How did you do it?
We’ve always been an incredibly efficient company; our carbon intensity (CO2/revenue) is less than half that of our closest competitor and we’ve made a pledge to reduce it further. Our carbon-neutral strategy prioritizes additional efficiencies, investment in green power through utility providers and responsible offsets for remaining impacts. Private sector investment in renewable energy is critical to ensuring a transition to a green economy.
We first took an inventory of our Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions to better understand the impact of our operations – our electricity usage, direct CO2 emissions and employee air travel. In September 2007, we set a transparent, three-tiered goal: 1) increase energy-efficiency 2) maximize purchases of green power and 3) responsibly offset remaining effects going forward. In typical Dell fashion, we committed to measuring our progress against the most rigorous industry-sanctioned practices and pledged to share results with our customers and stakeholders around the world. We were pleased to announce in August 2008 that we met our carbon-neutral goal several months ahead of schedule.
Since 2004, our annual investment in green electricity from utility providers, including wind, solar and methane-gas capture, has grown from 12 million kWh to 116 million kWh, an increase of nearly 870 percent. We’re also making additional investments in wind-power projects in the U.S., China and India through partnerships with the some of the world’s most reputable green-power providers. Combined with green electricity purchases from utility providers, this equates to 645 million kWh and the avoidance of more than 400,000 metric tons of CO2e.
We are not the only company to meet a carbon-neutral goal, and we obviously hope many, many more will follow. The guidelines Dell uses to measure carbon-neutrality are widely used by companies including News Corp., Google, Yahoo and HSBC. We are constantly looking for ways to decrease our carbon footprint and are always looking for better ways to help customers and suppliers achieve their environmental goals.