IBM's first formal environmental and energy corporate policies date back to 1971 and 1974 respectively, and programs supporting them have been embedded within the company's corporate wide environmental programs and global environmental management system since that time. IBM has been a leader in addressing climate change through our energy conservation and climate protection programs for decades. IBM's leadership is defined by our:
- Long-standing global commitment
- Comprehensive and multifaceted programs covering the company's operations, products and services
- Leading-edge innovations and client solutions
- Significant results, both early and ongoing, benefiting IBM, our clients and the world
We have a long-standing commitment to climate protection and execute a five-part strategy to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to our operations:
- Designing, building, updating and operating facilities, including data centers and product development and manufacturing operations, that optimize their use of energy and materials and minimize GHG emissions
- Purchasing electricity generated from renewable sources where it makes both business and environmental sense
- Requiring our suppliers to maintain an environmental management system that includes inventories of energy use and GHG emissions, reduction plans and public reporting of results
- Managing business travel
- Increasing the efficiency of IBM's logistics operations
In addition, IBM's strategy includes designing energy-efficient products and providing services and solutions that help our clients reduce their own energy use and climate impacts.
We consider energy and material conservation to be the cornerstone of our climate protection efforts. IBM does not use emissions offsets to become "carbon neutral" for our operations. Our efforts to reduce IBM's GHG emissions are focused on delivering results by devoting available resources to actions, products and solutions that actually increase energy efficiency and reduce GHG emissions for both IBM and our clients, rather than merely offsetting them.
From 1990 through 2017, IBM conserved 7.4 million megawatt-hours of electricity, avoiding 4.4 million metric tons of CO2 emissions and saving $616 million.