More Companies Doing Better by Doing Good

Off a quiet street in Seattle's dingy industrial district, 11 miles from the rolling lawns of Microsoft's Redmond campus, the neglected-looking warehouse hardly stands out. But inside, you'll find a small server farm, with 20 racks of machines running off natural-gas-powered fuel cells instead of standard electrical outlets. The eventual goal of this test is to cut data center electricity use in half while producing only reusable water, heat and a modest amount of carbon dioxide as waste—one of several energy moon shots that Microsoft will be rolling out over the next two decades, at a cost of hundreds of millions.