Week in ReviewStories discussed this week (4:08). Features Mainstage highlights from Circularity 20 (15:30) Last week, GreenBiz hosted Circularity 20, the largest North American conference focused on circular economy issues. We'll be posting videos for many sessions in mid-September. Meanwhile, here are highlights from five mainstage speakers.  Circularity and equity in cities: Mark Chambers, director of the mayor’s office of sustainability for New York, and Jose Manuel Moller Dominguez, founder and CEO of Algramo, comment on how brands can participate in motivating systemic change. The human dimension of waste collection: Bharati Chaturvedi, founder and director of the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group in India, and Keiran Smith, co-founder and CEO of Mr. Green Africa, discuss why informal collectors of plastics and recyclables should embrace within formal supply chains — and how to do it. Creative disruption: Design thinker Tim Brown, chair of IDEO, discusses the two major models that catalyze systems change. Thoughts on leadership (25:37) Trista Bridges and Donald Eubank, co-founders and principals of consultancy Read the Air, chat about their new book, "Leading Sustainably: The Path to Sustainable Business and how the SDGs Change Everything." You can read an excerpt here.  The state of composting (37:38) What is so much food still sent to landfills when it could be used for energy or to fertilize crops? Nora Goldstein, editor of Biocycle, chats about the U.S. composting infrastructure.  *Music in this episode by Lee Rosevere: "As I Was Saying," "Southside," "And So Then," "Here's the Thing," "Curiosity" and "More On That Later" *This episode was sponsored by Amazon Resources galore Greentech on the red sea. How do we innovate our way out of the climate crisis? Three professors from Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology discussing promising solutions in energy and water. Join the webcast at 1 p.m. EDT Sept. 8. Today's carbon-negative fuel. Exploring the potential for fleet emissions reductions through renewable natural gas. Register here for the discussion at 1 p.m. EDT Sept. 10. ESG values and a sustainable future. Why placing environment, social and governance principles at the center of COVID-19 recovery places makes sense for resilience and the bottom line. Sign up for the interactive session at 1 p.m. EDT Sept. 15. Action plus ambition. How leading companies, including Microsoft, approach audacious sustainability goals. Register for the discussion at 1 p.m. EDT Sept. 17.  Safety and performance in recycled plastics. UL and HP Inc. share strategies and insights in this conversation at 1 p.m. EDT Sept. 22. Inside The Climate Pledge. Senior executives from Amazon, Global Optimism and Verizon share insights on why collaborative corporate action on the climate crisis is more critical than ever. Join us during Climate Week at noon EDT Sept. 24. Clean air in California? It's easier than you think. Hear from the California Air Resources Board, the city of Oakland and Neste in this session at 1 p.m. EDT Oct. 1. State of the Profession. Our sixth report examining the evolving role of corporate sustainability leaders. Download it here. The State of Green Business 2020. Our 13th annual analysis of key metrics and trends published here. Do we have a newsletter for you! We produce six weekly newsletters: GreenBuzz by Executive Editor Joel Makower (Monday); Transport Weekly by Senior Writer and Analyst Katie Fehrenbacher (Tuesday); VERGE Weekly by Executive Director Shana Rappaport and Editorial Director Heather Clancy (Wednesday); Energy Weekly by Senior Energy Analyst Sarah Golden (Thursday); Food Weekly by Carbon and Food Analyst Jim Giles (Thursday); and Circular Weekly by Director and Senior Analyst Lauren Phipps (Friday). You must subscribe to each newsletter in order to receive it. Please visit this page to choose which you want to receive. The GreenBiz Intelligence Panel is the survey body we poll regularly throughout the year on key trends and developments in sustainability. To become part of the panel, click here. Enrolling is free and should take two minutes. Stay connected To make sure you don't miss the newest episodes of GreenBiz 350, subscribe on iTunes. Have a question or suggestion for a future segment? E-mail us at [email protected]. Let's block ads! (Why?)

Business strategy organization Boston Consulting Group will use remote workplace lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce per-employee travel by at least 30 percent by 2025, one key element of the $8.5 billion company’s new commitment to achieve net-zero status for its own operations by the end of this decade. It’s also planning an investment push that will see it fund carbon removal projects at an expected cost of $35 per metric ton in 2025, increasing to $80 per metric ton in 2030 — far higher than the amount companies traditionally pay to purchase carbon offsets on voluntary markets.  Both declarations are notable, for different reasons. The consulting industry traditionally has relied heavily on travel to deliver services — it represents 80 percent of BCG’s total footprint, for example. Reducing that activity is something that neither the consulting sector nor its clients would have imagined was possible at the end of 2019, BCG CEO Rich Lesser told GreenBiz. "We are in a period of unbelievable learning," he said. "My expectation is we will find different kinds of models with less travel intensity." While BCG hasn’t made any specific commitments about what that model might look like, Lesser said it could include using videoconferencing for certain sorts of engagements in the future rather than sending someone for an on-site meeting or arranging for consultants to work at client locations on a staggered, rotating basis rather than all at the same time. Within its own operations — it has 21,000 employees and offices in 50 countries — BCG is aiming to reduce direct energy and electricity emissions by 90 percent per full-time employee against a baseline measurement of 2018, according to the new set of commitments the company announced Tuesday. It previously committed to purchasing 100 percent renewable energy and will use energy-efficiency measures to fill the gap. Beyond 2030, BCG aspires to be "climate positive" — by removing more carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere on an ongoing basis than it actually emits through its own activities. While the company didn’t publicly identify projects in its press release about the new commitments, those investments will be for both nature-based and "engineered" solutions. "I suspect it will be a mix of both," Lesser said, adding that BCG will prioritize "change the game" kinds of solutions. One example of an organization with which BCG already works is Indigo Ag, the company behind the Terraton Initiative, an effort to draw down 1 trillion tons of atmospheric CO2 through regenerative agriculture and soil wellness initiatives. Indigo is growing fast both in terms of funding and connections with farmers, which are hoping to get credit for the carbon sequestration potential of their agricultural practices. In early August, it added $360 million in new financing, bringing its overall total to $535 million. The Indigo Marketplace, where it links growers prioritizing sustainability practices directly with grain buyers, has completed more than $1 billion in transactions since September 2018. 'The model has yet to be fully proved out, but there is massive capacity," Lesser said. Aside from its own commitments, BCG also has pledged up to $400 million in services — such as research or consulting support through its Center for Climate Action — to support environmental organizations, industry groups, government agencies and others working on net-zero projects. It works on more than 350 such projects with more than 250 organizations, including the World Economic Forum, WWF and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. How does BCG's new pledges compare with other leading business consulting firms? McKinsey & Company declared carbon neutrality in 2018 and has set emissions reductions in line with the Paris Agreement, including a 60 percent reduction in purchased energy by 2030 and by 90 percent by 2050. It also has been active in engaging its suppliers — including 50 of the world's largest airlines and five of the biggest hotel groups — on how to improve environment performance. And it has a large sustainability practice, focused on helping other businesses reduce their own impact. Another business consulting heavyweight, Bain & Company, was declared carbon neutral by Natural Capital Partners in 2012. It has reduced its direct emissions by 70 percent since 2011, with a pledge to reach 90 percent by 2040. It committed to delivering up to $1 billion in pro bono consulting work for social impact projects between 2015 and 2025. (So far, it has delivered about $335 million.) Let's block ads! (Why?)

