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Questions for Wayne Balta, IBM vice president for environmental affairs and product safety
Q: IBM works with a lot of clients in the energy and utilities industries and with chemical and petroleum companies to improve energy discovery, production and distribution. But IBM is a big company in its own right, and therefore potentially has a big environmental impact in what it does in its own house. So what is IBM doing?
A: To reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the earth's climate, we are focused on two major contributors: carbon dioxide and perfluorocompounds [PFCs]. PFCs are used in the manufacturing of semiconductors. In 1988, we were the first company in our industry to publicly commit to a specific reduction of PFC emissions. The result is from 2000 to 2005 we reduced our PFC emissions by 58 percent and the technology that enabled us to do this has been made available to others in the industry.
Now for CO2. Our opportunity to reduce CO2 emissions is through conserving energy, part of IBM's environmental management system since at least 1974. From 1990 to 2005, IBM reduced CO2 emissions through energy conservation by an amount equal to 40 percent of the 1990 amount. We believe that's one of the largest CO2 accomplishments you'll see from a company regarding its energy consumption.
Q: Electricity is still mostly produced by burning fossil fuels, at least in the U.S. What does this imply for the future of IBM's energy consumption?
A: When feasible, we also purchase renewable energy such as wind, solar and biomass. We've also purchased Renewable Energy Certificates to support renewable energy in places where it isn't directly available to IBM.
Q: You mentioned that IBM has been managing its electricity consumption since 1974. Is that when environmental issues first became a concern at IBM?
A: Actually, our first environmental policy was put on paper 36 years ago [in 1971] by Thomas Watson, Jr. [IBM's second chairman, and son of the founder].
Similar to IBM's leadership in areas of corporate responsibility — like diversity — our actions have occurred well before laws or regulations required us to act. IBM first published a corporate environmental report back in 1990 — 17 years ago — and has published one every year since then without interruption. We may well be the only Fortune 100 company that can say that.
And keep in mind, the prerequisite for being able to publish a report is that there is a management system and business processes in place to measure and manage what you do. Long before globalization exploded on the scene, IBM's environmental management system was global. It's been registered to an external, international standard, called ISO 14001, for ten years. In 1997, IBM was the first company to achieve a single global registration, which means our environmental management system is the same no matter where we are located.
Q: What's IBM's history of collaborating with other organizations on issues related to the environment?
A: IBM has been working on many external collaborations regarding energy and climate change. We join these groups of like-minded companies and organizations to work with us, challenge us, and set goals, as well as to share and learn from each other. It's important to note that our voluntary external engagements each involve working with groups that have commitments to act and produce results; it's not just about aspirations. IBM has acted under each and its results have been publicly reported, with some even audited by a third party. And they have attracted some very favorable recognition.
Green Grid is one example of a new partnership with companies to try to come up with a standard way to measure energy efficiency of server and storage products. It goes back to our mantra of "what gets measured, gets managed."
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