Xbox Talks Carbon Reduction Days after Energy Announcement

Typically I try not to blend two pieces of news together and just cover the most recent thing, but honestly, this one seems like it needs it for context. We’ll start with the more wholesome, face-value niceness then progress to everyone dogpiling on Microsoft after me. This week, Trista Patterson, Director of Sustainability at Xbox, put out a piece on the Xbox Wire. This is just the Xbox branch of press releases that Microsoft wants the public to see, general news stuff, what’s coming to Game Pass through a PR filter, and all the other tripe you don’t care about. Including progress on Xbox’s carbon footprint reduction goals.

The article is the PR-filtered boilerplate nonsense you don’t care about, mostly opening about the zero waste, 2030 goals, and blah, blah, blah. For the most part, it is the usual good stuff you like to hear, such as: “These interventions, which include greening game code and players opting into energy saver modes, have prevented over 1.2 million metric tons of CO2e, compared to usage without interventions. According to US EPA estimates, this reduction prevents emissions equivalent to more than 3 billion car miles being released into the atmosphere.” Sounds lovely, why don’t I sound impressed by this?

Well, despite Xbox offering energy-saving shutdown modes and such for sustainability, how much of that is on the player and how much of this is on the company? Sure we’re all being asked by Microsoft very nicely to switch our consoles to power saving, we’re reusing bags when shopping, we’re separating the recycling to help out a little, and we’re using those paper straws in bars that are as useless as the bar staff on a quiet night that can’t be bothered, we’re all doing our bit. Microsoft, what are you doing?

Oh, that’s right, setting up an agreement to bring Three Mile Island back online. Announced last Friday, Microsoft is buying 100% of the 835 megawatts of energy that TMI-Unit 1 can produce. If you’re trying to figure out why you know the name Three Mile Island, don’t worry, Microsoft and their energy partner Constellation Energy are set to rename the plant which saw TMI-Unit 2 have a partial meltdown in 1979. The renaming is in honor of nuclear energy “Titan” (read millionaire or billionaire, don’t care) Chris Crane.

Before anyone wants to get riled up at me, I don’t care about the nuclear energy bit, I’m the type to hit the Greens with their manifesto and tell them to like nuclear energy.

What does get up my dander is the reason for this 20-year deal which sees Microsoft now basically own its own nuclear power plant. The partial meltdown in 1979 was the worst accident in US history and was given an International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) level of 5 out of 7. By 2006 it was estimated to have cost $2,400 million in damages. For reference, Chernobyl was a 7 and was the last major nuclear accident until March of 2011 with the Fukushima disaster. If the safety measures are put in place, the idea of nuclear energy isn’t completely terrible.

However, Microsoft aims to use this plant to power its data centers. Some of you already know where I’m going with this. As Bill Gates said back in June to NPR, “The U.S. hasn’t needed much new electricity — but with the rise in a variety of things from electric cars and buses to electric heat pumps to heating homes, demand for electricity is going to go up a lot. And now these data centers are adding to that. So the big tech companies are out [sic] looking at how they can help facilitate more power, so that these data centers can serve the exploding AI demand.“

Interesting choice of words there Bill, being asked about nuclear power and still having the confidence to use “exploding” in the sentence. Yes, the 20-year deal between the US Government, Constellation Energy, and Microsoft is to restart the other nuclear generator on Three Mile Island to power its need for AI. It should be noted the unit that Constellation is bringing back online by 2028 is TMU-Unit 1, which was originally restarted back in 1985 and closed in 2019 due to “poor economics.” Still, it is a sore spot for the US and it is just being used to power a bubble which is heavily criticized for good reason.

To wind back around to Bill and his comments, with the expansion of electric vehicles, and generally more in the way of battery-powered transport rather than dead liquified dinosaurs, we need a bit more energy than the current grid has. Better still, Texas sees its power grid fail yearly due to several reasons, including the weather being a bit bad and hurricane [enter name here for the prize draw] destroying the place. Why not use that 835 megawatts on something like homes and transport, instead of wasting everyone’s time with ads during F1 broadcasts where I hear Matthew McConaughey saying “bad guy AI.”

The point here is, that Microsoft can set as many “carbon neutral” or “water positive and zero waste” goals for 2030 as you like. The fact of the matter still stands, despite being positive towards its goals, the company is still wasting power options on a “tool” to replace you, to collect your data, and to exploit more and more in the bid for whatever the goal is this time on the way to generate more money.

On a side note, earlier this year the company’s total equity was $268.5 billion, total assets $512.1 billion, with a net income of $88.1 billion, an operating income of $109.4 billion, and a revenue of $245.1 billion. Remember, set your Xbox to power-saving shutdown to save the dolphins.