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Comment by throwmeaway2344 | Hacker News Reader

30,000 employees drive their cars every morning to their suburban campus, conveniently located in unincorporated land between Redmond and Bellevue. Are they going to neutralize that CO2?

Do they have a plan to prevent employees from driving 20 miles each way every day? Their new campus renovation has tons of parking for cars. Any bike lanes? Bus stops?

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Disclosure: I work at MSFT, but not on any campus. I do, however, live in the Seattle area.

A significant amount of employees take MSFT shuttles/busses from around the greater Redmond area, and I imagine part of their plan is going to include electrifying those vehicles:

> We will electrify our global campus operations vehicle fleet by 2030.

In addition, Sound Transit's East Link will literally have a stop on the MSFT campus, which will eventually help people from all over the area (Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond eventually) get to work in a significantly more carbon-neutral way, especially given electricity produced in the area is relatively clean.

The Microsoft campus is within incorporated Redmond.

https://aqua.kingcounty.gov/gis/web/VMC/misc/KC_HwysCitiesHS...

The only unincorporated land in that area is Marymoor Park and Bridle Trails State Park.

The Link Light Rail will be opening a station next to the Microsoft campus in 2023, and Microsoft is paying to build a bike/pedestrian bridge over 520 at that location.

If we're going to start counting 2nd and 3rd degree connections, why not count people that are home playing video games on a Microsoft console instead of driving somewhere?

Microsoft is investing massive resources into the Sound Transit system. They just donated acres of land to the city (as well as a bunch of money) to add a train stop right next to their campus. Microsoft is one of the main reason the East Link Extension was funded (new train line connecting Seattle to Mercer Island to Bellevue to Redmond).

That would Be categorized as type 3 emissions, which they intend to cover.

business travel is different from commute. they chose to save money by building away from where people live. most of their employees drive, redmond campus has more than 15,000 parking spots.

vendors and contractors are not allowed to use shuttles and connectors, that probably adds another 5,000 cars

i want to believe they want to right their wrongs, but their initial decision to be far away from any population area has contributed a lot of co2 over the last 30 years.

Why should they? It's not Microsoft that's emitting in that case. Employees have several public transportation options, including Microsoft-run buses.

Then do you count emissions from Microsoft's suppliers? This announcement says they are considering emissions from their entire supply chain, so I can't imagine a reason why this wouldn't also apply to people they pay to work for them.

I believe that this is addressed in their "Scope 3" section that is mentioned, and they are looking to cut that figure in half by 2030, and it is included in their "net negative by 2030" considerations.

They can tell their suppliers to be carbon neutral or lose contracts. But this is a free country, there isn't much they can do about the employees beyond what they're _already doing_, and have been doing for at least a decade now. I live in the area, you see MS buses all the time, and many of their employees use them.

Sure they can. They can pay to offset the emissions.

All that "offsetting" is mostly for rich people to feel good about themselves as they fly their private jets to climate summits, it does little to nothing to reduce the actual CO2. Once that CO2 leaves the tailpipe, the only way to reduce it for real is by capturing it.

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