Climate Change

Company information

Key points

• HP recognizes that climate change is one of the most serious environmental and economic challenges facing the world today and that mitigating its effects must be one of the top priorities of governments, companies, NGOs and individuals.
• HP’s comprehensive climate change strategy encompasses a broad range of actions from reducing its own operations carbon footprint, minimizing the impact of its products on the climate, innovating to develop new solutions that will help reduce the carbon footprint of the overall economy, and exerting its influence to facilitate policies and develop standards that support and drive a rapid transition to a low-carbon economy.

	The issue

Our planet’s climate is changing, and greenhouse gases (GHG) are the main culprit. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007 shows that unmitigated climate change would likely trigger a range of environmental problems that would impact agriculture, natural habitats and many communities in low-lying coastal areas. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change published in 2006 also finds that the potential costs of responding and adapting to unmitigated climate change could rise up to between five percent and 20 percent of global GDP each year, putting global economic growth and development at risk; while mitigating climate change would cost around one percent of GDP each year.

Governments across the globe are working with the private sector to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses which are a primary cause of climate change, through improving the energy efficiency of economies, avoiding deforestation, and switching to less carbon intensive energy sources.

	HP’s position

HP recognizes that the costs of adapting to unmitigated climate change will likely far outweigh the costs of slowing it down, as noted in the Stern report. HP believes it is in both society’s and business’ interests to limit global temperature increase to 2°C from pre-industrial levels by the end of this century in order to avoid the most severe environmental, social and economic impacts of climate change.  HP supports the IPCC recommendation that global GHG emissions be reduced by well below half of the emission levels in 2000 by the middle of this century.

HP Eco Solutions was launched in 2008 to help customers identify HP initiatives, products and services designed with the environment in mind. As part of the HP Eco Solutions program, HP supports policies that facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy. HP believes that the IT industry has both a responsibility to limit the carbon footprint of IT equipment, and the opportunity to facilitate the reduction of carbon emissions across many sectors of the overall global economy. HP’s climate strategy framework includes the following goals:

1. Reduce HP-owned operations footprint
2. Reduce the impact of our products on the climate
3. Develop products that will reduce the footprint of the rest of the global economy
4. Advocate for effective public policy to enable the transformation of the economy to low carbon

As global efforts to tackle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions gain even more momentum, HP continues to collaborate with our customers, governments, NGOs and investors to address the issue. Further, we support the development and promotion of climate change policies through our participation in both local and global organizations. For instance, HP is actively working with WWF Climate Savers, Combat Climate Change, the International Partnership on Climate Change and the Pew Center for Global Climate Change to define effective policies to contain climate change and protect society and the global economy from detrimental climate change.

HP believes there are several key principles that should guide a climate change mitigation strategy, including:

• Policy frameworks that use market-based mechanisms to set clear, transparent and consistent price signals over the long term offer the best hope for unleashing needed innovation and competition.
• Efforts must be global but differentiated – developing countries have a legitimate aspiration to development that must be taken into account in global policies. HP supports approaches that create incentives and encourage actions by all countries, including large emitting economies in the developing world, to implement GHG emission reduction strategies
• HP believes IT solutions can help all countries, and particularly developing economies that are building their infrastructure from the ground up, achieve rapid economic development with a lower dependency on fossil fuels.
• Climate change mitigation must not be viewed in isolation from other highly important challenges, such as ensuring access to energy, expanding availability of clean water, alleviating poverty and achieving growth in the global economy.
• Undertaking a system-wide, integrated approach to the problem and its solutions is critically important – to identify where greatest leverage exists for mitigation from the beginning of the production cycle through to users and end-of-use.

In further support of HP Eco Solutions, the company published a white paper, Low Carbon IT Solutions, which identifies the potential to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by using existing HP solutions. In addition, HP recently commended the SMART 2020: Enabling the Low Carbon Economy in the Information Age report, which assesses the opportunities of IT to provide energy efficiency savings to transition to a low-carbon economy. These findings further corroborate HP’s climate strategy and our long-standing commitment to the environment.

HP recognizes that climate policies also need to include plans and actions for adaptation to climate change. Science indicates that greenhouse gas emissions over the past decades have already committed the world to a certain amount of climate change. It is important to prepare for these changes and minimize the impacts they will have on the global society and economy.

