Dell's Green Goal for 2008 (27-Sep-07)
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Michael Dell says he aims make his company "carbon neutral" in 2008, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.
The computer giant is looking to zero-out its carbon emissions through a number of initiatives, such as offering small businesses and consumers curbside recycling of their old computers, stuffing small recycling bags with free postage into new printer-ink cartridge boxes, and operating a "Plant a Tree for Me" program. Companies implementing carbon-neutral programs can adopt pollution- and energy-management practices in their own operations and/or purchase carbon-reduction credits from other businesses, which, in turn, offset the level of pollution their products or services generate.
Dell apparently is of the same mind as Will Wynn, the mayor of the company's hometown, Austin, Texas. The city is taking steps to slice its greenhouse emissions by developing sustainable-energy practices in a state known for industries heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
- Source: news.com
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Dell Plans To Go Carbon Neutral By Next Year (26-Sep-07)
Dell says it will become the first PC maker in the industry to make its worldwide operations carbon neutral by next year, Associated Press reports.
For every pound of greenhouse gas that goes into making, transporting or selling computers, Dell will find an equal offset through renewable energy sources, more efficient management of electricity use and other methods.
Dell says the company saved $1.8 million in electricity bills in the past year just by turning off equipment at night, when it’s not being used.
The move certainly points to a PC industry that has changed tremendously in the past few years. “You have IBM Corp., HP and Dell all battling it out on this environmental field, and that’s very different than ‘my processor has a clock speed faster than yours,’” said John Davies, an environmental and sustainability analyst with AMR Research.
The company also announced a new program called “Plant a Forest for Me” that lets organizations worldwide join together with Dell and share best practices, partner and facilitate the planting of millions of trees in reforestation projects. This program is a continuation of the “Plant a Tree for Me” program for consumers.
The founding members of “Plant a Forest for Me” include Dell, ABN AMRO, AMD, Ask.com, Salesforce.com and WellPoint. Each company has committed to offsetting part of their carbon output by purchasing trees for Plant a Forest. Dell partners with The Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org, non-profit organizations that facilitate the tree planting.
- Source: Environmental Leader
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Dell Aims To Go Carbon Neutral (27-Sep-07)
It's portraying itself as at the head of the pack among computer makers with a big initiative to help the environment. How good is the plan? by Arik Hesseldahl
Dell (DELL) is embarking on a broad environmental initiative under which it plans to consume less energy and use more power from renewable sources in a bid to make its operations carbon neutral by the end of 2008.
The announcement came in a speech Sept. 26 by CEO Michael Dell at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Never before in the history of business have we seen such a critical need to build a worldwide community dedicated to improving the environment," Dell said.
Carbon Scorecard
With a statement like that, one might think Dell is aiming to turn his sprawling $55 billion company on a dime into an oasis of eco-friendly industrial practices. But given the details disclosed so far, the move looks more like a baby step for a business of this size.
Dell executives say the effort will focus mostly on power consumption at Dell-owned and leased buildings around the world. For starters, employees' computers will be turned off at night and during long periods of inactivity, says Dane Parker, Dell's director of global environmental health and safety programs. The company estimates these efforts will save $1.8 million per year in power costs and cut annual carbon dioxide emissions by 8,500 tons—about the same amount of CO2 as 1,400 American cars spew in a year.
However, while certainly a step in the right direction, 8,500 tons amounts to just 2.2% of Dell's annual CO2 emissions, according to the latest data released by The Carbon Disclosure Project. The CDP is a nonprofit coalition of financial institutions, including ABN Amro (ABN), HSBC, AIG (AIG), and pension fund CalPERS, that manage a combined $41 trillion assets. The group uses that investing clout to press companies to disclose data on their carbon emissions and then produces an annual report rating companies on their disclosures.
Dell has told the CDP its annual global emissions amounted to 344,000 tons of CO2. That was well below the 2 million tons reported by archrival Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and the 2.8 million tons reported by IBM (IBM), but higher than the 284,000 tons reported by Sun Microsystems (JAVA).
Using Alternative Energy Sources
"It's going to be a big job," says Allison Hannon, corporate engagement manager for The Climate Project, an advocacy group that has worked with Dell on its carbon policy. "First, it's going to have to get its house in order and then work on reductions."