Week in ReviewStories discussed this week (6:45). Features Mainstage highlights from Circularity 20 (19:10) This week, GreenBiz hosted Circularity 20, the largest North American conference focused on circular economy issues. We'll be posting videos for many systems in coming weeks. Meanwhile, here are highlights from four of our mainstage speakers. (A second batch is forthcoming next week.) Dame Ellen MacArthur, founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which has been instrumental in catalyzing collective corporate action to address key circular economy issues such as plastics and food waste, kicked off the conference. This outtake feature her thoughts on systems change and the link between climate change and circularity. Audrey Choi, chief marketing officer and chief sustainability officer of Morgan Stanley, gave a great presentation on ways to engage the C-suite about circular economy issues. "I can’t think of another instance in which it would be a smart business position to take a finite natural resource, turn it into a product we use on average for 12 minutes and throw it away," she said, talking about single-use plastics.  Ovie Mughelli, the former Atlanta Falcons fullback who has dedicated his voice and resources to environmental education for children, challenged the business community to work harder on including environmental justice considerations in their strategy. Jasmine Crowe, founder and CEO of Goodr, addressed the persistent problem of food waste and made the case for why every company — no matter its industry — needs to be have a strategy for addressing it.  Reflections on circular economy progress (34:00) Lauren Phipps, director of the Circularity conference and senior analyst for GreenBiz, chats about the challenges — and opportunities — associated with taking the event online, the need to move from pilots into fully scaled projects and the imperative to prioritize concerns for equity and access in circular business processes. Green chemistry pioneer goes corporate (44:05) Chemist John Warner has joined materials company Zymergen as a research fellow, where he'll focus on building the 12 principles of green chemistry into its work. Warner and Zymergen co-founder and CEO Josh Hoffman chat about their new mission. *Music in this episode by Lee Rosevere: "Curiosity," "Knowing the Truth," "4th Avenue Walkup," "Going for a Coffee," "Here's the Thing" and "And So Then" *This episode was sponsored by WestRock Resources galore Greentech on the red sea. How do we innovate our way out of the climate crisis? Three professors from Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology discussing promising solutions in energy and water. Join the webcast at 1 p.m. EDT Sept. 8. Today's carbon-negative fuel. Exploring the potential for fleet emissions reductions through renewable natural gas. Register here for the discussion at 1 p.m. EDT Sept. 10. ESG values and a sustainable future. Why placing environment, social and governance principles at the center of COVID-19 recovery places makes sense for resilience and the bottom line. Sign up for the interactive session at 1 p.m. EDT Sept. 15. Inside The Climate Pledge. Senior executives from Amazon, Global Optimism and Verizon share insights on why collaborative corporate action on the climate crisis is more critical than ever. Join us during Climate Week at noon EDT Sept. 24. State of the Profession. Our sixth report examining the evolving role of corporate sustainability leaders. Download it here. The State of Green Business 2020. Our 13th annual analysis of key metrics and trends published here. Do we have a newsletter for you! We produce six weekly newsletters: GreenBuzz by Executive Editor Joel Makower (Monday); Transport Weekly by Senior Writer and Analyst Katie Fehrenbacher (Tuesday); VERGE Weekly by Executive Director Shana Rappaport and Editorial Director Heather Clancy (Wednesday); Energy Weekly by Senior Energy Analyst Sarah Golden (Thursday); Food Weekly by Carbon and Food Analyst Jim Giles (Thursday); and Circular Weekly by Director and Senior Analyst Lauren Phipps (Friday). You must subscribe to each newsletter in order to receive it. Please visit this page to choose which you want to receive. The GreenBiz Intelligence Panel is the survey body we poll regularly throughout the year on key trends and developments in sustainability. To become part of the panel, click here. Enrolling is free and should take two minutes. Stay connected To make sure you don't miss the newest episodes of GreenBiz 350, subscribe on iTunes. Have a question or suggestion for a future segment? E-mail us at [email protected]. Let's block ads! (Why?)

There were plenty of juicy news tidbits in Microsoft’s recent progress report about its goal to become carbon negative over the next decade. But its new goal to link at least 500 megawatts of forthcoming solar energy contracts to environmental justice considerations is bold for many reasons. For context, the total pledge amounts to about a quarter of the capacity that Microsoft already has signed (1.9 gigawatts) in solar and wind contracts. This is the largest commitment it has made to a single portfolio investment, so it isn’t some side project. Nor is this a reaction to the nationwide protests triggered by the death of George Floyd this spring — the active planning has been under way since December.  "We spend a lot of time talking about the energy transition needed if our society is going to transition to a net-zero economy by 2050," Microsoft’s environment chief, Lucas Joppa, told me. "Microsoft’s position is that the transition has to be an inclusive and just one." The arrangement, with project financer, investor and developer Sol Systems, will prioritize opportunities and investments in communities "disproportionately affected by environmental challenges." What does that mean more specifically?  The installations could be in urban neighborhoods that haven’t typically had access to economically priced clean energy resources or that historically have been disproportionately affected by pollution. But they also might be sited in rural communities that have been negatively affected by job losses triggered by the closure of fossil fuels plants or extraction operations, notes Sol Systems co-founder and CEO Yuri Horwitz. "We think it’s equally important that we engage all segments of society," he said.  As anyone responsible for renewable energy knows, it historically has been very difficult to build metrics around the social impacts of projects. The arrangement also will prioritize buying from minority and women-owned businesses. And it will provide at least $50 million in the form of grants to support educational programs, career training, habitat restoration and initiatives that provide low-income communities with access to clean energy and energy efficiency programs. "Solar is, and should be, an economic engine for everyone," Horwitz added. To make this work, the two companies created a framework power purchase agreement to cover individual projects as they are identified with the intention of getting them validated and approved more quickly. Among the terms: A certain portion of the revenue that’s generated will be reinvested back into the community where a solar farm is located. "You can do this at scale and at a price point that is economically doable," Joppa said. Microsoft will use third-party evaluators to help quantify and document both the social and environmental outcomes.  Lily Donge, a former principal in the energy practice at Rocky Mountain Institute and now director of corporate innovation for communities with Groundswell, believes Microsoft’s deal with Sol Systems is a sign of things to come. "We do not know whether the community process will be equitable, transparent or consultative," she wrote on the community solar organization’s blog. "But this is a signal that a giant tech company is willing to understand the demands of the community, under-served customers and the public at large." As anyone responsible for renewable energy knows, it historically has been very difficult to build metrics around the social impacts of projects, but Sol Systems has been focusing on methodologies for doing so for the past 12 years — it already has about 800 MW of similar projects in its portfolio, including deals it has done for Amazon and Under Armour. The latter project was built in Maryland on land that couldn’t be used for residential development; it will contribute about $1.4 million in tax revenue to the local community. Another Sol Systems ally is Nationwide Insurance, its financing partner. This isn’t the only relationship Microsoft will use to procure energy in the future, so it will be important to watch how that consideration bleeds into other contracts. I’ll definitely be asking. You should do so, too. This article first appeared in GreenBiz's weekly newsletter, VERGE Weekly, running Wednesdays. Subscribe here. Follow me on Twitter: @greentechlady. Let's block ads! (Why?)

