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CarbonSystems EPS chosen by Microsoft for its global environmental reporting

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Microsoft

In my reviews of tech companies sustainability reporting, one very obvious laggard has always been Microsoft. Hopefully that’s all about to change.

Why? Microsoft has just signed up with CarbonSystems to use CarbonSystems cloud-delivered Enterprise Sustainability Platform (ESP) to manage its energy efficiency initiatives and for reporting its environmental performance globally.

This is big news. Microsoft has 600 facilities across 110 countries worldwide. For the first time, the full energy and environmental footprints of all these sites will now be managed from within a single cloud-delivered resource, the CarbonSystems ESP system. The levels of transparency this will give Microsoft will be immense. Perhaps now, unlike many of its competitors, Microsoft will be able to join the EU’s ICT Footprint initiative.

This move should also enable Microsoft to report on the energy and emissions associated with its own cloud infrastructure – something, like all other cloud providers, Microsoft has failed to do to-date.

This move is a big deal for CarbonSystems too. CarbonSystems are an Australian company and have done quite well there but have more recently been eying the EU and US markets. Being selected by Microsoft for a global rollout has suddenly catapulted them up the credibility charts. Had you asked me previously which 3rd party platform Microsoft might have chosen I’d probably have mentioned SAP, Hara, CA, or Enablon.

Now with this win, CarbonSystems too has a seat at the big boys’ table.

Photo Credit ToddABishop

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Tech company sustainability reports reviewed – Updated

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Corporate Social Responsibility
Original photo by ATIS547

I was asked on Twitter recently where to find a list of links to tech companies’ CSR reports.

I didn’t know where to find one, so I built one and as well as just the links, I also added in a few extra observations I noted about the reports.

[table id=4 /]

As previously reported here, the 2009 SAP Sustainability Report is superb.

Another company in the list worthy of note is BT, whose report, despite the lack of interactivity, is the only other report to hit the GRI A+ rating.

HP’s site has gone heavy on design to the detriment of usability which is unfortunate because some of the content is really good.

After that, almost all of the companies who have a 2009 report published have done a really good job. The exception to this is Microsoft whose 2009 report, while an improvement on previous reports, still has a long way to go to approach a professional CSR Report standard.

Of the companies who have yet to publish their 2009 report, Oracle and Adobe’s 2008 reports are lacklustre attempts, at best. Neither report to GRI standards and both are long on pretty pictures and short on relevant data.

Having said that, at least Oracle and Adobe are producing Sustainability reports.

The three laggards in this list are Google, Amazon and Apple – none of whom are producing sustainability reports at the minute.

In their defence, Google has its Going Green at Google website and Apple has its Apple and the Environment site, both of whom go into considerable detail on each companies initiatives. In Apple’s case, it does go deep into a lot of the data you would normally see in a Sustainability report. Why it refuses to produce a formal report is beyond me.

In contrast, Amazon’s attempt at an Environmental site/page is an embarrassment. If this is the best they can do, honestly, they’d be better off doing nothing.

One issue I noted was that HP, Cisco and Apple [PDF] all report on sourcing 100% renewable power in Ireland. This is not possible for the reasons I outlined in this post.

What other companies should I add to this list? Please feel free to suggest any in the comments and I will update the list.

UPDATES:
Since publishing this, Nokia have brought out their excellent 2009 report and it is now included above.
Also, based on suggestions received on FaceBook I have added details about 3 other companies (NEC, Fujitsu and Indra Sistemas). It was also suggested there that I go over various telco companies CSR reports. I’ll leave that to a separate post.

You should follow me on twitter here.