Microsoft released various progress updates relating to the sustainability of its cloud computing platform and data centers, including renewable energy, energy efficiency, waste management, and ecosystems.

Cloud computing can make up a significant portion of enterprise carbon emissions, and increasing efficiency in different areas of the data center is an effective way to lower the environmental impact of enterprises across all industries.

Microsoft has publicly committed to be a carbon-negative company by 2030, which means it will reduce its carbon emissions to net-zero and remove additional carbon from the atmosphere.

The cloud giant shared its data center power usage effectiveness (PUE) and water usage effectiveness (WUE) data for the first time last April, because stakeholders had made it clear that measuring energy and water consumption is crucial if Microsoft truly wants to “take sustainability into account for commercial decisions,” Noelle Walsh, Microsoft’s VP of cloud operations and innovation, wrote in a blog post at the time.

Walsh wrote in an updated blog that Microsoft's newest generation of data centers, including one currently under construction in Chile, have a design PUE of 1.12 (an optimally efficient PUE is 1.0.).

"We are constantly focused on improving our energy efficiency. For example, in California our San Jose data centers will be cooled with an indirect evaporative cooling system using reclaimed water all year and zero fresh water. Because the new data center facilities will be cooled with reclaimed water, they will have a WUE of 0.00 L/kWh in terms of freshwater usage," she explained.

Walsh noted Microsoft's successful completion of a water reuse project at one of its data centers in Washington. This water treatment facility is more than 10 years in the making and will "process water for reuse by local industries, including data centers, decreasing the need for potable water for data center cooling," she noted.

She also highlighted the cloud giant's recently opened Circular Center in Chicago, which has the capacity to process 12,000 servers each month for reuse and divert 144,000 servers from landfills annually.

Circular centers are located near Microsoft's data centers and process decommissioned cloud infrastructure and hardware. Teams at the centers sort and channel the equipment components to optimize, reuse, or repurpose them. "We plan to open a Circular Center in Washington state early next year and have plans for Circular Centers in Texas, Iowa, and Arizona to further optimize our supply chain and reduce waste," Walsh said.