Plenty of prognostications, including this one from the World Economic Forum, tout the integral role artificial intelligence could play in "saving the planet." Indeed, AI is integral to all manner of technologies, ranging from autonomous vehicles to more informed disaster response systems to smart buildings and data collection networks monitoring everything from energy consumption to deforestation.  The flip side to this rosy view is that there are plenty of ethical concerns to consider. What’s more, the climate impact of AI — both in terms of power consumption and all the electronic waste that gadgets create — is a legitimate, growing concern. Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst suggests the process of "training" neural networks to make decisions or searching them to find answers uses five times the lifetime emissions of the average U.S. car. Not an insignificant amount.  What does that mean if things continue on their current trajectory? Right now, data centers use about 2 percent of the world’s electricity. At the current rate of AI adoption — with no changes in the underlying computer server hardware and software — the data centers needed to run those applications could claim 15 percent of that power load, semiconductor firm Applied Materials CEO Gary Dickerson predicted in August 2019. Although progress is being made, he reiterated that warning last week. At the current rate of AI adoption — with no changes in the underlying computer server hardware and software — the data centers needed to run those applications could claim 15 percent of that power load. "Customized design will be critical," he told attendees of a longstanding industry conference, SemiconWest. "New system architectures, new application-specific chip designs, new ways to connect memory and logic, new memories and in-memory compute can all drive significant improvements in compute performance per watt." So, what’s being done to "bend the curve," so to speak? Technologists from Applied Materials, Arm, Google, Intel, Microsoft and VMware last week shared insights about advances that could help us avoid the most extreme future scenarios, if the businesses investing in AI technologies start thinking differently. While much of the panel (which I helped organize) was highly technical, here are four of my high-level takeaways for those thinking about harnessing AI for climate solutions. Get acquainted with the concept of "die stacking" in computing hardware design. There is concern that Moore’s Law, the idea that the number of transistors on integrated circuit will double every two years, is slowing down. That’s why more semiconductor engineers are talking up designs that stack multiple chips on top of each other within a system, allowing more processing capability to fit in a given space.  Rob Aitken, a research fellow with microprocessor firm Arm, predicts these designs will show up first in computing infrastructure that couples high-performance processing with very localized memory. "The vertical stacking essentially allows you to get more connectivity bandwidth, and it allows you to get that bandwidth at lower capacitance for lower power use, and also a lower delay, which means improved performance," he said during the panel. So, definitely look for far more specialized hardware. Remember this acronym, MRAM. It stands for magnetic random-access memory, a format that uses far less power in standby mode than existing technologies, which require energy to maintain the "state" of their information and respond quickly to processing requests when they pop up. Among the big-name players eyeing this market: Intel; Micron; Qualcomm; Samsung; and Toshiba. Plenty of R&D power there. Consider running AI applications in cloud data centers using carbon-free energy. That could mean deferring the processing power needed for certain workloads to times of day when a facility is more likely to be using renewable energy. "If we were able to run these workloads when we had this excess of green, clean, energy, right now we have these really high compute workloads running clean, which is exactly what we want," said Samantha Alt, cloud solution architect at Intel. "But what if we take this a step further, and we only had the data center running when this clean energy was available? We have a data center that’s awake when we have this excess amount of green, clean energy, and then asleep when it’s not." This is a technique that Google talked up in April, but it’s not yet widely used, and it will require attention to new cooling designs to keep the facilities from running too hot as well as memory components that can respond dynamically when a facility goes in and out of sleep mode. New system architectures, new application-specific chip designs, new ways to connect memory and logic, new memories and in-memory compute can all drive significant improvements in compute performance per watt.   Live on the edge. That could mean using specialized AI-savvy processors in some gadgets or systems you’re trying to make smarter such as automotive systems or smart phones or a building system. Rather than sending all the data to a massive, centralized cloud service, the processing (at least some of it) happens locally. Hey, if energy systems can be distributed, why not data centers?  "We have a lot of potential to move forward, especially when we bring AI to the edge," said Moe Tanabian, general manager for intelligent devices at Microsoft. "Why is edge important? There are lots of AI-driven tasks and benefits that we derive from AI that are local in nature. You want to know how many people are in a room: people counting. This is very valuable because when the whole HVAC system of the whole building can be more efficient, you can significantly lower the balance of energy consumption in major buildings." The point to all this is that getting to a nirvana in which AI can handle many things we’d love it to handle to help with the climate crisis will require some pretty substantial upgrades to the computing infrastructure that underlies it. The environmental implications of those system overhauls need to be part of data center procurement criteria immediately, and the semiconductor industry needs to step up with the right answers. Intel and AMD have been leading the way, and Applied Materials last week threw down the gauntlet, but more of the industry needs to wake up. This article first appeared in GreenBiz's weekly newsletter, VERGE Weekly, running Wednesdays. Subscribe here. Follow me on Twitter: @greentechlady. Let's block ads! (Why?)

