. Engineering plants to absorb more carbon.
2. Engineering soil microbes to convert the organic carbon created by engineered plants turning it into permanently sequestered carbonates.
3. Or modifying the pigment in a few tree species to make them more thermal reflective to increase the albedo effect, cooling the atmosphere.

DeLisi focuses in his article on the first point arguing that through the modification of a few tree species we could accomplish significant carbon emission reductions. An alteration of 10% of the planet’s trees re-engineered to absorb more carbon could drop the annual 5 Gigatons rate increase by 22% without using any other mitigation technologies or practices.

That’s why DeLisi believes that SSB should be given consideration as a valuable tool under the broad umbrella of negative emissions technologies, and that it would be a mistake to omit it from serious consideration.

Why use genetically modified trees?

Because trees are “the dominant engine of carbon turnover” in the natural world. The process of experimenting with altering the plant genome of specific species will not necessarily be an easy task. But if we begin now we can identify favourable plant genomes that can be engineered and introduced into species to improve permanent carbon uptake.

For those who fear genetically engineering plants because of concerns related to the food supply, and protest all genetically-modified organisms (GMO), this proposal to modify trees to reduce atmospheric carbon should prove less worrisome.

DeLisi points out that humanity has been wrestling with carbon emission controls for over three decades since general consensus emerged about global warming. Negative emissions technologies such as industrial-level carbon sequestration projects have proven extremely expensive, with industrial partners often backing away from implementing them because of cost. What DeLisi proposes would entail a fraction of the investment, and yield within a few decades a far more effective long-term atmospheric carbon control.

“Humans started adding fossil CO2 to the atmosphere about 300 years ago and accelerated land use emissions by expanding croplands and pastures. The unintended consequence of these activities is a 120 ppm increase in atmospheric concentration of CO2, which is now changing our climate.” 

Having said what seems obvious to most of us on the planet, with the exception of climate change deniers and the Trump administration, the report describes technologies that could be used to reverse the buildup of atmospheric CO2. Whether through sequestration using natural and technological solutions, the opportunity exists to develop a broad range of solutions which come under the name, negative emissions technologies (NETs). This group includes carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS), although both are not exactly being used today to create a negative outcome. CCS and CCUS are add-ons to existing industrial facilities, used to trap CO2 as it is emitted, and then either compress or liquefy it and pipe it underground, or convert it where it can become permanently bonded within a product.

In the National Academy report it describes the current state of NETs. Some are close to deployment while others remain theoretical. In assessing the need for negative emissions technologies, the benchmark reference is Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. The reason for NETs is to work towards a global warming limit of less than 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) degrees, and ideally 1.5 Celsius (2.4 Fahrenheit). The Trump administration has announced its intention to withdraw from the Paris agreement. Nevertheless, the report states its conclusions would be no different, with or without the federal government’s participation, because there is sufficient commitment from U.S. states, cities, corporations, NGOs, and other countries around the world to meet the targeted temperature limits. And NETs appear to be an important addition to a range of decarbonizing strategizing.

How should NETs contribute?

1. NETs should be integrated into an overall climate change mitigation portfolio of strategies that includes industry-wide and personal carbon reductions by all.
2. Four NETs are ready today for large-scale deployment including both natural and technological solutions. These include afforestation and reforestation, changes to overall forest management, soil CO2 retention in agricultural practices, and using biomass with CCS for energy generation.
3. Current NETs can be scaled to capture and store substantial amounts of CO2.
4. NETs can play a larger role in mitigating climate change if scaled up with a potential to remove 10 Gigatons of CO2 per year by 2050, and 20 Gigatons per year by 2100.
5. The capacity of natural carbon sinks such as afforestation, reforestation, and soil CO2 retention is finite.
6. Direct air capture and carbon mineralization technologies could add to the total capacity but currently are too costly.
7. Blue carbon removal, and in particular, coastal projects could be added to improve CO2 uptakes.
8. CO2 storage in geological formations could be critical for decarbonization of energy power plants using fossil fuels.

In all these conclusions there is an assumption that a price will be put on CO2 to justify development and implementation to make the economics of the technology sustainable. What that price should be varies depending on the technological solution.

The majority of current NETs if implemented have a cost recovery of $20 USD per ton of CO2. They are even viable at $100 per ton. But on some of these technologies there are obvious constraints. For example, there is only so much space for afforestation and reforestation because these compete with other forms of land use such as growing crops.

At Techso Mogro, we have described other negative emissions technologies including large-scale CO2 direct air capture. The National Academy report acknowledges direct-air’s potential but sees its major barrier to entry being the current high cost of CO2 recovery at around $600 per ton.

Another NET, carbon mineralization, is also constrained by many unknowns.

But if both of these can be developed to scale, and the economics can be made to work, they would play a significant part in climate change mitigation.

When would these two become viable? The price per ton captured has to drop as the technology scales up, while, at the same time, the price per ton of carbon has to escalate to a point where the two intersect.

What other constraints are currently holding back scaling NET solutions?

The report describes “significant scientific gaps remain for all NETs.” For example, carbon mineralization uptake in geological formations presents many unknowns.

How quickly will the mineralization occur?

Is the rate a variable based on the type of rock formation below?

Does all the carbon bind with the rock or can we leave pockets of CO2 underground that could later seep to the surface?

And there are potential negative feedbacks and unknowns when talking about CCS or CCUS technologies. The“long-term consequences” of sequestration technologies could have unintended results that directly impact climate change, sea level rise, and other physical alterations to the planet’s homeostasis.

In its conclusions, the National Academy report gives multiple reasons to pursue NETs including:

• initiatives by state, local governments, corporations, NGOs and other countries make it an attractive field for investigation in the effort to reduce carbon emissions.
• existing tax credits from $35 to $50 per ton for captured CO2, already on the books in many US jurisdictions, can be applied to NET research.
• the intellectual property and economic benefits to be accrued to U.S. companies and researchers makes this an important avenue for the country to pursue.
• and, of course, the end result of keeping global warming within 2.0 Celsius cannot be overstated.