Pledging carbon neutrality on an annual accounting basis is standard corporate sustainability practice — any renewable energy certificate purchased anywhere offsets consumption recorded anywhere else. Microsoft's hourly clean energy matching goal was different: it required the company to match its power consumption with clean generation in the same hour, in the same grid region. That commitment was operationally demanding precisely because it could not be gamed with offsets. It is that specific target — the hard one — that is now reportedly under internal review.