HP-WWF partnership kicks off next stage in EMEA

Global Citizenship

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In the first phase of the partnership WWF encourages HP employees to come up with climate-smart ideas or best practices that can help HP’s customers reduce their carbon footprint.

The most promising ideas could be included in the second phase of the project – an external report showing how ICT services can lead to an annual reduction of up to one billion tons of carbon dioxide globally. This WWF report is sponsored by HP and is due for publication in May 2008.

Dennis Pamlin, Global Policy Advisor, WWF has spent the last few weeks visiting a number of HP sites across EMEA to discuss climate-smart ideas with HP employees.

We caught up with him to ask what progress has been made in EMEA so far, why WWF chose HP to partner with and what the benefits of such a partnership are for WWF and HP.

Q: What does this partnership between HP and WWF involve in EMEA?
DP: For EMEA, our goal is to identify how ICT can help bring about a reduction of global carbon emissions of one billion tonnes annually. We have started off looking at the potential of existing technology solutions to reduce carbon emissions.

HP’s product and solutions portfolio has a lot to offer here, if we look at the potential of teleconferencing solutions like Halo, or the opportunities offered by teleworking, working in virtual teams. All this reduces business-related travel and the need for office space considerably. HP servers are also in use around the world in ways that reduce carbon dioxide, for example by controlling heat and lighting and dematerialisation of paper.

We have also identified some external experts to help us develop a methodology and start the research into how ICT overall can help make drastic reductions in carbon emissions happen.

Q: Why did WWF choose HP?   
DP: For us this partnership represents a new type of cooperation between issues-focused organisations like ourselves and the private sector. We used to deal mostly with companies that were concerned about the business risk that environmental regulation brings.

HP is a Fortune 100 company with a global presence. In its own industry it’s definitely one of the leaders in environmental offerings to its customers.

HP has also done a lot of work to reduce its own carbon footprint and has designed products with environmental considerations for twenty years. So there is a lot of awareness and knowledge about environmental issues within HP as an organization. Surveys show that its employees have a real commitment to doing something about climate change and the environment.

WWF is a global leader in environmental stewardship. Working with a leader in the IT industry, we can explore how businesses can get involved in meaningful ways by creating new revenue streams for themselves in the long run. And we hope to encourage more businesses to embrace climate change as an opportunity to innovate and move into a new market space.

Q: What are the wider benefits for HP of collaborating with WWF?
DP: HP is really showing industry leadership with this project. Part of our joint work as partners in EMEA is to reach out to key stakeholders, including government agencies, the wider IT industry and environmental organisations to start a dialogue about the contribution ICT can make to reducing carbon emissions globally.

HP and WWF will be jointly presenting at the Gartner Symposium in Cannes, France next month on this topic and we also have a meeting with the UK government scheduled later on this year to discuss this further.

HP is also showing thought leadership that is being recognised beyond the IT sector. I have already witnessed considerable interest from the finance sector in this issue.

Industry analysts are excited about the idea of looking at how environmental issues are shifted out of the ‘business risk’ space and classified as a ‘business opportunity’.

They are looking at all the infrastructure investment that goes into logistics and transport, eg the building and maintenance of roads, airports, etc. They are asking what would happen if some of this investment started to be diverted into ICT infrastructure. Imagine broadband access was free, just like the use of roads is mostly free of charge, only financed by taxes. In the context of Europe becoming a knowledge society, this is an exciting proposition.

Q: What is needed to make this partnership succeed? 
DP: I think there is no doubt about the success of it; it’s really more a question of how much of a success it will be. I think to maximise the impact this partnership can have we need to remember that we are dealing with issues that cannot be resolved within the space of one financial quarter.

So we are not here to come up with short term tactics, we are looking for viable solutions.

And I think we will be most successful if we build on each other’s core competencies and strengths. HP brings business and technology leadership to the table; we have an established track record in environmental stewardship. I believe that this partnership will set an example for other environmental and private sector organisations to follow.

October 2007 issue

Global Citizenship Reports 2006 (*)

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