Dell says it's also replaced the lighting fixtures at its buildings in Central Texas, cutting power demands in those facilities by 9%. The computer maker also plans to buy more power from alternative sources such as wind farms. Already, 10% of the power needed to run Dell's facilities in Austin, Tex., come from renewable sources. However, "our biggest constraint with renewable energy is with availability," says Mark Newton, Dell's environmental policy leader. "Availability is a bigger problem than cost." While that increases demand for alternative energy, the immediate impact on carbon emissions is not very significant, says Michael Gillenwater, a climate policy researcher at Princeton University. "A lot of power from renewable sources would have been generated anyway," so there may not be a corresponding drop in electricity generated from fossil fuels, he says.
But since Dell can't eliminate all its emissions through energy savings, efficiency, and renewable energy, the company plans to buy carbon offsets to achieve "neutrality." Carbon offsets—the practice of buying and selling rights to emit C02— constitute a market worth about $100 million in the U.S. But in some cases, the impact of offset purchases can be negligible (BusinessWeek, 3/26/07). "We're working with a team of environmental organizations as we shape this offset strategy to ensure that the offsets are permanent and meaningful," says Parker.
Notably, the initative's cost has been small: So far, Dell has spent about $5 million, or less than one-tenth of 1%, of its fiscal year 2006 sales of $56 billion. Parker says the money spent so far will ultimately produce savings. "In some cases, the return on investment is a year and a half, and in some cases it's longer—like four to five years," he says.
Outsourcing Complicates The Picture
The details were also thin, however, as to how Dell plans to push the companies that actually manufacture its computers to meet the new goal. Dell says it will require major suppliers to report their emissions, but ultimately, the company has a lot more control over how much power it consumes in its own offices and facilities.
Like every company in the computer business, Dell outsources a lot of production to foreign manufacturers. Jeffery Wu, an industry analyst with iSuppli, estimates that more than half of all Dell notebook PCs are manufactured by Quanta Computer, while another third come from Compal Electronics. Dell's desktop PCs and servers are partially built in Asia, then shipped to Dell facilities in the U.S. and Ireland, where they're assembled, configured, and shipped to customers.
All that outsourcing makes for a vastly more complex picture of Dell's carbon impact, and all the more difficult to assess, Gillenwater says. "It's a matter of where you draw the boundaries. Everyone wants to say they're carbon neutral, but then there's the question of what that means. There's no clear definition. There's the problem with measuring the carbon footprint, and the wider out you draw the boundaries, the more complex the picture gets, and the less control a company like Dell has with the information it gets from its suppliers."
Goal: carbon neutral
Dell's logistics suppliers—mainly delivery companies—will be required to use biodiesel fuels on their vehicles. In particular, suppliers sending parts to Dell's campus in Penang, Malaysia, will have the emissions of their vehicles measured. Those that don’t meet Dell's demands, Parker said, will have 10 days to fix the vehicle or risk being banned from Dell’s campus.
In general, computers have a huge environmental impact (BusinessWeek, 9/10/07) from manufacturing, to the energy they consume while in use, to disposal, and recycling. Dell is one of many computer makers, including HP and Apple (AAPL), that have come under fire from activists and others who want the companies to lessen their overall impact on the environment. Lately, Dell has tried to portray itself as being greener than others in its industry, launching efforts like "Plant a Tree for Me," which encourages customers buying Dell products to offset their carbon impact by adding a few dollars to their purchase for charities that plant trees.
Dell is just the latest big name in the technology sector to brand itself with the "carbon neutral" billing. Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO) have both promised to make their operations, which consist primarily of huge installations of power-hungry computer servers, carbon neutral by the end of 2007.
- Source: Business Week
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Dell Moves Up Carbon Timeline (27-Sep-07)
Dell Inc. unveiled an environmental plan Wednesday that the computer maker said will make its operations carbon-neutral by 2008, a year earlier than it previously promised.
Dell said it would achieve the goal through a variety of methods, including buying so-called carbon offsets, replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent and requiring parts suppliers to list information on their environmental policies.
Among the gases that contribute to global warming, carbon — generated in the United States mainly in energy production and transportation — is the most voluminous.
For Dell, going carbon-neutral means the company will find ways to offset every pound of greenhouse gas generated in the production, transportation and sales of its computers. Possible methods include using renewable energy sources such as wind, managing electricity use more efficiently and planting trees, which gradually absorb carbon dioxide as they mature.
Dane Parker, the director of Dell's global environmental health and safety programs, said the company has spent $5 million so far on energy-saving efforts. He acknowledged that buying offsets from other entities that have made extra cuts in their carbon production will be Dell's main route to carbon neutrality in the short term.
