Last Thursday evening our very own TJ DiCaprio was awarded the Environmental Protection Agency Individual Climate Leadership Award for the work she has done to reduce carbon pollution and address climate change as Microsoft’s Senior Director of Environmental Sustainability. TJ was recognized for the role she has played in our internal carbon fee initiative.

The hour is upon us…Earth Hour, that is. This Saturday, March 23 at 8:30PM local time, households, businesses and landmarks around the world will turn off non-essential lights and electrical appliances for Earth Hour: a global movement sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund, held every year to raise awareness about the need for greater energy efficiency and sustainability.

In 2011 the United States consumed over 97 Quadrillion (that’s 97 plus 15 zeros) Btu of energy. To give you an idea of what that means: an average computer monitor uses 921 Btu and your average refrigerator uses 2,672 Btu every hour. Nearly 87 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions (the primary driver of climate change) come from energy production and consumption, so energy efficient technology is more important today than ever before. Earth Hour is an important reminder that we should strive to reduce our energy use every day. Technology can increase energy efficiency, and at Microsoft we see information technology (IT) as a key tool that can help reduce energy consumption and address energy and environmental challenges around the world.

At Microsoft, we understand how quickly information technology impacts society. This video with chief environmental strategist Rob Bernard addresses how the cloud is at the forefront of transforming society—and why that’s good news for the environment.

Last week Microsoft Research’s Drew Purves published an article in Nature (paid access) about how computer modeling can help map the planet’s ecosystems and better understand threats to biodiversity; we blogged about the article in this post. Today our friends over at ClimateDesk published a video interview with Drew that explains in 90 seconds how computer models can predict the impact of climate change. Check it out!

Anyone following sustainability conversations this week would see that climate change remains front and center.  Capturing a number of headlines was a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the U.S. and the second “most extreme.” Elsewhere in corporate sustainability, Walmart launched “My Sustainability Plan,” a program for their employees which helps tackle sustainability issues in their own lives.