Our climate commitment

We are committed to reducing the climate impact of our operations. In FY08, as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Climate Leaders Program, we committed to reduce all Scope 1, 2, and business-air-travel Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide to 25 percent below the CY2007 baseline by CY 2012.

By the end of FY10, our scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions from operations were 12 percent lower and scope 3 GHG emissions from air travel were 45 percent lower than the 2007 baseline. The challenge is to improve our scope 1 and 2 emissions reductions and sustain scope 3 air travel reductions in the context of a recovering global economy and projected business growth.

See our Report Card for a full account of our energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in FY10 and previous years.

Our approach

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, our plan is to:

• Use our solutions to collaborate remotely, and travel less
• Consume less energy using our global energy management program, especially for the research labs that account for two-thirds of our global electricity use
• Purchase electricity from certified low-carbon and renewable sources where available, making up 27 percent of our total energy use in FY10

We also raise employee awareness of energy and climate change through campaigns including Earth Day events, energy awareness month in October, and ongoing messaging on the Cisco Green website. See Embedding a Green Culture at Cisco.

Using technology to reduce travel

We use our own operations to test and showcase Cisco solutions that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions (see Low-Carbon Solutions). Employees used our 868 telepresence rooms and our collaboration tools such as Cisco WebEx and Cisco Unified MeetingPlace to hold meetings equivalent to 19.3 million people hours². Use of our virtual collaboration and remote working solutions helped us cut greenhouse gas emissions from business travel by 45 percent in FY10.

Improving energy efficiency

Efficiency measures helped us cut greenhouse gas emissions and save money. We established a self-sustaining fund in FY10 to invest the savings from energy efficiency programs into new programs.

• Installing smart power distribution units on approximately 12,000 devices at 11 Customer Advocacy Lab Operations sites, where remote shutdown of unused equipment via the network cut energy use by one-third on those devices, saving approximately $1 million in FY10 alone (see Story Highlight).
• Raising the ambient temperature to 77°F in all our research facilities, saving an estimated 10 million kWh and over $1 million a year in energy needed for cooling.
• Removing and upgrading approximately 29,000 lights at Cisco's San Jose campus in California, which saved approximately 5 million kWh and over $500,000 per year.

Our energy conservation measures have cumulatively reduced energy use by 132 million kWh per year at sites worldwide, saving approximately 66,116 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and $13.2 million in energy costs since FY07. These measures include installing high-efficiency lighting and LED exit signs, retro commissioning HVAC systems, modifying the timing of office and parking lot lights, programming environmental test chambers to automatically shut down when not in use, and taking out water fountains and their pumps.