Microsoft announced Thursday it will go “carbon-negative” by 2030 by investing in the development of technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere.

“The scientific consensus is clear,” the Seattle-based software giant declared in a statement on its website. “The world confronts an urgent carbon problem. The carbon in our atmosphere has created a blanket of gas that traps heat and is changing the world’s climate. Already, the planet’s temperature has risen by 1 degree centigrade. If we don’t curb emissions, and temperatures continue to climb, science tells us that the results will be catastrophic."

Microsoft, which says it will emit about 16 million metric tons of carbon this year, admits it hasn’t figured out exactly how it’s going to accomplish its goals. “Solving our planet’s carbon issues will require technology that does not exist today,” the company acknowledges.

The announcement is garnering a positive response from scientists and activists -- and sparking hope that other big companies will follow Microsoft’s lead.

“They’re going to decarbonize at a very fast rate and then use carbon removals to balance out those remaining emissions,” World Resources Institute climate-mitigation director Cynthia Cummis told NPR. “That’s what’s in line with science and what we want to see all companies doing.”

“It reminds me of the Microsoft of old,” Columbia University climate scientist and researcher Julio Friedmann told The Verge. “They used to do big, audacious stuff like this all the time and I’m glad to see that ethos return on a planetary basis.”

“The scope and scale of this proposal is exactly the kind of bold action we need from the business community,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Coons and Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Braun said in a statement. Coons and Braun are chairs of the bipartisan Senate Climate Solutions Caucus.

Microsoft, already carbon-neutral, says it will “accelerate the development of carbon reduction and removal technologies that will help us and the world become carbon negative.” That means the company will put $1 billion over the next four years into research and development of such technologies.

Read Microsoft’s detailed explanation for how it plans to go carbon-negative.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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