Cisco, Samsung Named In Carbon Savings Report

IT companies including Cisco, Samsung, EMC and Siemens have been named in a survey of global companies making significant progress on cutting carbon emissions.

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Global 500 Report released this week has included several tech companies in its annual list of those firms which have take action to cut their carbon emissions. The report, produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers, revealed that the IT sector achieved the highest average performance score overall out of any of the industries covered in the report. Cisco was ranked sixth in the CDP report while Samsung came in at number 12.

“Climate change may impose limits to the growth of the physical economy, but the information and communication technology sector can grow without limit, providing services like video communications substituting for physical travel. This dematerialization of the economy is vital, and may provide massive opportunities for ICT companies like Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and Apple as well as content providers of every kind,” said Paul Dickinson, chief executive, Carbon
Disclosure Project.

The CDP is a not for profit organisation that collects climate change data from 2,500 corporations and has assembled what it claims to be the largest corporate greenhouse gas emissions database in the world.

According to a statement from Cisco in the report, the company attributed some of its progress on carbon reduction on its own videoconferencing technology. “At Cisco, worldwide utilisation of Cisco TelePresence units remains near 50 percent based on a 10-hour day. The impact of increasingly pervasive TelePresence, WebEx, and MeetingPlace use is clear. Where changes in revenue and air travel once moved in sync, air travel in fiscal year 2008 was essentially flat compared with fiscal year 2006 even though revenue and head count increased 40 percent,” the company said.

Cisco reported total emissions of 598,382 tonnes of C02, while Samsung recorded 9,319,257 tonnes of C02 and EMC recorded 371,620 tonnes.

Cisco announced a plan in May to bring its networking expertise to the smart grid space. Cisco officials estimate that creating more efficient power grids could grow into a $20-billion-a-year business for Cisco within five years.

Another measure of companies’ approach to climate change, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, released earlier this month, put Nokia, IBM and SAP ahead in the technology industry.