The sustainability ambitions of the world’s largest cloud software companies — Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce — have been well-documented. The broad semiconductor industry’s position to date, however, has been less transparent and less ambitious, with the highly visible exceptions of AMD, IBM and Intel. That stance is shifting, as the sector contemplates the explosive growth projections for connected computing devices, including sensors, smartphones, tablet computers and personal computers, not to mention the massive server hardware needed to process artificial intelligence algorithms.  By 2030, there could be a half-trillion such devices "at the edge" of the digital networks driving business innovation around the planet, Applied Material President and CEO Gary Dickerson noted last week in a keynote address during a virtual edition of the industry’s annual conference, SEMICon West.  The association behind the gathering, SEMI, projects semiconductor revenue could reach $1 trillion by that same timeframe, more than double last year’s sales of about $470 billion. It previously took 20 years for the industry to double in size.  The big question for the sector at large and Applied Materials specifically, Dickerson said, is how to support accelerating growth without dramatically increasing the industrywide carbon footprint associated with creating all those components — currently estimated at 50 million metric tons of CO2 annually across more than 1,000 fabrication facilities worldwide (a.k.a. "fabs").  We are going to hold our supply chain to the same standards that we hold ourselves in the areas of environmental impact, labor standards, and diversity and inclusion. "I’ve been amazed at the increasing amount of power required to manufacture these ever-smaller chips, and I would join with others in encouraging all of the equipment manufacturers to work together to reduce carbon emissions in the manufacturing of these advanced semiconductors and finally continue decarbonizing the power supply on which the data centers operate," former Vice President Al Gore told me last week, when I asked him how the semiconductor industry could step up. Applied, which specializes in materials engineering, sells equipment and services used in the production of virtually every new chip and advanced display in the world. It generated more than $14.6 billion in annual revenue in 2019, and Dickerson estimated its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions — mainly from the power used to run its labs and factories — was the equivalent of 145,000 metric tons of CO2 in 2019. (Disclosure: Al Gore’s investment firm, Generation Investment Management, holds a position in the company. Applied was responsible for my invitation to lead an interview with Gore last week during the same conference.) "The first thing we need to do is decouple our growth from our environmental impact," Dickerson noted. "If we double or triple the size of our company, it would be irresponsible to double or triple our carbon footprint!" That conviction resulted in the company’s decision to adopt a series of new policies designed to shore up its environmental, social and governance (ESG) story, including a commitment to use 100 percent renewable energy worldwide by 2030 (by 2022 for its U.S. operations) and to cut its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 50 percent over the next decade. Moreover, Applied has created a sweeping new initiative intended to bring other companies in the semiconductor supply chain along for the ride. "We are going to hold our supply chain to the same standards that we hold ourselves in the areas of environmental impact, labor standards, and diversity and inclusion," Dickerson said. "We’re introducing a sustainability scorecard into our supply selection process, alongside our traditional metrics for performance, cost and quality." Making improvements of this magnitude and — at the same time — driving the technology roadmap forward is not easy and requires deep partnerships with customers. The new program, SuCCESS2030 (short for Supply Chain Certification for Environmental and Social Responsibility) will extend to all aspects of Applied’s operations, from procurement to packaging. It will now require these shared commitments from its suppliers, according to the press release about the program: A shift to intermodal shipping to reduce the industry’s reliance on air freight, aiming for an interim emissions reduction of 15 percent by 2024. A transition to recycled content packaging, with a target of 80 percent of such materials within three years. The complete elimination of phosphate-based pretreatments for metal surfaces within four years. The creation of a diversity and inclusion strategy to increase Applied’s spend with minority- and women-owned businesses by the same time frame. (There is no disclosed percentage for this goal.) "The response has been great, and we have six key partner suppliers already signed up to help us kick off this program," Dickerson said. Those companies are Advanced Energy, Benchmark Electronics, Foxsemicon Integrated Technology, NGK Insulators, Ultra Clean Holding and VAT. Technically, Applied doesn’t yet have an official emissions reduction target in place for its Scope 3 footprint, but the company has joined the Science Based Targets initiative with the intention of doing so within two years, according to Dickerson. To improve its own competitive story with customers, Applied will use risk scenario analysis recommendations from the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, and it has adopted a new "ecoUP" policy that includes a "3 by 30" goal for improvements in its own manufacturing systems on a per-wafer basis: a 30 percent reduction in energy consumption, a 30 percent cut in chemical consumption and a 30 percent increase in "throughput density," the number of wafers that can be produced per square foot of cleanroom space. "Making improvements of this magnitude and, at the same time, driving the technology roadmap forward is not easy and requires deep partnerships with customers," Dickerson said. Among those actively working with Applied on the new approach include Intel and Micro Technology, which is stepping up its own commitments. The latter intends to dedicate 2 percent of its annual capital expenditures over the next five to seven years — about $1 billion — on environmental and social stewardship.  Let's block ads! (Why?)

In the six years since Nancy Mahon assumed responsibility for CSR and sustainability strategy at Estée Lauder Companies — she's currently senior vice president of corporate citizenship and sustainability — her team has launched a series of new initiatives that are a "first" among her organization's sector.The list includes the company's first virtual power purchase agreement for 22 megawatts, a move made in pursuit of its 2020 net-zero carbon emission goal. More recently, it energized on-site two solar arrays — one at its Melville, New York, campus that will produce 1,800 megawatt-hours of power annually, and a smaller one at the Aveda brand's campus in Minnesota. The New York installation will provide 100 percent of the electricity required by the office operations, while the Minnesota one will contribute up to 50 percent — the remainder of its power will come from utility-sourced wind power.  Moreover, Estée Lauder Companies also has declared its intention to make 75 percent to 100 percent of its packaging recyclable, refillable, reusable or recoverable by 2025 — the strategy will depend on the needs of individual brands. As with many companies heavily dependent on nature for product ingredients, Estée Lauder Companies is developing biodiversity action plans and becoming far more attuned to it role in deforestation, afforestation and reforestions. And befitting its heavily female clientele, the company also funds initiatives focused on raising up girls and women, such as HERProject, a BSR initiative aimed at supporting low-income women in global supply chains. I recently checked in with Mahon, one of this year's 25 Badass Women in Sustainability, to get an update on how her priorities have shifted in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the corporate awakening about systemic racism. In mid-June, the company issued a series of sweeping new racial equity policies, i including reaching "U.S. population parity" for Black employees at all levels of the company within five years, doubling the amount spent on sourcing ingredients, packaging materials and supplies from Black-owned businesses over the next three years, and committing $10 million over the next three years to support racial and social justice initiatives. "Moving forward, I think where we are energized as a division — it's become super clear — on how core the work we do is to the business, not only the environmental side, but also the social side," Mahon told me. Following are excerpts from our conversations, edited for clarity and length. Heather Clancy: How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed the focus of the Estée Lauder sustainability team, if at all?  Nancy Mahon: I think the clear disparate impacts of COVID-19 across countries and communities has really highlighted, and I think really illustrated, the intersection ... of gender justice and social injustice, essentially, and racial injustice. I think while before that intersectionality might have been a little obtuse for folks, I think it's much clearer now that if you come from a community where there's high rates of pollution, there's a huge intersection between high rates of pollution, access to healthcare and health outcomes and COVID-19 outcomes. So I think the speed, the velocity and the ferocity of COVID-19 really highlighted that in a way that I think both unearthed that underlying reality and threw a spotlight on it. And also for consumers, [it] really allowed an opportunity to focus on what was most important in their lives around healthcare, around their families, and put an emphasis — really, I would say it hasn't changed it, but it has really accelerated consumer interest, particularly — on supply chains, which is super interesting ...  I think similar to HIV, there is a question of what will we make of this moment and how will we as stewards of funds or stewards of companies or stewards of our families make a difference. Internally, what it's allowed us to do in a very agile, very energizing way is move very quickly across different functions to stand up programs that we were planning on setting up. For instance, we created an employee relief fund, and we had targeted that we were going to do it basically this fall. When [COVID-19} happened,"‘We thought, you know what? We have to do this right away." We had incredible partnership from [human resources] and [information technology] and legal, and we started up right away, then globalized it.  We also created a race and social justice fund in a matter of a couple of weeks. In that way, we've had opportunities, which hopefully we've seized upon. Moving forward, I think where we are energized as a division — it's become super clear — on how core the work we do is to the business, not only the environmental side, but also the social side. Clancy: In a previous role, you were very closely involved with addressing the AIDS crisis, which is a humanitarian but also an economic crisis as well. How are you layering that perspective into the strategy as you're mobilizing around COVID-19?  Mahon: If there is a positive to all of this, it's that in terms of HIV, it took us well over two decades to have a deep discussion around structural racism or classism or the ways in which structures like a criminal justice system or a healthcare system basically disadvantage certain communities. It was always very hard to get at that discussion. It was much easier to fund street outreach or various research pieces or services than it was to really say, "We have to look at the way we act — either as consumers or as companies — and we might need to give something up, in addition to actually giving." I think what is exciting about this moment — and I think this is the largest civil rights movement clearly in the United States — there are similarities certainly to what I think the LGBTQ movement experienced around HIV. That was much more, I would say, expanded over time, but I think the discussions are similar. What I think also then is a big emphasis understandably in that movement around action, whether it be FDA approval of drugs or the acceleration of accessibility of healthcare or integration of HIV into other healthcare systems. And we're seeing that very quickly now, the fact that out of the gate we're funding a group like Equal Justice Initiative around structural racism and the criminal justice system is exciting.  There has been one difference: The acceleration of funding in the field. I was on a call [recently] and Dan Walker from Ford, who's so eloquent, basically said that there is roughly a half a billion dollars now in the field of racial and social justice, whereas last year there was only 10 percent of that.  Clancy: Wow.  Mahon: So I think similar to HIV, there is a question of what will we make of this moment and how will we as stewards of funds or stewards of companies or stewards of our families make a difference. How will we change our behavior? I think that's the exciting moment that we have. The complexity, of course, is that it's up against enormous economic loss, a lot of fear — which we always had in HIV, but we didn't have the economic backdrop that we currently have overall to COVID-19. But there's a lot of great people who are rowing in the same direction now. The question is how do we integrate ourselves? How do we sit in on committees that are focusing on office reopenings or how we're doing with COVID? How do we integrate social impact and environmental impact into the way we do business every day, and how we as a luxury company kind of show up in our communities? One of our strongest brands, Aveda, is in Blaine, Minneapolis, and we've had town halls and will continue to have town halls with our employees there, and how are they engaging, how are they thinking about how they can help? We spent a lot of time thinking about, well, what are virtual volunteering opportunities? What are the ways that we can basically help our employees channel their passion? We decided that we were going to allow, in our year one [of our response], our employees to give away most of the money. We created a five times matching campaign, and the groups we selected were Black Lives Matter, Global Foundation Network, Equal Justice Initiative, Race Forward and NAACP Legal Defense Fund. And we basically said to our employees: Every dollar that you give, we will match it five times. We saw literally over 4,000 employees engage. We had a higher engagement rate than we've ever seen. People were posting on their social channels. We'll be giving away almost $2.3 million through that vehicle. Clancy: Putting the long-term lens on, have there been any adjustments to your long-term corporate sustainability plans in this period? Have your priorities changed?  Mahon: I don't think they changed. We have been fortunate in that our overall performance over the last I'd say two years in particular has really accelerated. We're getting recognized by CDP or MSCI or ISS for that, which we find very gratifying. It feels like directionally we're headed in the right way. And we certainly see in our brands, our consumers and our employees are basically saying, "We want more of this." While it hasn't changed the direction, it's definitely accelerated. For instance, our climate work. We hit net zero early. We're looking to hit our science-based target early…  We are leaning in on our social impact work, which we're historically very well-known for. We have integration with social justice. That was an area in our social impact work which we hadn't done in the past. Many of us had done somewhat similar work. We leaned in and spoke with allies and the Ford Foundation and some of the great foundations that are doing this work. We are looking forward to being part of a broader community and trying to leverage our corporate microphone and our company values to play an even bigger role. So I'd say [we're moving] faster, perhaps more dimensionalized, and definitely [have a] better understanding not only how do we fund racial and social justice, but how do we as a business take concrete action around hiring and what our creative marketing looks like. So that's very exciting, because what you don't want as somebody in my job is to kind of be the nice people that aren't really integrated into the business.  Clancy: Much of the work on renewable energy has really focused on electricity. Obviously, one of the toughest areas and processes to decarbonize is manufacturing. What solutions are you exploring for your production facilities? Mahon: Waste and water and energy are all linked together. Within each facility, we have an incredible team that's been focusing on this for quite some time, which is looking at how efficient is our water use? Is there a way to reduce water use? Have we maxed out solar? And are there internal solutions before we move to offsets that we can buy to reduce our energy use? And the answer there is yes. It does vary somewhat by country, and by the state of the green energy and green finance in those countries. Also, as you know, government plays an important role, and of course, being in the U.S., we've seen a real rollback in terms of incentivizing green practices … What you don't want as somebody in my job is to kind of be the nice people that aren't really integrated into the business. I think the best thing that we can do is help the market grow so there are more alternatives for companies like ours. I think we don't have to do any convincing at this point. It's really about the level of sophistication of what we can invest in, and I think also kind of a deeper discussion about offsets, the quality of offsets, and where do offsets get us.  Clancy: Can you share your vision for sustainable packaging? How do things like reuse or refillable containers fit into that?  Mahon: What we're trying to do, really, is to give the brand presence the most flexibility they can to get to sustainable packaging, and while at the same time reducing plastics and reducing carbon footprint. And that's kind of a juggling act, frankly, because in many instances it involves added cost. We have a five-year glide path for every single brand. The ability to shift from plastic to glass is easier in skincare. Makeup innovation and sustainable packaging is a new frontier, and we're really active in that. As you likely know, the size of makeup packaging, particularly samples, is too small — it falls through the filters in the MRFs — so it's one of the areas that we're really focusing on now, and really inviting innovation.  Clancy: You're very excited about forestry and forest options as a means of carbon removal. Are there any particular things you're looking at that you can mention? Can you elaborate?  Mahon: There's been some companies that have basically supported, through grant funds, the creation and preservation of forests. And so we are looking at that. More directly, though, we would love to have direct investment in forestry as part of our climate portfolio, and an ability to create green energy. It gets somewhat complex, but obviously, we're a beauty company, and we don't want to be in the business of running forests … Those are the discussions that we're having now, and we've been looking at various things over the last couple of years. We don't have anything specific. We're basically in due diligence phase on a couple of things. But because this moves so quickly, it doesn't really make any sense to name names. But we would love, as a result of the article, to certainly invite both other companies who are looking at this [to talk about this and also have] a larger discussion about private/public partnerships around encouraging investment in forest preservation. We recently published a no deforestation policy, as many companies have, so there's a nice intersectionality there between no deforestation and improving our climate component.  Clancy: I have two more questions. One is just a thread I hear often. What role will collaboration play in Estée Lauder's strategy? What sorts of partnerships are you prioritizing?  Mahon: One of the exciting aspects of our company and our board … is we have folks who've worked in all different sectors. We have a lot of folks who've worked in government, like myself. We've worked in nonprofits. We've worked in for profits. So really, in order to move the ball down the field in a meaningful way, whether in social impact form or another form of impact, we have to basically look at this in a sector-agnostic way in which we really have company discussions about what we're doing in climate.  What does government bring to the table? OK, there's tax incentives. They can give various breaks in various laws, regulatory, both the carrot and the stick. What does business bring? Well, business brings enormous amounts of business discipline of understanding markets, understanding consumer needs, understanding how to scale a solution, understanding how to, candidly, abandon a solution if it's not selling. And then NGOs clearly bring a lot to the table in terms of advocacy.  I think that as we've moved so rapidly in the for-profit sector being in favor of green energy and of strong climate solutions, the role I believe of NGOs will be more to be a bridge between government and I would say also private foundations [to come up with solutions]. For instance, in our VPPA, we will have excess green energy. Do we want to be in a position as a beauty company of selling energy, green energy? Or would we rather donate it? We're having some conversations with the Rockefeller Foundation about, "Well, could we figure out a way where we could just donate it?" That's where I think we really do need these cross-sector solutions.  Clancy: My last question is what do you feel is your most important priority as a chief sustainability officer in this moment? Mahon: At the end of the day, the great pleasure and complexity and entrepreneurism of CSO jobs is that we don't own the P&Ls generally of the issues we need to influence. So, I would say the biggest priority really is continuing to listen to our key stakeholders with empathy, and be as responsive as we can, to try to run alongside the train of the business … A lot of what we do is obviously bring a substantive area of expertise, but also integrate as best as we can empathically to the business, and to drive value. At the end of the day, if we drive value for communities and our shareholders and our consumers, then we drive value for the business, and that is I think the great challenge … How do you sit at the table as a business person and understand and have empathy for the great demands being placed for instance on our retail team, and at the same time build climate solutions that help those retail teams, and don't seem sort of pie in the sky and divorced from the rest of the business? Ultimately, how do we leverage the passions and the interests of our employees and our consumers and now our investors, which is great. Because I think that kind of creates an unlimited path.  Let's block ads! (Why?)

Who is responsible for emissions? Where did they originate? How can we be sure? A global coalition fronted by former Vice President Al Gore promises granular insights and data into those sources — down to individual power plants, ships or factories.Climate TRACE (short for Tracking Real-time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions) intends to use a massive worldwide network of satellite images, land- and sea-based sensors and advanced artificial intelligence to generate what it’s describing as the "most thorough and reliable data on emissions the world has ever seen." The long lag it takes to calculate this information today is untenable if countries and the corporate sector hope to act quickly, the group wrote in a blog about the initiative, co-authored by Gore and Gavin McCormick, founder and executive director of coalition member WattTime. "From companies looking to select cleaner manufacturing suppliers, to investors seeking to divest from polluting industries, to consumers making choices about which businesses to patronize, one thing is clear: a reliable way to measure where emissions are coming from is necessary," they wrote. "Climate TRACE will empower all of these actors."  Some of the innovation around new materials has been particularly impressive to me, materials like silicon carbide. Climate TRACE is just the latest example of the former vice president’s decades-long commitment to educating the world about the climate crisis, through The Climate Reality Project, and to investing in technologies and solutions that could address it, through Generation Investment Manager.  Emissions monitoring using advanced technologies is something all members of the coalition have been working on for some time, but breakthroughs in software and processing technologies — as well as the will to take action more quickly than mid-decade — prompted the coalition members to step forward with the goal of making its first report before the United Nations COP26 conference in 2021. Candidly, Gore is the reason I’m on the corporate climate beat, so I was inspired by the invitation to interview him as a virtual keynote session for SEMICON West, a conference focused on members of the semiconductor industry. "There are real indications that this COVID-19 pandemic has actually accelerated the shift toward more sustainable technologies and as much as anything else, I would say there has been a very dramatic change in attitudes," Gore told me at the beginning of our chat, prerecorded before the Climate TRACE announcement. To be clear, the data isn’t encouraging. As Gore related during our conversation, 19 of the 20 hottest years "ever measured with instruments" have been in the last 20 years — and 2020 is on pace to dethrone the current record holder for hottest year on record. What’s more, Gore observes that we’re still emitting 152 million tons of heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours. The consequences of that imbalance are felt in water cycle disruptions, sea-level rises, far stronger storms and the spread of tropical diseases northward, he noted. "It’s a real horror story and since our civilization has been built up almost entirely during this climate envelope, if you will, that has persisted since the end of the last ice age, the fact that we’re changing those conditions so radically poses an existential threat to the survival of human civilization as we know it." But advances in processing, communications and data analysis technologies give Gore hope that humans still can take meaningful action, especially with new resolve and urgency borne out of the COVID-19 crisis, Gore told me. "This can be the stimulus we need for sustainable prosperity in the wake of the pandemic as we finally come out of it, so it’s so important that this tremendous industry has awakened to this challenge and is providing tremendous leadership," he said.   Following is a partial transcript of our conversation, which picks up after Gore’s opening remarks. The comments were edited for clarity and length.  Heather Clancy: Do you see any long-term changes emanating from the COVD-19 crisis that could help the world deliver a zero-carbon future? Are there nuggets of hope in the response that you can point to specifically? Gore:  Well, you have to go country by country, and I don’t want to dwell too much on the response here in the United States right now. I’m a recovering politician, and I don’t want to stray back into that field. The longer I go without a relapse, the less likely one becomes. But you can find examples of hope and optimism in many country’s response to the pandemic and their success should be emulated elsewhere. I’ll leave it at that. But there are many realizations that are coming from this. We now know that the burning of fossil fuels is a precondition for higher mortality rates under COVID-19. There was a study of 324 cities in China showing a linear correlation between the infection rate and the death rate from COVID-19 compared to the amount of fossil fuels burned in those locations. A Harvard study showed the same thing here in the U.S. and even if you go back to the 1918-1919 [flu] pandemic, there was a very thorough study just 18 months ago showing that the amount of coal burned in cities throughout the U.S., again, was correlated precisely with the death rate from the great flu pandemic a little over 100 years ago. There is a lot of scholarship on how diversity in crowds, if it’s properly appreciated and tapped into, can make any group and any company way smarter than the smartest person in that company. Now we’ve already also seen with COVID-19 a rapid reduction in travel and an increase in working from home and I’m sure many of the people listening to us, Heather, have had the same experience I know you and I have had. That is thinking, "Wow, this stuff works pretty well. Maybe we don’t have to make all of those airplane flights that we have been chained to for all this time,’" and there are many other examples. There are real indications that this COVID-19 pandemic has actually accelerated the shift toward more sustainable technologies and as much as anything else, I would say there has been a very dramatic change in attitudes. I don’t want to sound Pollyannish, but I really believe there has been a kind of a general awakening.  The gains from the LGBTQ community of the last several years are being consolidated. The gains demanded in gender equity over the last several years are also being consolidated, and I think, again, the shocking new awareness on the part of so many of the inequities and injustices that communities of color have been experiencing for a lot of reasons. I mean, they are much more likely to be downwind from the smokestacks and downstream from the hazardous waste flows, but they also have much less access to quality healthcare. Their housing, by and large, is not the same. They don’t have the Zoom-able jobs like we do right now on average. Incomes, I mean, it takes 11.5 typical Black families, average Black families to make up the net worth of one white family, average white family in the U.S. and these statistics have remained unchanged for 50 years. We’ve got to change that, and I think there is a general increase in awareness, an awakening if you will. One jokester called it The Great Awokening. I don’t think I’ll use that phrase as my own, but I do think there is something to it. I think that the rising generation is demanding a better future, and if they knew all that you have planned and underway in this industry, they would feel so good about it. I’m going to do my part to make sure they do find out about it. Clancy: What foundational technologies do you see coming out of this moment of destruction that could really make an impact? And let’s go to the semiconductor industry. What positive developments do you see happening where they could really make a difference? Gore: Some of the innovation around new materials has been particularly impressive to me, materials like silicon carbide … These have been already essential in, well, take increasing the range of Tesla’s electric vehicles and actually that’s another mark of the change. Tesla just became the most valuable automobile company in the world, surpassing Toyota. That’s pretty impressive.  I’ll mention one more: Innovations around how semiconductors are packaged, that’s also been a prominent trend and essential in enabling the next generation of algorithms which power things like drug discovery, which has got our attention right now, and smart electricity grids which are much more power efficient. Clancy: What could get in the way of these advances? What concerns should the industry have from an environmental standpoint as they take these to the mainstream? Gore: Well, we are seeing a challenge to the efficacy of self-government. I don’t want to sound too highfalutin on this, but really here in the U.S., we have seen what can stand in our way when we pretty much know what to do and we just have to get our act together and think and act collectively to do it and when we let partisanship get out of bounds and when we don’t accept the authority of knowledge, when we tolerate an assault on reason and when we allow powerful players in the economy to embark on information strategies that are intended to put out wrong facts. I started to say alternative facts but, again, I don’t want to trip over all of those controversies. But it is a problem, seriously, and we have seen that spread to some other countries like Brazil and the Philippines and Hungary, not to mention Russia. Democracy itself is the most efficient way of making collective decisions because it allows us to harvest the wisdom of crowds. There is a lot of scholarship on how diversity in crowds, if it’s properly appreciated and tapped into, can make any group and any company way smarter than the smartest person in that company. So I do believe that we are seeing a number of positive developments, and I do have a lot of confidence in this rising generation that is insisting that we get on with these solutions. Clancy: You referenced data centers and cloud computing services earlier, particularly for enabling things like artificial intelligence — which we need for drug discovery, we need for so many things, so many applications related to conservation and climate change. But these things use a lot of electricity. How can the tech industry address this? Gore: New technologies, innovation efficiency — including some of the new developments that I’ve already mentioned — will help, but we’ve got to go into this with our eyes wide open. Applied Materials has told us that, has told the world that their studies indicate that we could actually see a very large increase in the amount of energy used for information processing and that makes this challenge even more urgent. But I do continue to be optimistic, very optimistic on the ability of this industry to rise to the challenge and there are some things the industry could do, and I know some of these have been discussed.  First of all, collaborate across the industry from semiconductor equipment makers to software companies with academia to think about how to deliver a step change in the efficiency of data center semiconductors. It’s been encouraging already to see cutting-edge applications of artificial intelligence to effectively reduce data server energy use by significant amounts without any changes to hardware. I’ve been following for a few years now Google’s use of its DeepMind Division to dramatically reduce energy use in server farms, again, without any new hardware. That’s awfully impressive… Now they had the advantage of a lot of structured data to work with. They’re Google, after all, so they got a lot of structured data but there are thousands of use cases where that same approach can also be used.  Secondly, reduce the electricity required to manufacture semiconductors. I’ve been amazed at the increasing amount of power required to manufacture these ever-smaller chips, and I would join with others in encouraging all of the equipment manufacturers to work together to reduce carbon emissions in the manufacturing of these advanced semiconductors and finally continue decarbonizing the power supply on which the data centers operate… Clancy: I want to go back to something you referenced in your opening remarks, which is the environmental justice issue. It’s well-documented that climate change has a disproportionate impact on communities of color. How can the tech industry act internally and externally to change this to get rid of that digital divide that prevents progress? Gore: Well, I think first of all, this awakening that I talked about has affected people in the semiconductor industry. You look at these protest marches around the U.S. The vast majority of those marching are white and two-thirds of the American people now say they support the Black Lives Matter movement, a dramatic change compared to just two months ago. And, of course, George Floyd’s murder was a turning point but it’s also reflective of the changes that we have seen more broadly in our society. I mentioned already the fact that the communities of color are suffering disproportionately from COVID-19, and there are many reasons for it. But it’s wise for every industry, particularly a cutting-edge industry like this one, to respond very effectively to the rising demands from two groups.  First, younger employees who want their work to have meaning. Many of the executives listening to us have already long since learned that when they interview the best and brightest to join their firms, they find that the job applicants are interviewing them. They want to know whether or not the company shares their views on sustainability and shares their views on diversity. I think that the Science Based Targets initiative is a particularly important initiative that can make a tremendous difference, and I want to commend the leaders in this industry who have taken that step. And, by the way, I mentioned the wisdom of crowds earlier. I don’t want to emphasize it too much, but we’ve studied that a lot at Generation, and the scholars tell us and the evidence proves that you benefit tremendously in your collective thinking from as much diversity as possible on every matrix except one.  You don’t want any diversity on values. But then if you have different life experiences, different points of view, different religious traditions, different ethnicities and all of the rest orientations, that adds to the ability of any company to make better collective decisions. And so for the tech industry, specifically, it’s long been known that this industry has work to do in order to deal with the struggle to become more racially and culturally diverse. We’ve seen software companies make some very encouraging efforts to broaden their hiring funnels through apprenticeships and scholarships, but that could probably be increased in the semiconductor industry also. Clancy: Speed is of the essence in the fight against the climate crisis. How can the tech industry and the government work together maybe like in the area of research and development but also more broadly to make the most of this moment? Gore: Well, I think that the Science Based Targets initiative is a particularly important initiative that can make a tremendous difference, and I want to commend the leaders in this industry who have taken that step. I want to encourage others to adopt and embrace a science-based target to make sure that their activities and their emissions reductions plans are in keeping with what the global scientific community, the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] says is necessary to stay below a 1.5-degree Celsius increase in temperatures. Look, this is an existential threat to our society, and I know I’ve used that phrase, but we’ve got to accept that and we have got to take leadership and make sure that we’re doing everything we can. It’s just unbearable to imagine a future generation living with the kinds of consequences the scientists tell us would ensue if we don’t solve this crisis. And imagine them looking back at us in the year 2020 and asking, "Why in the hell didn’t you do something about it? Didn’t you hear the scientists? Couldn’t you hear Mother Nature screaming at you?"  Every night on the TV news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation, practically. We’re appropriately focused on the pandemic now, but even now we’re seeing these extreme weather events and the increasingly dire forecasts from the scientists. So I’m encouraged by this industry, and I think that the science-based targets approach is a really great step, and I’d encourage everybody to adopt them. Let's block ads! (Why?)

Apple already has ventured far beyond most other companies when it comes to pushing for climate action within its supply chain. Consider that it has convinced more than 70 Apple suppliers to use renewable energy to produce products on its behalf, an effort funded in part by close to $5 billion in green bonds issued by the technology giant as well as a dedicated pool of money in China.  Now, it's wandering farther into uncharted territory. With its latest set of combined sustainability commitments, Apple is pushing for carbon neutrality across its entire business by the end of this decade, including its supply chain and the life cycle for its products. Its own operations have been carbon neutral for some time, thanks in large part to its extensive investments in renewable energy projects. [embedded content]While every large company focuses to some extent on motivating suppliers to embrace sustainability principles such as reduced emissions or zero waste, few have aggressively and officially extended their corporate carbon neutrality pledges into the Scope 3 realm and into to their entire value chain. IKEA, L'Oreal, Microsoft and Unilever stand out as the notable recent exceptions in my sphere of knowledge. (I'd love to hear about more.) "By driving this scale of climate ambition through its supply chain, Apple is making a big, global contribution to the move to clean energy, transport and manufacturing. It will have a particularly big impact in some of the most critical markets for tackling greenhouse gases. The 2030 timing is as important as the scale of this move. By then, the whole world needs to halve carbon emissions," said Sam Kimmins, head of the RE100 initiative at the Climate Group, in a statement. As of this update — and thanks to new projects in Arizon, Oregon, and Illinois — Apple has supported the development of more than 1 gigawatt of clean energy to support its own corporate campus footprint. Apple's new carbon neutrality strategy will be supported by a number of investments, including a carbon solutions fund to protect and restore forests (something that Microsoft and Amazon are also prioritizing). Its first projects, in partnership with Conservation International, include a unique focus on restoring mangroves — which can store up to 10 times more carbon than forests on land. The overall aim of this nature-based carbon solutions fund is to remove 1 million to 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, with the aim of scaling over time. "This approach is more than buying carbon credits — it is an investment in nature that provides meaningful returns for both the planet and the people who invest in it," Apple notes in 2020 annual environmental progress report. Speaking of investments in people, Apple has created an Impact Accelerator meant specifically to invest in minority-owned businesses focused on "positive outcomes" in its supply chain or addressing communities disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. "Systemic racism and climate change are not separate issues, and they will not abide separate solutions," said Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives for Apple, in a statement. "We have a generational opportunity to help build a greener and more just economy, one where we develop whole new industries in the pursuit of giving the next generation a planet worth calling home." Apple hasn't said how much the accelerator will allocate in funding toward addressing the climate crisis, but the effort is part of Apple's larger $100 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative announced in June. We'll be watching this initiative closely. Plenty of other updates are included in Apple's progress report. I'll leave you with a few highlights:  7 gigawatts and counting. That's how much clean energy companies within Apple supply chain have committed to using. In China and Japan, Apple also has stepped in to help facilitate the development of close to 500 megawatts of solar and wind projects. Incidentally, while many of these initiatives are international, close to a dozen involve facilities in the United States. A new materials diet. Apple is using the first batch of the low-carbon aluminum it has been developing in production related to the 16-inch MacBook Pro notebook computer. Liam and Daisy, meet Dave. The company has added another disassembly robot within its materials recovering and circular production lab in Austin, Texas. This one takes out the Taptic Engine from iPhones, which is the haptics technology component. (You can catch a video here.) Recycled and rare. All rare elements included in the aforementioned Taptic Engine were reclaimed from recycling. 35 percent. That's how much Apple reduced its actual carbon footprint since it peaked in 2015. This story was updated at noon EDT July 21 to remove the Greenpeace USA comment, as it did not properly reflect certain publicly stated elements of Apple's strategy. Let's block ads! (Why?)

It isn’t often I have the mindspace to proactively follow up on every commitment proclaimed by the companies I cover. But I recently paused to catch up about one that has particular relevance as more companies act to address their Scope 3 emissions reductions, those generated by supply chains and customers: AMD’s bold pledge back in 2014 to improve the energy efficiency of its mobile processors — the components used in notebook computers and specialized embedded systems, such as medical imaging equipment or industrial applications — by 25 times by 2020.Not-so-spoiler alert: The fact that I’m bringing it up should be a big hint that the company has delivered. In fact, AMD overachieved the goal, delivering a 31.7 times improvement with its new Ryzen 7 4800H processor. In layperson’s terms, that means that the chip consumes 84 percent energy, while taking 80 percent less compute time for certain tasks. For you and me, that means batteries last longer. For companies buying entire portfolios of devices based on these processors, they will see their electricity consumption reduced. (The specific reduction you’d see by upgrading 50,000 laptops would be 1.4 million kilowatt-hours.) Consider this perspective from tech research analyst Bob O’Donnell, president of TECHnalysis Research: "Lower energy consumption has never been more important for the planet, and the company’s ability to meet its target while also achieving strong processor performance is a great reflection of what a market-leading, engineering-focus company they’ve become." Indeed, when I chatted with Susan Moore, AMD’s corporate vice president for corporate responsibility and government affairs, she told me it took "a full company focus and a lot of innovation" by the AMD engineering team to make the goal happen. Note to others attempting the same sort of thing. Although the company had pretty good visibility into what it would be able to pull off early on during the six-year period, there were plenty of questions marks, and it took unwavering support (and faith) from AMD CEO Lisa Su to keep true, Moore said.  Actually getting there took some very specific design changes, outlined in a blog by AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster. Here are some of them: Investments in new semiconductor manufacturing processors (specifically 7 nanometer technology) Changes to the real-time power management algorithms The integration of the central processor and graphics architecture into a common "system on a chip" (among other architecture changes) Changes to the interconnections between the components (its proprietary approach for this is called the Infinity Fabric) Moore said close collaboration with customers (such as the original equipment manufacturers using AMD chips for their computers) was also critical. "A large part is the ability to sit down with likeminded organizations," she noted.  Plus, disclosure. AMD decided to declare its progress year to year. (Here's the report card from 2018, for an idea of how it shared the information.) "That was definitely a risk, but we thought it was very important that is was something that we talk about along the way, so we did measurements every year," Moore said.  I wish every company were that transparent. Let's block ads! (Why?)