While Congress is paralyzed on federal climate legislation, many U.S. business are stepping up to reduce emissions, reports Maria Gallucci at Inside Climate News. A number of leading U.S. corporations are squeezing big reductions of climate-changing emissions from their operations and supply chains. With stakeholder criticism and other pressures building, more and more are also releasing rigorous climate data in their financial reports and enlisting third-party firms to make sure it is accurate. “We do it because it makes good business sense,” said Wayne Balta, a vice president at IBM. The world’s biggest computer services provider is on track to slash its 2008 electricity use levels by 20 percent by the end of 2012. Key to those reductions were efficiency upgrades in more than 360 buildings and data centers. FedEx, the world’s largest overnight delivery company, is on a similar path. Major US corporations taking action on climate change increased a whopping 89% between 2010 and 2011. Why? Tough economic times encourage increasing efficiency, increasing worry about the effects of more extreme weather on commercial activity and transport, and increasing investor pressure on corporations to cut carbon emissions.
Source
Major Corporations Quietly Reducing Emissions—and Saving Money Maria Gallucci, InsideClimate News http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120906/major-corporations-quietly-reducing-emissions%E2%80%94and-saving-money
