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When I first used this term in a meeting one of the other
participants asked “is this like Switzerland, why be neutral, take a
position!”
Anyway, the notion of achieving net zero carbon emissions in an activity or enterprise has since become a source of much debate. Various companies are positioning their products or their operations as being “carbon neutral”, but the meaning or definition of that claim is entirely unsettled.
The U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change recently conducted a public consultation on the subject and offered up the following definition: “Carbon neutral means that – through a transparent process of measuring emissions, reducing those emissions and offsetting residual emissions – net calculated carbon emissions equal zero.”
The highlighted terms in this definition are provoking much discussion. For example, many question whether offsetting emissions by contributing to a carbon reduction project other than your own operations (perhaps halfway around the world) is genuinely neutral. The pending U.S. Federal climate bills recognize that offsets should play some role, but the extent of credit for such offsets is uncertain.
There is also a great deal of discussion over what type of projects should qualify as offsets and concerns about fraud or gaming a trading system are beginning to emerge, as a recent Friends of the Earth report on the subject ominously predicts “carbon trading could be dominated by speculators…”
The question of how to measure an enterprise’s footprint is also quite interesting and controversial. In the electronics industry supply chains are often very extensive and many impacts are well outside of a company’s own operations. As an example, Apple recently estimated only 3% of its footprint is attributable to its facilities while 38% relates to outsourced manufacturing.
Meanwhile, Apple’s competitor Dell claimed in late 2008 to be the first personal computer company to achieve carbon “neutrality”, but theWall Street Journal quickly blasted this claim and suggested Dell was only neutralizing about 5% of its overall impact; according to the article, Dell’s omission was not accounting for its extended supply chain, both manufacturing and transporting its products.
So what is a company to do? Most companies acknowledge that offsets or credits will have to make up some of the difference between corporate footprints and the extraordinary carbon reduction goals that are being discussed in international forums. And, a key question remains; ‘How does an enterprise sustain itself economically while shrinking its footprint 50% or 80%?’
Meanwhile, many large companies, Applied Materials included, are still aggressively pursuing emission reductions through a combination of energy efficiency projects, through the addition of on-site renewable energy and via consolidation of facilities and operations to lessen energy needs.
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