Fixing large issues requires considering large and setting objectives that appear audacious. Cisco has achieved many daring objectives over its 38-year historical past by counting on good folks, innovation and science.
Now that I’m Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Officer, science has by no means been extra vital to me. Scientific proof reveals that local weather change is an pressing disaster. If we don’t restrict world temperature rise to lower than 1.5° Celsius in comparison with pre-industrial ranges, we are going to face dramatic penalties. Floods, extra extreme and frequent climate occasions, longer and extra extreme droughts, meals shortages. We’re already seeing proof of those occasions each day within the information.
How can we restrict world temperature rise to 1.5 levels? The world should halve world emissions earlier than 2030 and attain zero emissions by 2050. If that sounds arduous, it’s as a result of it will likely be. However the science says it’s potential, if we act now and with urgency.
That’s the reason one yr in the past, Cisco dedicated to reaching web zero greenhouse fuel emissions throughout its worth chain by 2040. Once we set our web zero objective, we aimed excessive. We didn’t essentially understand how we might get there, however we knew this was the one approach to make progress: by being bold, placing the precise folks in place, innovating collectively and trusting science.
The science behind web zero and the journey it’ll take to attain it are each complicated and evolving. However the cause for doing it’s easy: our future depends upon it.
I’m happy to share with you a few of the developments round our web zero objective within the final yr.
Third-party validation
In July 2022, Cisco’s 2040 web zero objective was accepted by the Science Primarily based Targets initiative (SBTi) below its Web-Zero Customary. The SBTi Web-Zero Customary is the world’s first framework for company web zero goal setting in keeping with local weather science.
To earn SBTi validation, firms are required to cut back their emissions by a minimum of 90%. This requirement means we are able to’t merely depend on carbon offsets to attain our objective. Having SBTi validation indicators that we’re dedicated to the deep emissions reductions which might be wanted to reverse world warming.
Let me again up for a second and outline web zero: it’s a state the place no incremental greenhouse gases are added to the environment. Firms can obtain web zero by way of a mixture of decreasing their greenhouse fuel emissions and neutralizing any remaining GHG emissions by eradicating (sequestering) an equal quantity from the environment (sometimes called utilizing offsets).
Firms with SBTI validation can use offsets for not more than 10% of their emissions discount. Because of this we should focus the majority of our efforts on deep emissions reductions over neutralizing – which is the scientifically sound approach to reverse world warming and reduce the impacts of local weather change.
Constant transparency
Cisco has a historical past of being open about our objectives and our progress by way of public reporting. We printed our first Company Citizenship Report in 2005, and we proceed to report our emissions knowledge yearly in our Goal Report and our ESG Reporting Hub (ESG = environmental, social and governance). We do that in order that our clients, staff, buyers, and others might be assured that what we are saying is actual. And we regularly search for methods to enhance the readability of our reporting and the accuracy with which we calculate our emissions.
There’s a main shift occurring in rules round ESG reporting proper now as properly. For instance, in the US, the Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) is contemplating new necessities for a way public firms make local weather disclosures. Whether or not the SEC drives and actually adopts these guidelines or not, we’re already doing the work to align to them. We imagine having standardized local weather disclosure necessities supplies buyers and others with extra clear, constant, comparable, and decision-useful info.
Cisco just lately employed a controller to focus completely on ESG, and now we have created a working group to assist establish areas to bolster controls; perceive SEC local weather guidelines, anticipated disclosures and different worldwide rules; and develop clear plans to handle them.
We’re selecting to boost our ESG governance as a result of we wish our stakeholders to have a transparent image of our progress, our challenges, and our learnings. We welcome the elevated scrutiny as a result of it pushes us to repeatedly enhance our technique and the way we report on it.
Doing what is nice for the world
Cisco was chargeable for roughly 23 million tons of carbon dioxide equal (CO2e) in fiscal yr 2021. That’s solely about 0.0006 % of whole world greenhouse fuel emissions (based mostly on 2021 IEA knowledge), however it’s nonetheless critically vital for us to cut back our personal emissions as a lot as potential. In doing so, we are able to have a fair greater affect by enabling our clients and others to do the identical.
