eWaste policy in action

In 2013, Workday committed to a "100% no landfill policy" and we have been actively implementing this program in the last year. For example, across 4 different data centers and office locations we have conducted six hard drive collections for data destruction, shredding and recycling of materials. This accounted for a total of almost 3,000 disk drives. Similarly, over 370 units of obsolete computing equipment were collected, cleansed and made ready for resell. Recycling can even be profitable on recovery value if done right!

Workday is committed to this program on a global scale and we are extending our coverage going forward. This will ensure that we are doing our best to minimize any negative impact on the environment as outlined in our sustainability commitment.

Green internet

With much of our lives moving online, we need to become more conscientious of how our clicks are powered. While some leaders already consume only renewable energy sources to provide their services, others are stuck in the dirty world of fossil fuels. Greenpeace has issued a report analysing the current state of the internet and calls out several green internet innovators such as Google green, Apple's Environmental Responsibility or recently Facebook. This has not always been the case and Greenpeace has run targeted campaigns to pressure these players into becoming more responsible of their power-related emission footprint. You can take action to move more internet players into this direction. As the report states "Six major cloud brands – Apple, Box, Facebook, Google, Rackspace, and Salesforce – have committed to a goal of powering data centers with 100 % renewable energy and are providing the early signs of the promise and potential impact of a renewably powered internet."

We can also see this in the world of enterprise applications. SAP has announced to power all their data centers and offices with 100% renewable energy. And of course, Workday has been doing this since 2008 and going forward as a 100% green power purchaser! Going forward Workday is using a blend of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) and Verified Emission Reductions (VERs) to achieve carbon neutrality for our power consumption.

Solar powered cars

Note: the following post includes the personal opinion of a single Green Team member

Usually solar powered cars are some goofy looking vehicles taped together by a few undergrad students for a solar mobility competition in the Australian outback. That's all very good and important, but in my view there is much more to the concept. Electricity can efficiently and cleanly be produced by photovoltaics and electric vehicles of all kinds can be efficiently powered by it. Let's look at both of these aspects.

PV arrays have increased in efficiency while dropping sharply in price. In 1980, a MWh of solar power would have cost almost $1,600 while in 2010 the same amount of power was available for $200 (as outlined in the much recommend GMO quarterly report by Jeremy Grantham). Prices are likely to continue to go down making solar a highly competitive power source. If only it were to shine all 24 hours of each day...

Similarly, electric vehicles are much more efficient in use of primary energy to move about their cargo (i.e. single humans mostly). Even if we were to burn the same gasoline in a stationary large scale facility to generate electricity, it would be more efficient than driving around a small scale engine with direct exhausts. More so, electric vehicles have much less moving parts and are simply more economical over time (on top of being more ecological right out of the gate). A quick look at key ingredients of the Tesla Model S makes that point clear.

In my personal quest to become electricity (not quite energy) independent, I have added a PV array to our house capable of producing 27 kWp (that's kilowatt peak).  Even in "sunny" Germany, this setup produces about 24,000 kWh / year, which I can consume or sell back into the grid as clean energy due to the German system of feed-in tariffs. This, of course, is way more electricity than we consume as a family (about 6,000 kWh per year for a 6 person household). But this is where electric mobility comes in. We can use the excess power we generate to charge our electric car! On a clear sunny day this looks as follows:

Our solar power control center "SMA home manager" shows the current electricity flow from the roof to the house drawing 7.4 kW (and taking 260 W from the grid to supplement). 

At the same time, the car is set from my iPhone's mobile app to being charging at this moment consuming the locally generated clean solar power to fill its battery. That's what I call a "solar powered car".

An electric vehicle has a certain amount of kWh it consumes per 100km driven. The new BMW i3 for example is rated at 12.9 kWh / 100km. So to drive 20.000 km it would require 2.580 kWh. This is an amount that can be achieved by a normal household sized roof top PV array. Even if sourced from the grid as 100% renewable energy at .25 Euro-Cents / kWh, it would be less than half of what you would have to pay at the pump to drive that far.

