Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson describes climate change as "the single biggest risk that exists to the economy today." It is estimated that $4 trillion in assets globally will be at risk from climate change by 2030.
At Symantec, focusing on environmental performance not only supports our business objectives, it also contributes to the urgent action needed to combat global climate change and other environmental challenges. Our environmental strategy addresses our responsibility as an individual business and as a global stakeholder to create a world where connectivity and environmental health can flourish. A central part of this is our ability to support a low carbon future through minimizing resource use across our business operations, incorporating environmental stewardship into our product and supply chain operations, engaging employees in protecting the environment and partnering with others to leverage our collective impact.
This past fall CDP published its annual scoring and leadership indices across crucial environmental impact areas including climate change, supply chain impacts, water scarcity and deforestation. CDP is a globally recognized reporting framework that is integral to our environmental strategy for a variety of reasons:
- Provides a rigorous and standardized framework for measuring and reporting our impact and for targeting improvement efforts. This helps us realize cost savings and mitigate risk while enhancing our company’s status as responsible corporate citizen. CDP cites that companies reporting and responding to the organization’s climate change program have reported $53bn worth of savings.
- Enables us to benchmark progress over time and in relation to industry peers, and aligns our reporting and transparency process to that of our industry peers.
- Demonstrates our commitment to stakeholders, including our investors and customers, many of whom look to CDP to evaluate a company’s environmental strategy and exposure to environmental related risk. In 2013, CDP was highest ranked in the evaluation of external sustainability raters by SustainAbility in their Rate the Raters report 2013.
- Investors increasingly incorporate climate change into their investment decisions. According to the CDP, the population of companies that respond to CDP have a 67% higher return on equity than their non-responding peers.
- Customers often incorporate climate change assessment into RFPs and are concerned about their suppliers’ performance, transparency and accountability. Each year a number of Symantec customers request our CDP data; in 2016 11 key customers requested that we respond to the CDP Climate Change survey.
Symantec is proud to have reported to the CDP Climate Change survey since 2008, CDP Supply Chain since 2012, and to CDP Water for the past three years. Symantec received an A- on our climate change response, placing the company in the leadership bracket. Additionally, we scored an A- on the supply chain response and a B on the water response.
Details behind our improvements
Our improved CDP Climate Change score wasdue in part to our new ambitious GHG reduction target (reducing GHG emissions by 30% from 2015 to 2025) and environmental projects that resulted in a 5% reduction in GHG emissions from FY15 to FY16. Examples of projects include energy use reductions in our Tuscon data center, energy efficient design and operational updates to our Mountain View campus, increasing our reliance on clean energy in regions such as India, and strategically consolidating space to increase efficiencies.
Additionally, we continued to take part in various industry initiatives to tackle climate change and transition to a clean energy future:
- Joined more than 60 companies as a signatory of the Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers Principles.
- Continued our participation in the BSR Future of Internet Power initiative to support greater use of clean power by data centers.
- As a member of the CERES Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP), signed on to support a global agreement to phase out short lived climate pollutants and joined over 600 companies, investors and organizations in signing the Low Carbon USA Letter, reaffirming our support of the Paris Climate Agreement following the US Presidential election.
- As a member of CERES Connect the Drops campaign we support policies that promote water stewardship in California.
Continuing to set our bar high
Our improvements this year are exciting, however, we recognize the need for continual improvement to meet our goals. Over the coming months we will gather data on our FY17 progress, remain focused on our ambitious 3% per year GHG emission reduction goal, continue our advocacy efforts and work to integrate newly acquired companies into our environmental strategy.
Additionally, as a company whose core mission is the protection of information, we recognize the role our market-leading products and services play in ensuring that technologies contributing to a sustainable future are able to remain safe and secure.
We look forward to bringing you more updates on our environmental activities here on our Corporate Responsibility blog and in our annual CR report next year.
Amanda Davis is Symantec's Senior Manager, Corporate Responsibility and Environment.