Many people assume that tech companies are always competing. But as we celebrate Earth Day this year, we’re feeling grateful for our tech peers. When it comes to the environment, working together allows us to make bigger strides toward our shared sustainability goals — and collaboration is the only way forward.
For example, working with Enel Green Energy in Nebraska, in March we partnered with Facebook to sign the tech industry’s first aggregated purchase of wind energy — a project demonstrating that two companies with similar renewable energy goals can work together to achieve their objectives. For Facebook, Enel and Adobe, this is an important next step in helping open up the U.S. renewable energy market, stabilizing the cost of energy, and helping to eliminate pollution in the region. Further, it provides revenue for local farmers, ranchers and landowners in the process. This project came to fruition because we had worked with Facebook on sustainability initiatives over the years.
Behind the scenes, we’ve joined forces with committed companies and environmental NGOs (such as WRI, WWF, RMI and BSR) to share ideas, consolidate our renewable energy buying power, and support legislation for sustainability.
Working toward 100 percent renewable energy
Over the past few years it has been great to see the majority of our fellow tech companies set renewable energy goals, make tremendous progress to reach them, and subsequently create more opportunities for everyone else. Following through on these commitments, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, GM, Walmart and Microsoft have all made numerous, grid-scale renewable energy purchases. Their combined actions have changed the power landscape by replacing traditional, fossil-fuel powered grids with true renewable energy. As a direct result, we’ve seen a significant drop in the cost of renewable energy, allowing more companies – with smaller energy demands, such as Adobe – to enter the renewable energy buying market.
OK, Now What?: Navigating Corporate Sustainability After the US Presidential Election
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As an example, in early 2016 Adobe signed an amicus brief supporting the Clean Power Plan
with companies including Apple, Amazon, IKEA, Mars, Microsoft and Google, in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund. And we, along with business leaders across the country, affirmed that We Are Still In when it comes to the Paris Climate Agreement. Everyone has more power and influence when we work together.
Again, the goal should not be to simply offset our carbon footprint, but to fundamentally change it: decrease consumption through energy efficiency, switch from fossil fuels to clean energy when possible, and work to get renewable electricity powering the grids in our communities. We’ve already started this process in Bangalore.
Bangalore and what’s next for Adobe
In March of 2017, Adobe signed a 2.5-megawatt, grid-scale solar power purchase agreement for our Bangalore site — so instead of purchasing unbundled renewable energy credits to offset the carbon-based, “dirty” electricity we use, we’re buying solar energy that goes directly into the local power grid in Bangalore.
As a result, our energy spending is helping clean up the grid for the community — the schools, libraries, businesses and homes that are part of our Bangalore employees’ daily lives will all draw from a pool of electricity that includes more clean energy because of our purchase. Karnataka (Bangalore’s state) will burn less coal, so the air and water will be cleaner for everyone who lives there.
In many ways, completing the Bangalore project was easier than trying to do something similar in the U.S. (a function of regulated grids in states such as California). But, we need to work for this on every grid. We believe that the ability to purchase renewable energy directly in the places where we work and live stabilizes costs, improves business operations and creates value for our shareholders.
Among a number of activities, we’re currently advocating for “Green Tariff” legislation in Oregon that will make it possible to procure renewable energy for our data center there. And we continue to work with NGOs, state and local governments, developers and utilities to push for progress so that we can open up more opportunities for the direct purchase of renewable energy across the U.S. market.
Science-Based Targets and sustainability
As part of our 100 percent renewable energy goal, we’ve joined the Science Based Targets initiative, with more than 100 of our peers. These targets ask companies to consider their own percentage of the GDP, based on revenue, and to translate that percentage into our fair share of carbon dioxide emissions. Science Based Targets are keeping us all accountable for reducing our contribution to CO2 in absolute terms by 2025.
To bring all of this together, we have a multi-pronged approach:
- We are laser-focused on energy efficiency and can report that over 70 percent of our employees work in LEED-certified workspaces. In order to manage our business properly and make sure we are provisioning no more energy than we need, this is always number one.
- We’re working toward decarbonizing our grids through policy advocacy.
- We’re always looking for ways to implement technology and new sources of renewable energy at each of our sites, such as implementing battery storage at our San Francisco site or replacing fossil-fuel burning cars with electric vehicles at our Bangalore and Noida offices.
- Finally, we strive to help our customers become more sustainable through their use of Adobe products.
Working together for lasting change
Operating sustainably has been one of Adobe’s core values since the beginning, but we can’t go it alone. It’s only when we pool our ideas, our influence and our buying powerwith other companies, inside the tech industry and out, that we can meet the goals we all share — reducing our energy use and cleaning up our power grids.
The next step is inviting everyone to do more than just offsetting emissions. Consider this a call to action, through policy advocacy and procurement, about decarbonizing our grids.
This post first appeared on the Adobe blog on April 20, 2018.
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Published Apr 27, 2018 10am EDT / 7am PDT / 3pm BST / 4pm CEST