The crux is that our car is not always parked in our home garage plugged into our house grid when the sun shines. This is where two co-dependent factors come into play: a high number of electric vehicles and wide distribution of standardized charge points. As soon as EVs can be plugged in (or better using plugless charging systems) at work, at the supermarket, at the gym, almost anywhere, they can be connected to the grid as an electricity consumer while charging as well as contributor selling electricity back. The accounting for the demand and supply based battery management is likely easier than my daughters cell phone plan. On a large scale many of these 'driving storage systems' can be used to manage the inherent ebb and flow of renewable energy sources in today's electricity grids.

In my view, a future with de-centrally produced clean energy, a large number of electric vehicles and a widespread bi-directional charging infrastructure is possible. It is the true potential of solar powered cars and a much preferable outlook over today's fossil fuel based mobility.

Workday ranked fifth biggest user of Green Power amongst technology companies

In a recent Bloomberg study, Workday was ranked the fifth largest consumer of Green Power (by percentage) amongst its peer group of technology companies. Led by giants such as Lenovo, Microsoft or SAP, this list also differentiates between companies producing clean energy themselves (such as Apple or Adobe) and other using RECs or other clean energy products to achieve their goals. Strangely missing from this list are companies like Google (major player in clean energy), Amazon (getting there) and Salesforce (recently also commitment to clean energy).

This is exciting validation that our efforts to be a 100% green powered cloud player are recognized and our CSR report is used as a source for such information.

How green is the internet?

At a recent Google-hosted conference, the research community discussed the question of how green the internet really is. The video shows several 5 minute rapid talks on a variety of angles to this topic.



Also, Northwestern University presented a research framework called CLEER to provide a baseline to compare cloud to non-cloud offerings. Something we could consider in the future as a case study approach.

Google expands purchase of green power in Africa and Europe

In two separate deals in the last two weeks, Google has increased its investment in green power to source its vast electricity needs for data centers. 

After signing a 10-year deal with a South-african solar power plant, they closed also a 10-year deal with a Swedish onshore windfarm (72 megawatts) to power their Finnish data center. The best thing about this is that they specifically looked for a net new green energy opportunity to ensure their funding would add additional positive impact rather than purchasing from existing sources. This engagement secured the funding to even begin with the wind farm.

This adds to their existing $1bn portfolio of green energy investments. Well done, Google!

Cheap oil and climate future

While the environmental debate has not been a prominent topic in the all dominating US election coverage, the last few weeks have been packed full of truly confusing news items. 

On the one hand, IEA has published their World Energy Outlook 2012 (see also 12 page executive summary) showing that we can achieve energy savings equivalent to nearly a fifth of global demand in 2010 and that Renewables become the world’s second-largest source of power generation by 2015 and close in on coal as the primary source by 2035.

That sounds like environmentally good news to me - at first. Another truly astonishing result is that the US will become the worlds largest oil producer by 2020 and become nearly self-sufficient around 2035. Given peak oil, how is this possible? It is possible by tapping into "unconventional gas and oil". Fun stuff like tar sands and specifically shale oil by use of fracking. While the oil industry celebrates this as a new dawn of the fossil fuel era, we ought to question the environmental impact of the techniques used for extracting unconventional oil and gas as well as the effect of burning it. The IEA report states clearly no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2 °C goal. This however seems highly doubtful given the current excitement over cheap oil.

To warn us all, the World Bank has released their climate change report "Turn Down The Heat" which outlines the devastating consequences of staying on the current trajectory. 

It is up to us to politically demand a different path for the next generations than what is outlined in the numerous scientific reports of the recent years. To renew our understanding of our climate reality, I encourage you to spend a few minutes watching some relevant information:  

Reinventing fire

Watch Amory Lovins give an information-packed talk on how we can go from the current gridlock mess to a bright future of energy independency. In in the meantime savings trillions of dollar and providing lots of entrepreneurial opportunities.



A must see! Then go visit Rocky Mountain Institute's "Reinventing Fire" site to learn more about this can be done in this graphic.

Club of Rome takes a 40 year global view

Four decades after their famous "Limits to Growth" report in 1972, the Club of Rome has issued another global report looking at the world in 2052. Not surprisingly, it is not a pretty picture.

Dwindling global resources, continued population growth and a firm rooting in an outdated belief system of growth and market capitalism will bring the planet to the brink of collapse. Climate crisis will accelerate and possibly even reach a point of no return in the second half of the century, unless we act soon.

