Zeroing Out Our Carbon Use

We’re going 100% carbon neutral.

Global warming. Climate change. Whatever you call it, all of us here at Yahoo! want to do something to combat it. We are changing our energy consumption practices as well as investing in greenhouse gas reduction projects to make our impact on the climate essentially “neutral.” Check out what it means, how we’re doing it, and what difference it will make.

Sure, Yahoo! can think big. But you can, too. Even your smallest individual changes can add up to a big change for the better. To see what you can do, explore our Yahoo! Green site, check out hybrid vehicles, or connect with other eco-minded people on a green Yahoo! Group.

What It Means

What does carbon neutral mean?
The basic definition is that we don’t want our energy use to add greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So we’re measuring our impacts, reducing within Yahoo! where we can, and, for what remains, investing in projects elsewhere that reduce greenhouse gases in amounts equal to what we are emitting.

For every ton of greenhouse gas emissions that we can’t avoid putting into the atmosphere, we’ll take out the same amount somewhere else.

What’s included?
The first step is measurement. We needed to decide what parts of our business were included in going carbon neutral. In our “carbon footprint,” we included energy use in our global offices and data centers, plus the impact of our employees commuting to work and flying for business.

The more technical definition is that, according to the greenhouse gas protocol developed by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, our carbon footprint includes Scope 1 and 2 emissions and employee commuting and business travel in Scope 3.

We measured our carbon footprint with data from all of 2006 with the assistance of ICF international. We’re having a third party validate the measurement to make sure we haven’t missed anything. We’ll continue to make investments on this timeline – using the prior year’s data to be carbon neutral in a given year.

When does this happen?
By the end of 2007, we’ll be carbon neutral. We’ve acquired carbon reduction credits from third party provider Ecosecurities, a leading company in the business of sourcing, developing and trading emission reductions worldwide, and through the services of CantorCO2e, one of the world’s oldest and most experienced global environmental credit and renewable energy brokerage firms. The credits are from clean energy projects in three locations: a small scale run-of-river hydropower project in Western Brazil, and wind turbines in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra states in southern and western India.

How Are We Going Carbon Neutral?

Transparent approach
We’re committed to being an environmentally responsible business and to be as transparent as possible in our carbon neutral approach. By sharing our carbon footprint of 250,000 metric tons of CO2 (see What Difference Will This Make?) and our best practices, we hope to encourage our industry peers to take action as well. We also hope to inspire our greatest asset, our community of more than 500 million users to make their own positive impact on the environment.

Reducing impacts
As in the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle,” the most important thing is to first reduce the impact we have on climate change. We’ve already focused on conserving energy, supporting alternative commuting, and inspiring our employees to take actions. Check out what we’re doing now. We’ll continue to focus on decreasing our overall impact through efficiency.

Offsetting the rest
After reviewing over 100 projects, we chose ones that met our criteria and provided the best fit for Yahoo!’s overall objectives. In addition to our own reductions, we’re investing in carbon reduction credits in areas of the world where Yahoo! has a presence.

As a leading Internet company, we know how powerful the Internet can be to change lives. Therefore, in Brazil, we’re connecting a community near the hydroelectric project to the Web and to Yahoo!’s community of over 500 million people to foster an exchange of ideas about creating a sustainable world. The community of “Catorce de Abril” is a remote village in the Brazilian state of Rondonia. The school and most of the village gained access to electricity just last year, when the Primavera hydroelectric project was built and the capacity of the local and isolated electrical grid was increased.

Currently, there are no computers in the school – lesson plans are copied on a mimeograph machine – and the nearest access to Internet is over an hours’ drive away. As a result of this project, the students who attend la Escola Maria Rosa de Oliveira in Catorce de Abril will be given access to the Internet – which allows access for these students to the world’s information, new opportunities for learning, and a network for an exchange of information through Flickr, Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Messenger, and Yahoo! Groups. The larger community will be able to benefit from the lab as a community resource as well. We’ll be looking for opportunities to form similar partnerships related to our wind offsets in India.

This is what’s important to us, and is reflected in the projects we are supporting:

Measurable results: We want to see real, measurable, direct emissions reductions.
Verification: Our projects are screened through a third-party verification process to ensure they’re actually delivering their expected environmental benefits.
Additionality: Our investments support projects that go beyond business as usual. Some offset projects have been recently criticized because they merely provided additional revenue without environmental improvements. Our projects help to accelerate the development of wind and hydro in regions where coal and diesel are the standard approach to providing power.
High quality: We chose projects that are wise investments with strong environmental returns but which also help other businesses and consumers build faith in this new and emerging offset market.
The Purple Gene: We want to do this in a way that’s innovative, authentic, and uniquely Yahoo!.

This is a new arena, and we don’t claim to know everything about it. Like others who’ve pledged to become carbon neutral, we’ve been learning as we go along, and will continue to learn as we continue our commitment to carbon neutral in the future.

Your Answers. Our Actions.
In the spring, many of you responded to David Filo when he asked for your ideas to help Yahoo! reduce its carbon emissions. We value your feedback and have taken several steps to incorporate your ideas.

One of the most popular ideas was simply increasing our efficiency. We’re implementing several new measures for reducing energy consumption and saving dollars this fall, including one that will cut natural gas consumption at our Sunnyvale campus by an estimated thirty-five percent.

Several of you suggested ways to reduce our paper consumption. We’re converting copiers to double-sided as their default setting, and creating an employee tiger team to improve our existing recycling program.

One of the many recommendations from our best answer winner was locating our data centers in temperate climates and cooling them using air from outside, instead of relying on energy-intensive cooling systems. Our Quincy, Washington data center, opening later this year, features this particular innovation – we’ll be taking advantage of the temperate Pacific Northwest climate to use less air conditioning and reduce our energy consumption.

Another recurring idea was investing in clean power. Yahoo! recently doubled its commitment to our local utility’s Green Power program. Our office in Hillsboro, Oregon matches its electricity consumption with 100% wind power.

Several other respondents urged us to invest in education. We took that to heart when developing the internet connection project in the rural Brazilian school. In the US, we gave Fremont High School in California a green makeover in December 2006, installing energy efficient windows and retrofitting its outdoor science lab. We also spread the word about Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” by showing it to environmentally aware low-income students in New York and LA, and distributing copies of the movie to local science teachers.

Many suggested a permanent Yahoo! green web page. As one responder commented, “You can reach the world, so start with all your users. That’s your greatest power.” In May 2007, we launched Yahoo! Green.

What Difference Will This Make?

Yahoo! going carbon neutral in 2007 is like taking 35,000 cars off the road for a year … or turning off the power on the Las Vegas strip for two months.

Yahoo! is striving to do its part to fight climate change. But we can’t do it alone. Small changes by people like you will also help the environment. Visit our Yahoo! Green site, check out hybrid vehicles, or look for our Yahoo! Groups green category. You can also find ways to offset your own impacts at TerraPass or CarbonFund.