Building a More Sustainable Real Estate Portfolio

When it comes to building and operating corporate real estate, sustainability is at the heart of what we do. My real estate team views each of our 33 million square feet as a responsibility — and an opportunity to support Microsoft’s ambition to become carbon negative, zero waste, and water positive by 2030.  

To contribute to these ambitious sustainability targets, our real estate team has spent the last year evaluating and developing roadmaps for key zero-waste initiatives for each campus, studying our water usage and infrastructure in water-stressed regions, committing to an all-electric fleet by 2030, and so much more. Each of these initiatives will support Microsoft's corporate commitments, influence our choices across our real estate globally, and put us on a path to make even more impactful changes. 

New Construction Across the Globe 

We all know that pursuing corporate sustainability goals involves more than just focusing on the final product, but also careful consideration for the processes that get us there. Currently, we have several ongoing new construction projects across the globe. From our management of construction waste to the selection of energy and water-efficient features, these new buildings are designed and constructed sustainably from the ground up. 

Our global real estate team also pays careful attention to our impact on the planet while building — not just in our final product. For instance, for our new construction projects, we use the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) to evaluate and reduce embodied carbon (the carbon emitted during construction) in our construction materials. 

During construction in Redmond, we are using the EC3 tool, keeping us on target to exceed our goal of reducing embodied carbon by 30%. As CRE professionals, it is important to us that we create and share best practices across our portfolio. Wherever we can, our team brings learnings from building refresh projects to new campus construction and vice versa. Our new Atlantic Yards project in Atlanta also used the EC3 tool to reduce embodied carbon during construction and is currently developing more sustainable initiatives to be implemented, such as rooftop herb gardens and a rooftop bee habitat, like the one recently built and monitored with Microsoft AI technology in Munich. Because of its highly sustainable details, Atlantic Yards is pursuing LEED v4 Gold certification ahead of its opening this fall. 

Thanks to our committed real estate team, we’re able to construct and operate more sustainable campuses like Atlantic Yards and pursue ambitious certifications that confirm our commitment to protecting our planet and the communities where we operate. In Silicon Valley, nature is truly the building block of this campus, from an extensive solar panel system that will offset energy consumption up to 20% to an integrated water management system set up for the campus to achieve net-zero non-potable water certification. We’re proud that the American Institute of Architects selected this innovative campus to receive a COTE Top 10 award this year, the industry’s best-known award for sustainable design excellence. It’s an honor to be selected for this award — and for us, this marks a major milestone in our mission to build and operate more sustainably across the globe. 

In Sydney, our office is slated to achieve a 5 Star Green Star rating. During the construction of this project, we worked hard to reduce our waste going to landfills and took careful consideration to select responsible building materials including low VOC paints, adhesives, sealants, carpets, and low formaldehyde wood products. Though many of these features are less apparent once the campus opens, we also consider biophilic designs into our campuses that bring the great outdoors in and pay attention to acoustic and visual comfort to provide an excellent indoor environmental quality to our employees and visitors. 

At our Puget Sound headquarters, our goal during construction last year was to reduce embodied carbon emissions by 30% or more, which we are on target to exceed. In addition to monitoring our process for building, we're installing features like a hyper-efficient Thermal Energy Center, which uses geothermal wells to heat and cool our buildings and will reduce our energy usage by 50% compared to the typical utility plant. We're also working to reduce our water consumption on campus by collecting rainwater from our roofs and storing it in cisterns that will hold over 200,000 gallons throughout campus. Alongside the installation of low flow systems, all of our offices will reuse this harvested rainwater in flush fixtures, putting us on track to save over 5.8 million gallons of water annually. 

Our real estate team is always thinking of innovative ways to address challenges. This focus on innovative solutions is on display at our new Herzliya campus, where one of our new buildings has become the first LEED v4 Building Design and Construction certified building in Israel. In a location where temperatures are around 27 C (80 F) seven months out of the year, building a campus with a concerted effort to conserve water and energy was incredibly important. In addition to energy-efficient features, Herzliya is using innovative Watergen technology, which produces 237,000 liters of fresh drinking water from humidity in the air annually. The site’s landscaping has also been designed to minimize the use of drinking water for irrigation by planting native and drought-tolerant species using efficient drip irrigation. One hundred percent of the air conditioning condensate water is reused for irrigation and the cooling towers, resulting in an estimated water savings of over three million liters annually.  

In Hyderabad, we’re piloting similar air-to-water generators that will capture the moisture in humid air, purify it, and produce safe drinking water. This effort in Hyderabad will help offset 400 thousand liters of groundwater extraction per annum (20% of potable water used by the site) in this water-stressed region where water scarcity is an ongoing crisis that is expected to worsen. 

These are just a few highlights from the work we're doing around the globe to build more sustainably. In addition to a focus on the process for new construction, our real estate team works hard to implement smaller changes to existing buildings. From a reusable cup initiative in Japan that's saving over 960,000 paper cups annually to a new LED lighting retrofit in both Istanbul and Ankara that's resulted in a 10% reduction in energy usage, we're also striving to operate our campuses more sustainably as well. 

Leading the Charge 

Achieving your company’s sustainability goals might require implementing sweeping changes across your portfolio. When that happens, you will need a strong, dedicated team to make it happen. On our real estate team, we made the investment and hired a Senior Sustainability Programs Manager, Katie Ross, who has been leading the charge on many fronts for the past four years. Katie is responsible for developing and implementing sustainability strategies for our offices around the world, including our new campuses in Puget Sound, Israel, and Silicon Valley. 

Not only does Katie work to implement construction and operational best practices globally, but she also is making our sustainability work more tangible for employees using our facilities in the It's in Our Nature campaign, launched last Earth Month. The employee-facing campaign is designed to share our global real estate team’s progress, commitments, and stories from team members and employees from around the globe — and it's already making a big impact. Building and operating sustainably is in our job descriptions but living sustainably is important to many of our employees as well. 

With a real estate team dedicated to the details and a collective mindset focused on sustainability and accessibility, we’re building new campuses that set the bar for all the real estate projects that lie ahead. And together, we’re able to continue realizing our vision for a more sustainable workplace and way of living.  

What's Next 

If 2020 has taught us anything, it's that our responsibility is to protect what we care about and to be good stewards of the future we want. This has never been more important. We have the opportunity to turn our vulnerability into strength. Even when we’re at a distance and wrestling with many other challenges beyond the workplace, our dedication as corporate real estate professionals to double-down on our commitments and actions has only emboldened us to continue this work. In the year ahead, I challenge our CRE industry to live up to that age-old mantra: Earth Day is every day. We'll do this not only through the huge commitments we make but through the small actions we each take day in and day out.