But there is also hope that we can transition to a sustainable, equitable and happier world. They outline six essential goals to make such a shift. None of these seem easy to achieve or reflected in societies today. It will be a huge learning process for mankind, but maybe it is a defining moment for us as a species. And it requires fast action. "Business as usual" is not an option if we want to ensure that our grand children can live on a worthwhile planet.

Let's make this a driving motivation in all our actions - the time is now!

Microsoft commits to carbon neutrality

Software giant Microsoft announced its commitment to become 100% carbon neutral for all of its operations worldwide (data centers, software development labs, offices, and employee air travel) in the upcoming fiscal year. Fantastic!

A couple of interesting aspects of this are:
First of all, they are using CarbonSystems, not any of the known other players like HARA or SAP.  This provides them with better real time view into their footprint and can drive immediate actions by the various business units.

Secondly, they implement a carbon fee chargeback model for all emissions which gets pooled in a central fund from which they buy Renewable Energy Credits. A good idea - they included the CFO as a prinary stakeholder. In this approach, every business units knows about its impact and is incentivised to take action to reduce exposure to the CFO.

For more details, here is their recently released white paper.

Cloud Computing and Sustainability: Beyond energy and into ethics

BSR recently wrote an article on the sustainability impacts of cloud computing beyond the usual topic of energy/carbon reduction that instead delves into energy policy, human rights, and data privacy.

It is interesting to note that in the context of cloud computing, human rights doesn't necessarily equate to labor practices, but rather data privacy and protection of data by cloud service providers. This, of course, is an area that Workday takes very seriously.

They end with this note, which challenges cloud providers to broaden the scope of what is typically considered corporate responsibility:

"As cloud computing takes hold and changes the profile of business, so too will it change notions of business ethics and corporate responsibility. There was once a time when business would argue that suppliers should take sole responsibility for following labor and environmental laws, yet today we see armies of auditors and labor relations specialists going above and beyond what is legally required. A similar transition will arise with cloud computing, and activities deemed outside the scope of corporate responsibility today -- challenging unreasonable law enforcement demands and meddling in energy policy -- will be mainstream tomorrow. Now is the time for today’s most innovative companies to define what that looks like in practice."

Kids of Sodom - eWaste in Ghana

This year's UNICEF picture of the year is by German photographer Kai Loeffelbein. The series "Kids of Sodom" depicts life at the other end of the spectrum of consumer electronics.

If eWaste isn't just tossed into a landfill or a nearby ocean, it is collected for recycling. This sounds good, but countries are not required to recycle their electronic trash in their own country. Despite some country specific regulations or global agreements like the Basel Convention (which is not signed or ratified by all countries) this is common practice.

So each year, hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous eWaste are shipped in containers to places like Accra in Ghana. In those countries, large slum cities exist where people try to harvest valuable materials with the poorest of means and absolutely no health protection.

Loeffelbein's photo series shows this kind of life. We are not only exploiting the poor countries for rare materials, but also toss the broken toys right back at them. With more stringent and mandatory regulation we could stop externalizing the true cost of our digital life style and achieve a more viable relationship to innovative electronics.

Green Christmas wishes 2011

"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction."
- Bill Gates 


This year has been huge for our Sustainability efforts at Workday.

• We issued our very first CSR report 2010, which was truly a change maker in our journey to be the most environmentally and socially sustainable company we can be. It was a beautiful document, but more importantly it anchored all our efforts in the minds of our executives and fellow employees, so we moved from tree huggers to sustainability managers.
• We had a green and healthy Rising.
• We started composting in the offices.
• We continued and extended our commitment to carbon neutrality by purchasing RECs for 2011.
• We revamped and reinvigorated our green blog.
• And hey, we even got a cool new logo!

Looking ahead, I’d like us all to consider Mr. Gates’ quote for a moment: While this is unfortunately very true to the negative extent in the climate realm, it also is true in the positive direction. Small improvements here and there start building up momentum until they become a shift in perspective for many until we finally reach a tipping point. What wasn’t even conceivable a few years ago is now common sustainable business practice. Think what we can achieve in two, five or even ten years and how it can make a measurable difference. We should be proud of what has been achieved so far and look for opportunities to do more in 2012.

So, I am dreaming of a green Christmas...

Take only what you need

Professor Tim Jackson from the University of Surrey has, as part of the Sustainable Development Commission for the UK, published a remarkable report about "Prosperity without Growth". He outlines problems of our current system of rampant consumerism and shows possible ways out of this economically and ecologically flawed a approach.

