Microsoft Reports a Massive 25 Percent Jump in Emissions

Microsoft’s greenhouse gas pollution increased by roughly 25 percent last year, the company says in its new sustainability report released Thursday. The report follows similar ones released by Google and Amazon last week. Together, they show a troubling trend of rising tech company emissions, driven by the global race to build out power-hungry data centers. In a blog post announcing the report, Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith and chief sustainability officer Melanie Nakagawa say that the emissions increase is driven “primarily by the expansion of our datacenter infrastructure.” A significant portion of that increase, they write, was tied…