IBM plans to achieve its GHG emissions targets by continuing our focus on energy conservation and operational efficiency and increasing our purchases of renewable electricity to reduce our GHG emissions to the lowest feasible quantity, and then we anticipate to use carbon removal solutions and other feasible technologies to remove emissions in an amount which equals or exceeds IBM’s residual emissions.

To that end, IBM also has the following related and supporting targets in place:

• Procure 75% of the electricity IBM consumes worldwide from renewable sources by 2025, and 90% by 2030.
• Reduce IBM’s GHG emissions 65% by 2025 against base year 2010, adjusted for acquisitions and divestitures.
• Implement a minimum of 3,000 energy conservation projects to avoid the consumption of 275,000 megawatt-hours of energy from 2021 to 2025.
• Improve average data center cooling efficiency 20% by 2025 against base year 2019.

We challenge ourselves by:

• Not counting the purchase of unbundled Renewable Energy Certificates to comprise any percent renewable (and associated Scope 2 emissions reductions) if IBM cannot credibly consume the electricity those certificates represent.
• Not including the purchase of nature-based carbon offsets to comprise any emissions reduction.
• Setting a numerical target for residual emissions.

We challenge ourselves by:

• Not counting the purchase of unbundled Renewable Energy Certificates to comprise any percent renewable (and associated Scope 2 emissions reductions) if IBM cannot credibly consume the electricity those certificates represent.
• Not including the purchase of nature-based carbon offsets to comprise any emissions reduction. We anticipate using feasible technologies such as direct air capture to remove emissions in an amount which equals or exceeds IBM’s residual emissions. We support the development of such technologies with research to accelerate the discovery of enabling materials.
• Setting a numerical target for residual emissions.

Energy conservation is a basic pillar of our GHG emissions reduction targets. From 1990 through 2022, IBM has conserved 10 million megawatt-hours of energy – equivalent to more than triple IBM’s 2022 annual energy consumption – saving $680 million and avoiding 4.6 million metric tons of CO2e. Therefore, it is a strategy that reduces emissions, improves operational efficiency and saves money. In addition, for a company like IBM switching from conventional to renewable electricity procurement has the largest effect on GHG emissions reduction, since the majority of our energy consumption is in the form of electricity.

We anticipate the most challenging operational change will be associated to drastically reducing our Scope 1 emissions from the use of fuels in operations, including for heating and transportation. This will require transformational change and investment in infrastructure and assets to use low-carbon sources of energy, e.g. electrification. In addition, direct air carbon removal technologies are still in development. Even though for both aspects of our strategy mentioned here technologies exist, these are not feasible to be deployed at scale for an organization the size of IBM.