When it comes to offsetting carbon emissions, Microsoft has set a new precedent for companies around the world. Instead of trying to offset more emissions than it produces on a yearly basis, the company has committed to erasing its historical carbon footprint. In other words, Microsoft will capture an amount of carbon equivalent to all the carbon it has emitted since 1975, the year the company was founded.
Microsoft was a lone wolf when it kickstarted this initiative, but now another company has followed suit: Denmark-based skylight manufacturer Velux, which plans to offset its emissions from the last 79 years to become “lifetime carbon neutral”.
The company calculates that it will need to capture some 5.6 million metric tons of CO2 to do so. Now, you might be asking: how can a company calculate all its emissions? The fact of the matter is that no standard methodology exists, and it’s fairly impossible to accurately estimate past emissions. Past energy consumption data is also not available, which makes things harder. But Velux plans to share the methodology it used with other businesses.
To offset emissions, Velux is working with WWF to support forest projects in Uganda that help protect existing forests and grow new trees in forests and in plantations. Meanwhile, in Myanmar, the company is funding projects that protect forests that play a key role in biodiversity.
Perhaps we should tell Velux to sponsor carbon-capturing seagrass meadows, which we wrote about in the top story of today’s daily.
