The impact of airtravel

To date, only about 5% of the world's population has ever flown. However, the IPCC estimates that 3.5% of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions stem from aviation. Taking a long distance flight, say from Munich to San Francisco, is about the worst climate offense one can commit in a day. Air planes are per person not much more efficient than cars. If you consider the distance being about 5870 miles one way, a round trip can be equivalent to your annual car mileage!

But given that our lives at times require air travel, it is important to mitigate its impact. There are many sites selling carbon offsets, but they all vary in precision of climate maths, efficiency of administration and quality of investment projects. It is very important that the money gathered by selling offsets is invested in meaningful, timely and verifiable projects. The currently best option to offset flight emissions is atmosfair. Their focus on the airline industry makes them a good partner for environmentally acceptable air travel.

Some of the things that make atmosfair stand out are:

• Over 90% of all investments go into CDM Gold Standard project (the highest available standard for climate protection projects).
• High efficiency of administration with 92% of all funds going into projects.
• Detailed emission calculation specific to air travel, including non-CO2 impacts.
• Research on efficiency of airlines, published in a detailed airline index.
• Engaging with corporation to optimize and offset business travel.

atmosfair is "more costly" than what carbon calculators of other sites quote to fully offset a flight. However, this is due to more accurate calculations and higher quality projects. As they state on their site, 'because contributions to atmosfair are voluntary, [...] passengers should be fully informed about the ecological effects of flying as they are currently understood by the scientific community.' It becomes our choice then.

Next time we fly, we can consider our personal climate budget. Given the climate community's stated goal of limiting the average rise in Earth’s temperature by 2050 to 2°C above the pre-industrial level, we have a global budget of about 750 billion tonnes of CO₂ until the year 2050. Given a world population of 8.2 billion people, this means that each person on Earth has a yearly budget of roughly 2.3 tonnes of CO₂. We can do our own maths on how many flights that allows us to support this important goal. Let's do our part!

Workday awarded by EPA

Workday has been awarded membership to the 2010 Green Power Leadership Club by the Environmental Protection Agency!

For offsetting 100% of our electricity use of all our office buildings and data centers we have been given a nice Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood plaque, which we will proudly display in the lobby.

Looks for us also in the EPA Green Power Partner listing.

Workday offsets 100% of its electricity use!!!

Fantastic news!

Workday has renewed and extended its commitment to clean energy and to making SaaS the truly green alternative by offsetting 100% of its electricity use of its office buildings and development data centers. To achieve this, we have partnered with Renewable Choice to purchase over 1 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable energy credits (RECs).

Our purchase of 1,300,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable energy credits has an impact that is similar to:
- Planting 4,986 mature trees
- Not driving 1,484,518 miles in an average car

For this commitment, we are (soon) registered with the EPA as a leading partner and a 100% Green Power Purchaser.

This is an awesome commitment by Workday as a company. It shows our true leadership and makes a tangible impact. And our customers do not only get the green benefits of more efficient data centers, but know that all of the electricity consumed is now 100% offset as well.

Thanks to everyone at Workday for making this possible.

On Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) and Carbon Offsets

Workday is purchasing RECs to offset our use of electricity consumption. What does this actually mean? Well, we are not using renewable energy directly, because we cannot have our data centers powered by a hydroelectric power plant exclusively and we do not have a large solar panel array on the roof of our office. Instead, we are consuming "normal" electricity as it is available in the grid. But if someone, like a wind farm, produces clean electricity somewhere else in the US and puts that into the grid (hence making the overall mix greener), they get a "Renewable Energy Credit (REC)" for each 1000 kWh they feed in. These RECs need to be certified by a third-party organization, such as by Green-e Energy. Green-e is a leading voluntary certification program certifies renewable energy credits that meet environmental and consumer protection standards. So we are buying Green-e Energy certified RECs from Renewable Choice which helps the producers of clean energy compete in the energy market. By purchasing RECs for 100% of the electricity we use, we are ensured that clean, renewable energy is added to the national power grid to offset our conventional electricity use.

We do not offset carbon directly, which would be more applicable to companies that have manufacturing processes that emit carbon or other direct emisions. In that case, companies leverage "verified emission reductions" (VERs) to reduce their footprint.

This is nicely depicted by the following image which shows scope 1 (what you emit directly), scope 2 (what your electricity emits) and scope 3 (what your supply chains emits. Ultimately to claim carbon neutrality, all 3 scopes need to be considered.




A good over view of some of these terms can be found here.

Rent green with Enterprise

Good news! Workday has negotiated a new Rental Car Agreement with Enterprise. They offer us the lowest rates in the "Bay Area". And, as reported recently, Enterprise currently offers a carbon offset option, which is even matched 1:1. The best part is, you can now select the carbon offset option and expense it along with your rental cost, so any of the CO2 emitted during your drive will be offset by clean energy with TerraPass.

When you get to the page "Verify your information and Book your Rental" the option Go Green with your Rental is on the right and you click Add. This will add $1.25 to the rental and recalculate the price. (We cannot auto-elect this option, individuals have to do it.)

We have not signed a national agreement with them yet but will in the very near future. So these low price deals are only in the Bay Area which include Pleasanton, SFO, Oakland and San Jose Airports and all other downtown locations. We'll let you know when we have our national agreement.

Thanks to Betty and our Finance execs for making this happen! Let's give Enterprise lots of good business for being green leaders.

p.s. with this we should not select the more expensive hybrid vehicles as our offsets compensate.