	Impact on HP

As the world’s largest IT company, HP’s greatest impact on the environment is through our products. HP is committed to providing products and services that are environmentally sound throughout their life cycles. Environmental impacts occur at every stage of the product life cycle: from product design, through manufacturing and transport, to use by customers and, finally, reuse and recycling at the end of a product’s use.

Managing these impacts is a complex challenge as well as an opportunity. We apply design expertise to create innovative products and services with reduced environmental impact. For example, flat panel displays, notebooks, multi-function handhelds and all-in-one printers use less material and are more energy-efficient than the desktop PCs and individual scan, fax, copy and print devices they replace for many customers. These newer products help reduce energy consumption, GHG emissions and space/weight used in transport, all of which result in lower environmental impact. HP ensures environmental design does not compromise other product requirements such as quality, reliability and price.

HP recognizes that its own operations are also at risk from climate change: For instance, HP facilities and supply chain could be subject to increased incidence of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods associated with climate change. Power shortages and blackouts could interrupt our operations or those of our suppliers, distributors and customers.

HP and environmental sustainability: Learn about HP's commitment to the environment, including recycling programs, responsible product design, clean operations, energy efficient products and solutions, and more on HP’s environmental web site.

HP actions and outlook

1. Transparency and Reporting: HP is reporting its greenhouse gas emissions through several channels:
• HP was one of the first companies to join the WEF Global Greenhouse Gas Register to report, track and improve emissions and set improvement targets.
• HP has been reporting through the Carbon Disclosure Project since its inception, and was named “Best in Class” (with a perfect score in climate change) in 2007.
• HP reports and verifies carbon dioxide emissions from its facilities, based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
2. World Wildlife Fund Partnerships: In 2006, HP began a joint initiative with World Wildlife Fund-US (WWF-US) to reduce HP’s greenhouse gas emissions from its operating facilities worldwide, educate and inspire others to adopt best practices, and use HP technology in conservation efforts around the world. Current projects include:
• HP to define ambitious targets to reduce the energy consumption from its operations and products:
  1. By 2010, HP will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from HP-owned and HP-leased facilities worldwide to 16 percent below their 2005 levels.
  2. By 2010, HP will reduce the combined energy consumption and customer associated GHG emissions of its operations and products by 25% below their 2005 levels by the year 2010
• WWF-US and HP to leverage HP technology to advance the science and practice of adapting and becoming resilient to climate change. An initial project involves funding from HP to study the effects of climate change on the wildlife and habitats of North America’s Bering Sea.
3. Energy efficient products:
• HP is an original partner of the ENERGY STAR program, a globally recognized voluntary program to design and promote products that save energy while maintaining product performance. View HP’s ENERGY STAR qualified products.
• HP was the first PC manufacturer to register an Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT™) Gold product – the highest rating products can achieve – with the HP Compaq rp5700 Long Lifecycle Business Desktop PC in 2007, and is continuing to introduce many new products that are registered at either the Gold or Silver rating levels.
• In April 2008, HP’s entire personal workstation line was the first in the category to achieve an EPEAT™ Gold” listing.
• HP is a board member of Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI), which brings together businesses, consumers and conservation organizations to make new PCs and servers more energy efficient and to promote power management to minimize energy consumption.
• HP has committed to reduce the energy consumption of its volume desktop and notebook PCs by 25% by 2010 through a variety of strategies, including integrating more efficient power supplies and lower-energy chipsets.
• HP BladeSystem c-Class servers with embedded Thermal Logic technology use 33% less power than regular rack mount servers, reduce noise by 50%, and the jet-engine inspired ‘active fan technology’ uses 50% less power than conventional cooling fans.
• HP Halo Telepresence Solutions enables global interactive collaboration while avoiding CO2 emissions related to travel. On just one project, an HP team eliminated 44 international trips and improved time to market by six months. This represents avoiding 143.271 metric tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of preserving 1.17 acres from deforestation.
• HP LaserJet printers with Instant-on Technology provide up to 50% energy savings over traditional fusing. It has reduced emissions by over 5.25 million tonnes of CO2 to date – the equivalent of removing over 1.1 million cars from the road for one year.
• HP’s “Closed Loop” Inkjet Cartridge Recycling process is an industry first that uses post-consumer recycled plastics in the production of new Original HP Inkjet print cartridges. 
