シスコはClimateTechnologies、プロジェクトに1億ドルを費やします

Cisco Foundationは本日、気候変動の影響を遅らせる助成金と投資に10年間で1億ドルを費やすことを約束しました。The Cisco Foundation today committed to spending $100 million over 10 years on grants and investments that slow the effects of climate change. The Cisco-funded endowment will go to nonprofit grants and impact investments that support early-stage technologies and organizations focused on reducing carbon emissions, or educating the community about climate action, among other sustainability efforts. The new $100 million pledge is consistent with Cisco’s ongoing commitment to sustainability, Cisco CFO Scott Herren told SDxCentral. “Everything from how we design products to be far more power efficient to the way we think about our supply chain and the things we do to reduce waste, energy consumption, and water consumption through the supply chain, to the way we run our own facilities,” he said. Having a high degree of focus on sustainability is in the ethos of the company. We have the skill sets and the resources to drive the next wave of innovation in sustainability — it just makes sense.” Sustainability also makes sense from a business perspective, Herren added. Cisco stakeholders including its customers and employees who care about environmental issues. “It’s a competitive marketplace out there for talent,” and its sustainability efforts help Cisco recruit and keep employees, he explained. “And the clear correlation between companies that focus on doing the right thing, across the spectrum of environmental, social and governance, also demonstrating superior returns is not lost on our investor base,” Herren said, adding that one of the reasons he accepted the CFO job at Cisco is because of the company’s track record on sustainability. Specifically, the Cisco Foundation committed to fund: It wants these early-stage efforts to be scalable and measurable, and Cisco will work with the organizations that receive funding to measure and report on the impact of their programs. In fact, choosing groups to fund will be based on their ability to measure and report outcomes such as reducing or capturing greenhouse gas and carbon emissions, increasing energy efficiency, creating green jobs, and changing community behavior in a way that leads to a smaller carbon footprint. “If you can’t measure it, you don’t know whether you’re succeeding or not,” Herren said. Ensuring that the goals that we had when we set out and made the investment are quantifiable — and then we can track how we’re doing on those — it’s the way we do all of the investments that we do across Cisco both organically and inorganically.” Cisco takes this same approach to its own internal sustainability goals, and the company says it’s on track to use electricity generated from renewable sources for at least 85% of Cisco’s global electricity in 2022. Right now, about 83% comes from renewable sources. The company also pledged to reduce its direct greenhouse gas emissions as well as indirect emissions from purchased electricity, heating, and cooling by 60% by the end of 2022 compared to 2007 levels. To date, Cisco says it’s reduced scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gasses by 53%. Cisco is working with its suppliers to reduce emissions throughout its supply chain. The vendor says it’s “on track” to design 100% of new Cisco products and packaging using circular design principles by 2025. Cisco will begin percentage reporting on its progress in is fiscal year 2021 report. “There’s an urgency that I think that we feel, and that I think every company and every government needs to feel, to begin to address this problem in a much more urgent way,” Herren said. “And so I’m pleased to be doing our part.”