Offsets on rental cars matched 1:1

If you rent a car with Alamo, Entrprise or National, you only pay $1.25 to offset your carbon emissions. This is probably a reasonable average value for miles driven per average vehicle. However, this is now matched by a fund 1-for-1 until 1 million in offsets with TerraPass is reached.

Check it out here and remember to ask for offsets on your next rental. You can spare the dollar I am sure....

Green Credit Card saves the planet while you shop!

From Chuao Wang:

"Here’s some details about the carbon offset credit card I mentioned the other day.

I have been looking for an easy way to purchase some carbon offsets and I found this credit card from Brighter Planet and Bank of America.

Here’s how the card works:
* Earn 1 EarthSmart point for every $1 spent in net retail purchases.
* Points are automatically redeemed monthly to help fund renewable energy projects.
* Every 1,000 points will fund an estimated 1 ton of carbon offsets.
* Every 1,000 points is roughly equivalent to taking a car off the road for 2,000 miles, or powering and heating/cooling your home for a month.

This page lists the projects that Brighter Planet supports. You can also track your climate profile with My Brighter Planet and see the offsets earned with your linked credit card. So instead of frequent flier miles, cash rewards or free gas, I can easily and directly purchase carbon offsets with every purchase!"

Awesome find Chuao!

Workday Germany goes CO2 neutral (of course)

As some might have expected, I was looking for a carbon-neutral way to provide an office in Germany. Starting November, the 5 German employees will have a home in a shared office provided by "Plug&Work". I told them that environmental concerns are high on my list, especially carbon offsetting. Well, turns out their General Manager is big on the topic, too, and is involved in a reforestation effort lead by Global Woods. Although details remain to be found out, the CO2 offsets are provided by CarbonFix, which does reforestation in several project. The main project is named KIKONDA in Uganda. Check it out.

Now I will get on them for recycling and such....:-)

Analyst predicts green accounting in ERP software

This morning I had an analyst call with Warren Wilson from Ovum. Warren is asking two main questions:

1) How can the IT industry reduce its own carbon footprint (e.g., how much electricity is required to accomplish a given workload with a SaaS solution vs. an on-premise solution); and
2) To what extent can ERP software help the rest of the world reduce its carbon footprint (e.g. by collecting and analyzing energy-consumption data and then helping to manage it).

With regulations about carbon emissions on the horizon, how can companies track their current footprint? Currently there does not seem to be a solution out there that would support carbon accounting in manufacturing, facility or fleet management or other areas. While this is not any of the areas Workday will go into anytime soon, it is still noteworthy that there is an opportunity for software that support this.

Of course, we also talked about "SaaS is green" and Warren supports the statement that centralized, efficient processing in green datacenter (with offsets) is a strong case.

Workday's Green Commitment

With the launch of our new website today, we also have a page outlining the commitment Workday makes to being green:

http://www.workday.com/company/the_workday_experience/green_commitment.php

How carbon offsets work

Our friends and customers at Salesforce have extended their 1-1-1 program and added another "1": Earth.

Their program "EarthForce" also purchases carbon offsets (like Workday). One of their offset partners, NativeEnergy has a nice short movie explaining the basic working of the offsets: http://www.nativeenergy.com/pages/flash/97.php

Check it out.

DELL goes carbon neutral in '08

Very groovy, DELL now powers its campus with 10.000 employees completely with green energy and goes carbon neutral in 2008. Read the details here.

We are in good company...

the carbon atlas

Check out this interesting representation of current CO2 emission level by country:

http://kelsocartography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/carbonatlas.pdf

No surprise here, change for clean energy needs to happen in Asia and the USA...

The green road warrior

If you live near our office in Walnut Creek, it is easy to take BART or ride your bike to work to be green. But how about those of us traveling for Workday working with our customers or selling our solutions?

Airplane travel is one of the most carbon emitting activities and until the airline industry comes up with a better alternative fuel source, we can only leverage carbon offsets. TerraPass offers a simple calculator to see how much carbon is emitted by a flight (based on your portion of the plane's fuel consumption) and how much it costs to offset it.

An example: Last year, 10 Workdayers traveled to a prospect in Wichita, Kansas for a few days. Taking everyone's starting point into consideration, this amounted to 27,000 miles of round trip travel producing 10,000 lbs of CO2. Offsetting this amounted to about $60 for the team or $6 per travelers, which is roughly 1-2% of the average ticket price (or a beer at the airport lounge).

It felt good to travel carbon neutral. And of course we had the beer, too.

Carbon Offsets - are they real?

Workday is participating in a Carbon Offset program by Renewable Choice. We have purchased carbon offset for part of the energy that we are consuming in our office and our internal data center and are working towards an agreement to include our production hosting centers as well. The idea of course has to be 100% carbon neutral.

But offsets are unlike tangible goods. When engaging in offsets, it is always tricky to assess if the investment is done in real initiatives that truly support a reduction in carbon footprint. KQED has issued an interesting 5-minute radio program on the topic.

http://www.kqed.org/quest/radio/view/740

Renewable Choice is investing primarily in wind power. Their subsidies are certified by green-e, which is supported by the Center for Resource Solutions. While it is hard to assess how much a certification in this non-regulated market is worth in the end, green-e is at least mentioned as a viable certification in several websites. It is also used by TerraPass, a leading offset provider. They cite that green-e and Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) were reviewed by hundreds of stakeholders (e.g., carbon experts, industry participants, and environmental and consumer groups) and went through several versions before final release. Finally, Renewable Choice is also used by large green supporters such as Whole Foods. So we rest our case for now...

For additional comparison of offset providers, their prices and projects types you can also check out http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/carbon_offset_wind_credits_carbon_reduction.htm.