  • More than 200 million cartridges have been manufactured using the new engineering process thus far.  HP used more than five million pounds of recycled plastic in its inkjet cartridges last year, and the company is committed to using twice as much in 2008.
4. Our operations:
• HP launched two renewable energy programs in 2007: wind power in Ireland, ensuring that nearly 90% of HP Ireland’s energy use is renewable; and a solar power installation in San Diego that is expected to save $750,000 in energy costs over the next 15 years and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than one million pounds per year, or nearly 16 million pounds during the next 15 years.
• HP is consolidating its 85 legacy data centers into six data centers in three cities, each equipped with the latest energy-efficient equipment and Dynamic Smart Cooling technology. This is saving enough electricity to power all the homes in the city of Palo Alto, Calif. for more than a year.  When the initiative is complete and fully optimized, we anticipate yearly energy savings from data center consolidation up to 380 million kWh, and annual cost savings of up to US$30 million.
• HP is optimizing the use of office space in order to save costs and reduce the environmental footprint associated with real estate. HP now owns and leases less space than we did a year ago.  HP decommissioned 179 sites around the world in 2007, with a net reduction of 2.9 million square feet (269,400 square meters), or 5.7 percent of our total space.
• HP is upgrading its facilities with more energy efficient monitors and notebooks to reduce energy use by more than four million kilowatt hours (kWh) per year, saving approximately 2,000 tonnes of CO2e and about $320,000.
• HP is reducing paper waste in our office printing environment. We’re currently implementing duplex printing as standard across the company, using HP Web JetAdmin and Universal Print Driver to configure printers. This technology is helping us to achieve our goal for 80 percent of general office printing and copying to be double-sided by the end of 2008, saving HP up to 726 metric tonnes of paper a year and $7.7 million.
• HP has the most aggressive recycling and re-use goal in the industry.  We aim  to recover a cumulative two billion pounds of electronics and print cartridges by the end of 2010.
  • HP recovered the first billion pounds in 20 years. We expect to recover the 2nd billion in three years.
5. Supply Chain Leadership:
   • HP, which has the largest IT supply chain in the world, requires our suppliers to meet HP’s own stringent environmental expectations, no matter where in the world they operate
   • HP is the first company in the technology sector to make public a list of top suppliers. In doing so, we aim to promote transparency and progress in raising standards in the IT industry supply chain -- driving positive operational changes in supplier labor, health and safety, environmental and ethics practices. 
   • HP led the development of the industry’s first Electronics Industry Code of Conduct to extend our social and environmental standards to our supply chain.
   • HP has conducted over 400 audits with our first tier suppliers worldwide.
   • In 2006, HP launched two new capability building projects to help suppliers build management skills and share best practices – the Focused Improvement Supplier Initiative in China and the Central European Supplier Responsibility project.
6. Research and Development: HP Labs is researching new ways to increase the energy efficiency of our products
   • HP Labs announced in March 2008 a refocused research agenda, with sustainability being one of five focus areas, including: creating technologies, IT infrastructure and new business models for the lower carbon economy that save money and leave a lighter footprint on the environment.
7. Investments to advance the science of addressing climate change:
   • In the IT industry, we understand our role as leaders in the fight against climate change. While we are responsible for only two percent of the world economy’s global GHG emissions, we believe we also have an important role to play in helping to reduce the other 98 percent of global GHG emissions. Even with technology that uses energy more sparingly, emissions for the industry are expected to grow to 1.4 billion metric tons by 2020. 
     • HP published a white paper, titled “Low Carbon IT Solutions,” that identifies the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by using existing HP solutions.
8. HP Recognitions
   • Chosen as a corporate Green Giant by Fortune Magazine
   • Called “Global-Warming Ready” by Newsweek Magazine
   • Ranked as one of the most sustainable corporations in the world by The Global 100
   • Appears on the Dow Jones Sustainability, FTSE4Good and Accountability Rating Indices
   • Named “Best in Class” (with a perfect score in climate change) by the Carbon Disclosure Project
   • Named one of Computerworld’s Top 12 Green IT Vendors
   • Named one of the 100 Global Most Sustainable Companies in the World by Innovest Strategic Value Advisor

¹ Throughout this document, “greenhouse gas” or “GHG” refers to all greenhouse gases emitted by human activities, and “CO2e” refers to “carbon dioxide equivalent”, the unit used to measure greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main, but not the only man-made greenhouse gas.

² IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (http://www.ipcc.ch/)

³Goal applies to average energy consumption across identified high volume product families, using industry standard measurement benchmarks and holding ship rates constant using IDC reported figures for 2005. Identified product families include products in the following categories: notebook and desktop computers, inkjet and LaserJet printers and industry standard servers.