Microsoft to buy carbon-free power from Constellation as part of collaboration

Microsoft Corp. will purchase a portion of its clean energy supply from Constellation Energy Corp. for five years as part of a collaboration between the companies to develop a system that matches a customer's power needs with a local clean energy source in real time.

Among other things, Constellation will adopt Microsoft's Azure cloud platform to develop clean energy solutions with enhanced data analytics to help customers understand their environmental footprints, Constellation said in a March 7 news release.

"In addition to collaborating with Constellation to develop the 24/7/365 solution, Microsoft will become one of its first customers, pioneering use of the new tools to intake, store, match and report emissions data on an hourly basis," Ravi Krishnaswamy, corporate vice president of Microsoft Cloud for Industry, said in the news release.

In December 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order requiring federal facilities to transition to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030 with at least half locally supplied. To support the order, the federal government issued a request for information from companies interested in supplying carbon-free power.

Constellation intends to submit a request for information and called its partnership with Microsoft a "critical component" to support the initiative.

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