"Our priority is to minimize total (energy) consumption," he said. But "offsets are what we will do as a last resort in the most responsible way we can."
Parker said specific changes Dell has already taken include turning off computer systems at night and replacing incandescent light bulbs with more efficient fluorescent designs. Such measures have cut Dell's electricity bill by $1.8 million in the past year, company officials said. It was unclear how big a percentage of its total bill that was.
Robin Schneider, executive director of the Texas Campaign for the Environment, said she was encouraged by Dell's news but would like to see data on how many tons of carbon Dell produces and how much it plans to remove.
She noted that Dell has not addressed its production of other greenhouse gasses such as methane.
"I think we do need to see a very clear before-and-after so that it's not just a press release that gets good headlines," she said.
Dell should be lauded for taking the initiative, said Iza Kruszewska of Greenpeace International. But the company isn't addressing the full impact of a computer's life cycle from raw material to outdated e-waste.
"We have to realize that Dell is talking about carbon neutrality only in its operations," she said. "But are you going to go back to the mining of the minerals?"
There's no way to verify a company's carbon neutral claims in the United States, because the federal government doesn't track companies' green house gas emissions, she said.
Company founder and CEO Michael Dell said in an interview that the company's environmental policies were "the right thing to do."
"When you think about our industry, we produce 260 million computers a year," he said Tuesday. "There's a responsibility that comes with that."
The Round Rock, Texas, company's greener push comes amid a turnaround attempt by Dell upon his return to the helm. The company has lost market share to Hewlett-Packard Co., and continues to deal with the fallout of a federal accounting probe.
The company is not alone in trying to do better by the environment.
HP spokeswoman Kelly Newton said her company has long been a leader in reducing overall emissions and was named best in class this week by the Carbon Disclosure Project, an international nonprofit to which companies submit reports on greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental issues.
"We commend others in our industry who are now joining in these efforts," Newton said.
Greenpeace International placed Dell fourth in a ranking this year of the environmental friendliness of 14 global technology companies. It landed behind Lenovo Group Ltd., Nokia Corp. and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications. Apple Inc. has disputed its last-place showing; Hewlett Packard finished in eighth place.
John Davies, an environment and sustainability analyst with AMR Research in Boston, said this rivalry shows how important the environment has become for the computer industry.
"You have IBM Corp., HP and Dell all battling it out on this environmental field, and that's very different than, 'My processor has a clock speed faster than yours,'" he said.
Dell also announced Wednesday that it was expanding its "Plant a Tree for Me" program, in which customers can choose to have $2 of a laptop purchase or $6 of a desktop purchase go toward funds to plant trees around the world. Other companies also will be able to purchase trees to offset their carbon impact, Dell spokesman Bryant Hilton said.
The company also is partnering with Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Ask.com, Salesforce.com, WellPoint and other businesses to share information about environmental practices and establish more reforestation projects.
- Source Associated Press
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Dell Unveils Carbon Neutral Plans (27-Sep-07)
The company has announced big plans to make its worldwide operations carbon neutral.
Computer giant Dell has pledged to become the "first major computer manufacturer" to go carbon neutral.
The company hasn't said when it plans to achieve its lofty goal, although many media reports have suggested it is aiming to complete its green mission by the end of next year.
Dell says it will "neutralise the carbon impact of its worldwide operations," with a series of initiatives to reduce or offset its greenhouse gas emissions.
These include a new 'Plant a Forest for Me' scheme, in which Dell and its partners will "plant millions of trees in sustainably managed reforestation projects" to offset their carbon emissions. It's a none-too-subtle sequel to its 'Plant a Tree for Me scheme, in which Dell's customers can opt to plant a tree when buying a new computer.
"Never before in the history of business have we seen such a critical need to build a worldwide community dedicated to improving the environment," said Dell's chairman and chief executive Michael Dell.
He went on to issue a challenge to competing companies to join in "a long-term, carbon-neutral commitment to our shared Earth."
The news follows Dell's June announcement that it plans to become the "greenest technology company on the planet," a position that will not be easily won. Google, for example, has completed 90 per cent of a 1,600 kilowatt solar panel installation at one of its data centres, and has also pledged to become carbon neutral by the end of the year.
Dell will be working with the Environmental Protection Agency to determine the extent of the greenhouse gas emissions from its US operations. The company says it will primarily be investigating the emissions impact created by its electricity use and facility heating and cooling, but will also be purchasing carbon offsets for employee travel.
- Source ITPro
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