This week, leaders from all over the world are attending the primary water-focused occasion hosted by the United Nations in 46 years. It’s a possibility to seek for solutions because the world struggles with more and more excessive water challenges highlighted within the latest IPCC report. Water is a valuable finite useful resource, important for all times. For Microsoft, water administration is vital to operations reminiscent of these wanted to chill our datacenters and function our buildings globally. And that’s the reason, in 2020, Microsoft introduced its commitment to change into water optimistic by 2030 and joined the Water Resilience Coalition. Getting to water optimistic goes past lowering water-use depth and replenishing water sources; it’s additionally about offering folks throughout the globe with entry to water and sanitation providers, partaking in public coverage and driving innovation.
Today, we’re excited to share the progress that has been made because the announcement of our dedication in 2020. This contains new particulars on how we’re working with clients and companions to assist organizations monitor and handle their water information extra successfully, an funding we’re making via the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund to scale replenishment and water entry initiatives globally, and a first-of-its-kind leak detection expertise replenishment challenge with FIDO Tech.
The 5 pillars of water optimistic
Over the previous three years, we’ve been working throughout 5 pillars to information the actions now we have taken and that can proceed to affect our future selections:
1. Reducing our water footprint throughout our direct operations
We take a holistic strategy to water discount throughout our enterprise, from design to effectivity, in search of quick alternatives via operational utilization and, in the long run, via design innovation to scale back, recycle and repurpose water. While now we have extra work to do, this strategy has led to progress throughout our datacenter fleet. We’ve discovered success in utilizing direct air as an alternative of water to chill datacenters, harvesting rainwater and procuring reclaimed water from utilities to scale back our dependence on freshwater. Datacenters in cooler environments, reminiscent of Sweden and Finland, for instance, require no freshwater from municipal sources for cooling. We are additionally discovering efficiencies and driving reductions on our campuses. Our Silicon Valley campus is pursuing net-zero water certification via the International Living Futures Institute (ILFI) and is on monitor to change into one of many first expertise campuses to safe this accreditation.
2. Increasing entry to water and sanitation providers
Today, one in 4 folks on Earth don’t have entry to secure consuming water and over half of the worldwide inhabitants lacks safely managed sanitation providers. Since 2020, now we have partnered with Water.org to offer microloans for a spread of water options, reminiscent of set up of bathrooms and faucets and improved water storage, to folks in India, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil. To date, our help has supplied greater than 1 million folks with secure water and sanitation, and we’re nicely on our approach to reaching our objective to achieve 1.5 million folks. We are excited by this progress and but we’re conscious that it isn’t sufficient. We will proceed to search for new methods to scale our attain in areas the place we function throughout the globe, offering alternatives to those that can’t afford microloans. This guideline has knowledgeable new replenishment investments we’re making.
3. Replenishing extra water than we devour throughout our operations
Replenishment is a vital element of our water journey as we search for alternatives to return water to its authentic supply. At Microsoft, we’re replenishing greater than we devour throughout our operations in 40 precedence high-stressed basins the place we function. Since 2019, now we have invested greater than $7 million in replenishment initiatives all over the world, starting from watershed safety to agricultural water effectivity analysis.
As a part of our continued effort to scale funding in water entry and replenishment, we’re excited to announce that we’ve reached a preliminary settlement with WaterFairness to be the primary investor within the Water and Climate Resilience Fund, topic to execution of ultimate paperwork. The fund will focus completely on investing in municipal-level climate-resilient water and sanitation infrastructure for low-income populations in nations in South and Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Through this fund, WaterFairness will present financing for eligible initiatives and corporations supposed to enhance water sourcing, therapy, distribution and reuse. This funding represents our third water-related challenge superior via Microsoft’s $1B Climate Innovation Fund.
The international quantity of non-revenue water, or freshwater that’s misplaced attributable to leaks, is estimated to be 346 million cubic metres per day, amounting to 30% of water system enter volumes internationally. Water information and new AI-powered instruments may also help deal with this problem and have an incredible influence on water options like leak detection. Today, we’re asserting a first-of-its-kind leak detection expertise replenishment challenge in London with FIDO Tech that can scale back water misplaced to leakage in London’s ageing distribution community, leveraging FIDO’s AI-enabled acoustic leak evaluation. This challenge is anticipated to avoid wasting hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of water per 12 months.
Traditional replenishment initiatives alone won’t meet the size that the world wants as water challenges proceed to worsen all over the world. These new initiatives with WaterFairness and FIDO Tech symbolize how we’re seeking to spend money on scaling up our replenishment work via partnership with each non-profit and private-sector entities which can be working to unravel vital water challenges.
4. Scaling water options via innovation and digitization
The work we proceed to do at Microsoft to handle the water used throughout our personal operations, and thru entry and replenishment initiatives, is vital. However, we all know that we will enlarge our potential influence by investing in – and bringing our expertise to – clients and companions constructing revolutionary applied sciences that assist the world shield freshwater assets. Innovation and digitization of water information is a vital element of the world’s water journey, serving to to establish and perceive the place water stress is rising.
Today, we’re asserting a joint answer with Ecolab that mixes their ECOLAB3D™ digital platform with Microsoft Sustainability Manager to watch and handle water information, serving to organizations to attain water sustainability targets and speed up total sustainability progress. We’re thrilled to be working with Ecolab to drive extra environment friendly water administration in manufacturing processes towards lowering water use, power use and carbon emissions for our clients.
5. Advocating for efficient and revolutionary water coverage
We acknowledge that authorities engagement on this planet’s water disaster is a key piece of the puzzle in defending freshwater assets throughout the globe. Microsoft has a longstanding historical past of environmental sustainability motion and advocacy, and we’ll proceed to search for alternatives to make use of our voice to advance the insurance policies that incentivize and scale water discount and replenishment, and enhance entry to wash water in water-stressed areas.
What’s subsequent
In 2020, we set an formidable dedication to be water optimistic and we co-founded the Water Resilience Coalition (WRC), a CEO-led initiative to scale back water stress by 2050. Today, we’re constructing on this sturdy basis with the WRC and signing an Open Call for Water Action to speed up the collective influence companies can have in constructing better water resilience. This, together with investments and initiatives introduced as we speak, are nice examples of our continued dedication to make water a central piece of our environmental sustainability technique.
In the years forward we’ll proceed making progress in opposition to the 5 pillars of our water optimistic dedication. We look to scale our efforts to scale back water use throughout our operations whereas rising procurement from different sources, and enhance the variety of revolutionary replenishment and entry initiatives that we spend money on.