AT&T has committed to be carbon neutral across our entire global operations by 2035. We’re addressing climate change because it impacts our operations, our people and the communities where we live and work.
We will achieve net zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions – the equivalent of 1.1 million homes’ annual electricity [i] – by focusing on key initiatives:
By entering into power purchase agreements with renewable energy developers, we reduce our emissions, hedge against rising costs, and help add more clean electricity to the power grid. In 2022, AT&T renewable energy deals accounted for about 2.8 million MWHS of produced electricity.
We will continue to bring down emissions from our operational fleet by optimizing routes, switching to hybrid and electric vehicles and reducing the overall size of the fleet. We’re also planning for the decarbonization of our fleet.
Each year, we implement thousands of energy efficiency projects across our network and operations, lowering electricity use, emissions and reducing costs. Learn more in our Energy Management issue brief.
[i] EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator
Smart Climate Solutions, powered by AT&T Fiber, 5G, IoT and other connectivity, can help companies in high-emitting industries, such as energy, manufacturing, and transportation, become more environmentally sustainable in many ways.
Investors, customers and other stakeholders are looking expect us to employ responsible innovations to solve for climate change and meet global regulation standards. We know 5g, IoT and other broadband connectivity can help businesses reach their climate goals, and by 2035, we aim to reduce a Gigaton of emissions through our connectivity solutions for our business customers.
To ensure methodological rigor in tracking progress against our goal, we worked with the Carbon Trust, a leading environmental NGO, to develop a methodology for measuring emissions reductions enabled by our connectivity. We will provide an update on our progress annually as part of our ESG reporting.
We started calculating the emissions reduction that AT&T helps enable in 2018. At the end of 2020, we calculated that our technology solutions cumulatively have helped enable 72 million metric tons of CO2e, which is equivalent to over 8.1 billion gallons of gasoline, per the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This amount only represents the solutions that we’ve been able to identify and quantify, so there likely are more examples that we’ve been unable to count so far. We’re committed to working with our customers to quantify more of these impacts as we look to help increase the rate of emissions reduction.
We recognize that it’s very important to be transparent as we measure our impact in this area, so we’ve created several documents to show how we make those calculations. Here is the archive of those documents:
Connectivity can help lower emissions and curb resource use in many ways. Our case studies highlight some of the sectors and situations where connected solutions create more sustainable approaches to business.