For instance, decreasing the vitality consumption of our merchandise lowers Cisco’s Scope 3 emissions, but in addition helps our clients cut back their Scope 2 emissions. Should you’re not accustomed to scopes of emissions, you’ll be able to study them from this Greenhouse Fuel Protocol picture, or see our definitions on the backside of this weblog.
Growing the quantity of vitality generated from renewable sources like wind and photo voltaic (“greening the grid”) is one other crucial. In response to the newest Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC) report, “limiting warming to 2°C or 1.5°C would require substantial vitality system adjustments over the following 30 years. This consists of decreased fossil gas consumption” and “elevated manufacturing from low- and zero-carbon vitality sources…”
Our merchandise and options might help utility firms shift to a extra low-carbon mannequin. For instance, now we have labored with Enel, Italy’s largest vitality supplier, to create a wiser, extra energy-efficient energy grid. Utilizing Cisco know-how, Enel can monitor its vitality grid and preemptively handle any faults or failures that threaten the community, and extra successfully hook up with renewable vitality sources.
And our efforts to extend our personal use of renewable vitality during the last 15 years may assist to speed up the deployment of renewable vitality methods around the globe. How? As a result of longer-term, multi-year renewable vitality agreements present beneficial funding for vitality suppliers, making it extra aggressive with conventionally produced energy, and be certain that the vitality can be bought over a sure time frame.
For instance, to extend the quantity of renewable vitality we use in India, we signed two long-term solar energy buy agreements (PPA) in 2018 that ship roughly 85,000 megawatt hours of electrical energy yearly to the grid the place our Bangalore campus is situated.
Via our investments and management, we hope to speed up the adoption of renewable vitality and encourage different firms to put money into renewables as properly.
All instructed, now we have a number of multi-year renewable vitality energy buy agreements (PPAs) around the globe that collectively produce greater than 300,000 megawatt hours per yr. We’re actively pursuing further PPAs and count on to extend the quantity of renewable vitality we buy by way of PPAs and long-term renewable vitality agreements over the following few years.
Making the journey collectively
We may even co-innovate with our clients, suppliers, companions, and others to develop new enterprise fashions that may dramatically speed up the transition to a low-carbon economic system. We all know that know-how advances quickly, and we wish to be able to seize alternatives. This can be a time for considering large, and we wish to share and collaborate like by no means earlier than. The one manner we are going to reverse local weather change is by working collectively and extra brazenly sharing practices which might be working and never working, so we are able to be taught from one another.
Whereas we are going to dream large, we are going to nonetheless stay grounded within the science. And we are going to proceed to evolve our method as extra mechanisms turn into accessible. We are going to use actual knowledge to grasp what is de facto working, what affect we’re having, and if there are any unintended penalties. The extra we all know, the higher we are able to do.
Finally, it isn’t nearly our web zero objective. We should construct ecofriendly companies; promote round enterprise fashions; preserve and restore the well being of our land, oceans, and ecosystems; and create alternatives for folks to take part within the inexperienced and digital economic system. It’s about serving to to scale local weather options by investing in them now. You possibly can see an instance of this within the Cisco Basis, and the way it has dedicated to investing $100 million over ten years in promising local weather options.
Setting a web zero objective and naming a Chief Sustainability Officer are vital steps ahead. However they alone aren’t sufficient to reverse the affect of local weather change. We nonetheless have rather more work to do within the years to come back, and as our technique grows and evolves, we’re dedicated to sharing the small print – each the accomplishments and challenges – with you.
particulars on our environmental initiatives.
Scopes of emissions
Scope 1: Emissions from fuels we purchase and burn inside our operations. For instance, pure fuel used to warmth our buildings, back-up mills that run on diesel, gasoline utilized in Cisco-owned automobiles.
Scope 2: Emissions from electrical energy we purchase for our operations. For instance, the ability we use in our labs and knowledge facilities to energy our gear and preserve the lights on.
Scope 3: Emissions associated to our enterprise, however that we don’t personal or management. For instance, the electrical energy our merchandise eat after we promote them, our suppliers’ vitality use, transporting our merchandise, and worker commuting of their private automobiles.
Share:
