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Meta Powers Towards Net Zero with Carbon Removal Projects

Posted on February 7, 2024February 7, 2024 by dishanth

Any organisation worth their sustainability salt knows that reaching net zero emissions in operations alone is not enough

Decarbonization must extend beyond offices and factories to include Scope 3, from the emissions caused by suppliers to those created by employees.

For Meta, the world’s fifth-biggest tech company, this challenge is being met with ambitious targets and bold, meaningful action.

Having already hit net zero emissions in global operations in 2020, the social media giant now has its sustainability sights set on achieving net zero value chain emissions by 2030.

This is quite the challenge, given 99% of Meta’s carbon footprint came from Scope 3 in 2022 – and this continues to rise.

“We know that reaching net zero emissions across our value chain will not be an easy task,” Rachel Peterson, Vice President of Data Centre Strategy at Meta said in the company’s 2023 Sustainability Report.

“Right now, our Scope 3 emissions are increasing and will continue to do so as we work to support the global demand for the services we provide.”

Meta Tackles Hard-to-Abate Sectors with Carbon Removal Projects

Meta acknowledges that reaching this goal requires a significant shift in how it builds infrastructure and operates its entire business – and the 20-year-old company is prioritising efficiency and circularity in its business decisions and embracing low-carbon technology to operate with a lower emissions footprint.

For example, through its supplier engagement programme, Meta is working to decarbonise its supply chain and enable at least two-thirds of its suppliers to set SBTi-aligned reduction targets by 206.

However, there are some emissions from hard-to-abate sectors the Facebook owner knows will be difficult to reduce by the end of the decade.

And so to tackle this, Meta has turned to carbon removal projects, the third pillar in its high-level emissions reduction strategy.

In a white paper outlining its Net Zero Strategy, the company says investing in value chain emissions reductions projects is necessary to address sources it can’t directly influence – like companies or processes used to extract and process the copper in data centre hardware or mechanical electrical equipment.

“These projects offer a significant opportunity to decarbonise our business at pace and scale require to achieve our 2030 reduction target,” the paper states.

For Meta, a diverse approach to carbon removal that includes both nature-based and technological approaches is crucial – not only to ensure near-term climate impact but to support carbon removal solutions for the future.

This strategy involves the purchase of credits from projects that align with Meta’s principles, from reforestation to investment in direct air capture technology.

Nature-Based Solutions in Mitigating Carbon Emissions

Since 2021, the social media giant has supported numerous nature-based carbon removal projects, from Australia to Kenya, including increasing forest carbon stock of community ejido forests in Oaxaca and increasing stored carbon via protection of forests that provide habitat for mitigating salmon in California.

And demonstrating its continued commitment to investing in nature-based solutions to mitigate carbon emissions, Meta recently signed a major carbon credits deal for 6.75 million carbon credits with Aspiration, a leading provider of sustainable financial services.

These credits hail from a myriad of ecosystem restoration and natural carbon removal approaches, including native tree and mangrove reforestation, agroforestry, and the implementation of sustainable agricultural practices.

Meta’s role in the voluntary carbon market extends beyond purchasing credits from projects to supporting new project development through financing and encouraging the evolution of standards that bring more certainty to the market.

Among the ways Meta is driving development in the sector is through collaborative action that will “aggregate the resources of multiple companies to create rapid change at scale”.

This includes a collaborative pledge to develop carbon projects that centre Indigenous leadership.

Through 1t.org, the National Indian Carbon Coalition and Meta have pledged to support and promote a model of carbon projects that centre on the leadership, traditional ecological knowledge, and vision of Indigenous Peoples for themselves and their land.

Among other collaborative projects:

Participation in the Business Alliance to Scale Climate Solutions (BASCS), which provides a platform for businesses and climate experts to meet, learn, discuss and act together to improve climate solutions.
Collaboration with the World Resources Institute to develop a method to map forest canopy height↗ at individual tree-scale using a new Meta AI training model. We have mapped forest canopy in California and São Paulo, Brazil, and are making the data public and freely available

Meta’s Role in Scaling Carbon Removal Technologies

In further driving development in the sector, Meta joined forces with other big tech companies in 2022 to accelerate the development of carbon removal technologies by guaranteeing future demand.

While some say focusing on carbon capture is a distraction to the real goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Meta argues that both emissions reductions and carbon dioxide removal are needed.

And climate science backs this up.

Scientists say removing the carbon emissions that we have already pumped into the atmosphere is necessary if we are to avoid the 1.5-degree rises in global temperature set out in the Paris Agreement.

Launched in 2022, Frontier is a US$925 million joint commitment between Meta, Stripe, Shopify, McKinsey Sustainability and Alphabet – more recently bolstered with four new companies – Autodesk, H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase and Workday – committing a combined US$100 million.

Frontier helps its member companies purchase CO2 removal via pre-purchase agreements or offtake agreements. The goal is to spur the development of a new industry by providing a novel source of funding that isn’t based on debt or equity investments, but on actual product purchases before the technology is fully available at scale.

So far, Frontier has spent $5.6 million buying nearly 9,000 tonnes of contracted carbon removal from 15 different carbon dioxide removal startups.

Among these, RepAir uses electrochemical cells and clean electricity to capture carbon dioxide from the air, while Living Carbon is a synthetic biology startup working on engineering natural systems to remove carbon dioxide.

With this strategy, Meta is helping to expand the voluntary carbon market, overcome barriers to scale, and at the same time achieve its own ambitious net zero goals.

Source

The workplace of the future: smart, sustainable, holistic

Posted on June 10, 2022 by dishanth

The workplace as we know it has evolved dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic, expanding into our homes and complex digital-physical spaces. As organisations and their employees continue to navigate hybrid working arrangements this year, how can technology help to shape green and conducive workplaces of the future?

Many new innovations are aimed at helping workplaces save energy. While energy efficiency may not be the snazziest of climate solutions, it remains a potent and cost-effective way to slash emissions without major reworks of existing infrastructure. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has projected that low-cost measures, such as better ventilation and LED lighting, if implemented globally, could slash 3.5 gigatonnes worth of carbon emissions a year.

The savings would amount to 40 per cent of the emissions that need to be abated to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. With the increased focus on climate mitigation, energy efficiency solutions for the built sector is now a US$340 billion market globally that is set to grow by over 8 per cent through 2027.

In addition, in Singapore, energy efficiency incentives like the Green Mark Incentive Scheme are encouraging companies to pursue smart, sustainable and predictive solutions in the workplace. Companies are paying closer attention to their carbon footprint to support sustainability goals, and this requires more tools to monitor and optimise utilities consumption.

These tools usually come in the form of building intelligence systems, such as SP Digital’s GET Control. The system uses AI and IoT to optimise and regulate air-conditioning and maximise energy efficiency in real-time, based on changes in occupancy, current weather conditions and forecast data. The smart damper system, for example, divides large open-plan office spaces into micro-zones to enable better air-flow distribution and control. With predictive intelligence working together with all the sensors and smart dampers, data is sent wirelessly to a central control unit that recommends and adjusts the dampers dynamically such that the desired temperatures are met, making the office energy efficient and comfortable.

GET Control’s Dynamic Airflow Balancing in real-time is suitable for brownfield and greenfield projects. Image: SP Digital

These heat maps show how air temperature is regulated by GET Control. Left: Before implementation, there are hot and cold spots in the office. Right: After implentation, the office is evenly cooled. Image: SP Digital

Clement Cheong, SP Digital’s vice president of sales and customer operations, says that GET Control responds to the needs of corporate real estate owners and commercial landlords in Singapore.

“Landlords are seeing more occupants coming into work and at different times,” he says. “They need to adapt their buildings and systems to cope with this change dynamically. For example, they do not need as much cooling or fresh air supply at non-peak or low occupancy periods.”

Moreover, he adds that the pandemic has also made employees even more conscious of indoor environmental quality. “They want to have visibility into IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) and the building’s measures to monitor and improve IAQ. Even though occupants may spend less time in the office, they want a better, healthier indoor experience.”

He explains that currently, building owners or tenants have limited visibility into indoor air quality in offices and limited ability to intelligently control it. Traditional air side control and management technologies tend to be “reactive”, that is, facility managers make adjustments when occupants complain of any indoor thermal discomfort. Because such technologies do not take into account dynamic changes in ambient temperatures, they are not as energy efficient as a system with real-time tracking capabilities like GET Control.

He shares a case study from an educational institution in Singapore, where facility managers were faced with frequent occupant complaints about hot and cold spots in the office. Besides the fact that facility managers had to make time-consuming manual adjustments, the building’s cooling efficiency was poor, resulting in high energy use and carbon emissions. When SP Digital’s GET Control was deployed, the site saw more than 30 per cent airside cooling energy savings, enhanced thermal comfort and indoor air quality for employees, and improved operations and productivity.

On a larger scale, some multinational corporations are leading the way in greening their offices, and their examples might provide insights into the future of the sustainable workplace. One of them is Meta, which operates the social media platform Facebook and aims to achieve a 50 per cent reduction in carbon by 2030. At its 260,000 square-feet office in Singapore, spread over four floors at Marina One Tower, this target has translated into environmental control systems that use the latest in automated sensor technology, which can optimise even the smallest indicators of energy efficiency. Numerous sensors are in place to measure temperature, air, light and motion open spaces, meeting rooms and lifts.

Apart from office management, Meta Singapore also uses technology to assist employees to adopt carbon reducing behaviours, and, while in the workplace, to holistically analyse their carbon footprint across the product supply chain, recycling, water and waste management.

Looking ahead globally, the journey to make buildings more sustainable will be a long one. Currently, the built environment is responsible for nearly 40 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the world. According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the 2020 pandemic caused a drop in the buildings sector carbon emissions, followed by a moderate rebound in 2021, but buildings are not on track to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

In Singapore, energy efficiency remains a core tenet of the city-state’s decarbonisation pathway, even as longer-term solutions such as carbon capture and clean energy imports are being considered for the next few decades. Power generation firms are provided subsidies to upgrade their turbines and software; a similar fund is in place for building owners to buy more efficient air-conditioning systems and install motion sensors that automatically switch off appliances when not needed. Buildings contribute close to 15 per cent of Singapore’s national emissions — the high fraction resulting from the almost complete urbanisation of the island-state.

As part of its efforts to reach net-zero emissions around 2050, the government wants 80 per cent of buildings in Singapore – both old and new – to adopt energy efficiency measures by 2030, up from 50 per cent today.

There is growing awareness among businesses that greening their offices makes economic and environmental sense. The Singapore Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark Incentive for Existing Buildings – a $100 million fund started to co-sponsor the adoption of energy-efficient technologies in existing buildings – has been fully committed, as has a separate $50 million fund which does the same for small and medium enterprises.

This suggests that more landlords in Singapore understand that the initial outlays of such green investments may be high, but returns in the long run justify the cost, given the changes in expectations of workplace experience, energy efficiency and sustainability in post-pandemic times.

Source Eco Business

These people lead sustainability within Big Tech. Here’s how much power they actually have

Posted on April 4, 2022 by dishanth

Chief sustainability officers are all the rage. Tech companies are hiring them left and right and holding them up as the human talismans of their commitment to fighting climate change, one (sometimes dubious) net zero goal at a time.

In some cases, CSOs have real power to bring companies in line with their climate ambitions. But in others, they are window dressing. To get at where CSOs are able to exact real change, we looked at eight major tech companies’ reporting structures and whether or not executive compensation is tied to meeting sustainability goals.

Giving a CSO a direct line to the CEO not only empowers them to actually make real changes to the way a business operates, it also sends a clear signal to the rest of the company that sustainability is a central part of the business plan and not an afterthought. According to a survey of CSOs by Deloitte and the Institute of International Finance, 32% report directly to the CEO, and 13% report to the head of marketing.

“If you’re reporting to the head of marketing and you’re trying to influence someone in risk, you’re pushing a boulder uphill. They’re going to perceive what you do as a marketing campaign, when really you’re aiming for strategic transformation,” one of the surveyed CSOs told Deloitte.

In Tim Mohin’s view, the role of the CSO is “changing rapidly.” In the past, corporate sustainability used to be much more of a marketing issue, and now it sits more in the financial risk and business strategy side of things, according to Mohin, the CSO at carbon management startup Persefoni who has literally written the book on corporate sustainability. For a company to have a true commitment to sustainability, its CSO needs to understand how the business operates from a corporate risk and finance perspective, so that they can have the authority and credibility to make real change. Mohin believes it’s better for a CSO to start off with a solid background in business or product area expertise, then build in the ESG knowledge rather than working the other way around.

Kentaro Kawamori, Persefoni’s CEO, agrees with his CSO’s assessment. Questions to ask of companies to really ascertain the strength of their commitments include whether or not they’re linking executive pay to decarbonization, if they’re hiring people with the right sustainability credentials or if, in Kawamori’s words, they’re “just putting a PR person into the job.”

Here are the chief sustainability officers at some of the biggest tech companies we’re watching here at Protocol.

Google

Who: Kate Brandt, chief sustainability officer

Background and responsibilities: Brandt leads sustainability across Google’s worldwide operations, products and supply chain. According to a Google blog post, that means she coordinates with data centers, real estate and product teams “to ensure the company capitalizes on opportunities to strategically advance sustainability.” Before starting at Google in 2015, she was appointed by former President Barack Obama as the Federal Environmental Executive and was the U.S.’s first Federal Chief Sustainability Officer, responsible for promoting sustainability across the federal government.

Reporting structure: Brandt reports to Ellen West, Google’s vice president of Engagement within the office of the CFO, who in turn reports to CFO Ruth Porat. Brandt also reports in a dotted line to Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president for Technical Infrastructure.

Compensation: Google announced in a public disclosure that it is introducing a bonus program for members of its senior executive team that will be determined in part by performance supporting the company’s ESG goals beginning this year.

Microsoft

Who: Lucas Joppa, chief environmental officer

Background and responsibilities: Joppa leads the development and execution of Microsoft’s sustainability strategy across its worldwide business. He has a Ph.D. in ecology and is a highly cited researcher. (He has an h-index of 45 for those of you academic nerds keeping count.) Before this position, he was Microsoft’s first chief environmental scientist, founding the AI for Earth program.

Reporting structure: Joppa reports to Brad Smith, president and vice chair of Microsoft.

Compensation: Microsoft announced in 2021 that progress on sustainability goals is part of executive compensation. This is adding onto the practice the company’s had since 2016 to tie a portion of executive pay to ESG measures, starting with diversity representation gains. This applies to members of the senior leadership team, including CEO Satya Nadella.

Amazon

Who: Kara Hurst, vice president and head of Worldwide Sustainability

Background and responsibilities: Hurst is responsible for executing the work of the Climate Pledge, sustainable operations and responsible supply chain management, among other things. Prior to Amazon, she was the CEO of the Sustainability Consortium, a nonprofit focused on making the consumer goods industry more sustainable. Before that, she was a vice president at BSR, a sustainable consulting firm.

Reporting structure: Hurst reports to Alicia Boler Davis, Amazon’s senior vice president of global customer fulfillment.

Compensation: Amazon does not explicitly link senior executive compensation to sustainability goals. In a 2021 proxy statement, the company explained that it does not tie cash or equity compensation to performance goals, stating, “A performance goal assumes some level of success by a prescribed measure. But to have a culture that relentlessly pursues invention and is focused on building shareholder value, not just for the current year, but five, ten, or even twenty years from now, we must encourage experimentation and long-term thinking, which, by definition, means we do not know in advance what will work. We do not want employees to focus solely on short-term returns at the expense of long-term growth and innovation.” That doesn’t mean that shareholders haven’t tried to make the company tie compensation to climate targets. They just haven’t been successful.

Netflix

Who: Emma Stewart, sustainability officer

Background and responsibilities: Stewart, who holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Management, is Netflix’s first sustainability officer and is responsible for the company’s climate and environmental strategy and execution. She oversees decarbonization efforts across Netflix’s corporate and film and TV production operations, the latter which account for the majority of the company’s direct emissions. Content and its data centers account for 55% of the company’s carbon footprint, while corporate emissions stand at 45%, according to its 2020 ESG report. (Other parts of Netflix’s Scope 3 emissions tied to energy used by its viewers dwarf these other sources.) Prior to Netflix, Stewart led World Resources Institute’s work on urban efficiency, climate and finance.

Reporting structure: Stewart reports to Netflix’s CFO Spencer Neumann.

Compensation: Stewart’s compensation is not tied to sustainability goals, according to a spokesperson, and executive pay at Netflix in general is designed to attract and retain “outstanding performers,” according to a company proxy statement.

Apple

Who: Lisa Jackson, vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives

Background and responsibilities: Jackson oversees the company’s efforts to minimize its impact on the environment “through renewable energy and energy efficiency, using greener materials, and inventing new ways to conserve precious resources,” according to Apple. She also leads its $100 million Racial Equity and Justice initiative and is responsible for Apple’s education policy programs, product accessibility work and worldwide government affairs. Prior to Apple, she was the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Reporting structure: Jackson reports to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Compensation: Apple’s 2021 proxy statement confirmed that annual bonus payments for execs will increase or decrease by up to 10% depending on whether they meet so-called “Apple Values.” One of those values is a commitment to environmental protection.

Salesforce

Who: Suzanne DiBianca, chief impact officer and executive vice president of Corporate Relations

Background and responsibilities: DiBianca leads Salesforce’s “stakeholder capitalism strategy,” which includes the company’s sustainability efforts, ESG strategy and reporting. She’s been at Salesforce for more than 20 years and was previously the co-founder and president of the Salesforce Foundation and Salesforce.org, which provides free or discounted licenses to Salesforce software for nonprofits, educational institutions and philanthropies.

Reporting structure: DiBianca reports to Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff.

Compensation: Salesforce recently announced that a portion of executive variable pay for executive vice presidents and above will be determined by four ESG measures, which for this fiscal year will focus on equality and sustainability. The sustainability measures are tied to reducing air travel emissions, as well as increasing spend with suppliers that have signed the company’s Sustainability Exhibit, a procurement contract that aims to reduce its suppliers’ carbon emissions and align them with the 1.5-degree-Celsius target.

Intel

Who: Todd Brady, vice president of Global Public Affairs and chief sustainability officer

Background and responsibilities: The company created the CSO role within the past year. Brady sits within the manufacturing and supply chain organization of Intel. He’s an Intel lifer and has held a variety of leadership roles at the company, including environmental health and safety and product ecology and stewardship, as well as public affairs.

Reporting structure: Brady reports to Keyvan Esfarjani, the Executive Vice President and Chief Global Operations Officer at Intel.

Compensation: Since 2008, Intel has linked a portion of executive and employee compensation to corporate responsibility factors such as sustainability. In 2020, those operational goals included climate change and water stewardship. The company said it got 82% of its energy from “green” sources and reduced emissions 39% per unit that year. (That last metric is different from reducing overall emissions, though.) In 2021, the company set out new metrics, according to a spokesperson.

Source Protocol