Our market-driven model is entirely predicated on continued growth, which inevitably has to finds its end at some point. Resources such as fossil fuels become more scarce very quickly and the ecological footprint of growth brings our planet to its knees.
Growth has delivered its benefits very unequally within societies and across countries. Also, the blind belief in consumerism as a credo doesn't really raise people's happiness, in fact it it brings about a feeling of emptiness and "affluenza". I recommend at least reading the first introduction pages to get an idea of Jackson's work.

Now, as we enter the high season of consumerism called "the holidays", maybe we should ponder if Black Friday violence isn't a tell-tale sign that something isn't quite right with the social status we associate with mere "stuff". My personal recommendation for the Christmas Season this year (again) is to take action against deforestation and protect an acre of rainforest with Conservation International. Or just spend good old quality time with someone. In any case more meaningful than yet another unloved plastic toy or tech gizmo du jour.

Does the Internet hurt our Environment?

Well, does it? How much does running all those servers in all those data centers in the cloud consume in electricity? What about the insane carbon footprint of Spam? But what about all the savings by telecommuting? What about fostering innovation by sharing information about new technologies that lead to more efficient use of resources? A pretty complex topic, but I am of the opinion that new technologies and the internet will play a crucial part in the transition to a Renewable Energy future.

A cool 2010 Infographic shows the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the Internet in terms of environmental impact.

Google ends RE <C

In a recent announcement of out-of-season spring cleaning (EOL for Google projects that didn't play out as planned), Google decided to end their efforts to make the production of Renewable Energy more cost efficient than Coal (RE < C). This ambitious initiative ran for four years and results on solar thermal (heliostat) and geothermal energy are published and broadly available.

Stopping this project does not mean Google abandons their attention to green energy. They continue to invest heavily in Renewable Energy (more than $850 million) and also are leading on Data Center efficiency. However, some doubts remains about their future direction as Bill Weihl, google.org's Green Czar and driving force behind many initiatives,  has decided to leave the company in November 2011.

CDP Study Shows Cloud Computing Saves Green AND Is Green

The Carbon Disclosure Project recently released a study that provides some interesting numbers on the sustainability of utilizing cloud computing (both economically and environmentally). The study was conducting using 11 global firms as case studies, including two Workday customers: Aviva and Applied Materials.

Key findings:

• Cloud computing can avoid millions of metric tons of CO2
• Potential financial benefits from cloud computing run into $ billions
• Cloud computing delivers a postive net present value (NPV)
  
• Cloud computing brings business efficiency savings

To illustrate, they build a hypothetical scenario of a large global firm moving their HR application to the public cloud (e.g. Workday HCM). They found that this would save $12 million over five years and cut CO2 emissions by 30,000 metric tons - the equivalent of taking 5,900 cars off the road for a year!

The overall results show that by 2020, "large U.S. companies that use cloud computing can achieve annual energy savings of $12.3 billion and annual carbon reductions equivalent to 200 million barrels of oil – enough to power 5.7 million cars for one year."

This is great news for Workday customers and confirms what we've known for a while now: SaaS Is Green!

Workday's first Sustainability Report is here

Workday's first ever Corporate Sustainability Report is here!

What started as an idea in summer 2010 in the Green Team meetings picked up momentum towards the end of the year. Everything came together nicely by January and from there on the professionals of our marketing group took over to create an amazing document. We are all very proud of the result and can truly look at a document representing the spirit of Workday when it comes to Sustainability.

But CSR 2010 is just the beginning. The report provides us with a baseline for our future initiatives to continue to improve our efforts on Sustainability. We have already listed lots of areas for improvement and we are looking forward to working on "CSR 2012" where we can report back on those.

Organize for Good

A customer of ours pointed out a very interesting offering: AngelPoints. Their solution allows companies to organize all Employee and Company efforts for donations, volunteer work, community support and sustainability. Being part of a meaningful efforts in their workplace attracts top talent, motivates and retains employees. They also have a solution for Sustainability programs.

This is software doing good in action!

Cloud Computing is Greener

A recent study from Microsoft (with Accenture and WSP), "Cloud Computing and Sustainability" showed that companies can reduce the energy use and carbon footprint of computing by up to 90 percent by outsourcing applications.

Check out this HBR article Cloud Computing is Greener for more information.