Greenhouse gas emissions

2010 AT&T GHG Emissions Disclosure

We believe that it is important to accurately measure our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions so that we can know where to focus our improvement efforts. We've been measuring and disclosing our GHG emissions since 2008. These are our results for 2010.

Performance

Our GHG emissions stayed relatively steady in 2010 compared to 2009.

Scope 1 (Direct Emissions)

Direct emissions account for just over 12 percent of our total GHG emissions and over 62 percent of these come from our fleet. Our commitment to operate a more efficient fleet led to a 4.3% reduction of fleet GHG emissions compared to 2009. Much of this progress has been a result of fuel efficiency gained from our adoption of 3,487 alternative-fuel vehicles and operational efficiency. This is part of AT&T's commitment to deploy approximately 15,000 alternative-fuel vehicles through 2018. Read more about these efforts under our Transportation Initiatives section.

Another large component of our direct emissions — 11 percent — came from the stationary engines and portable generators that provide back-up power for AT&T. These generators are an important component of AT&T's Network Disaster Recovery (NDR) organization, which works to keep wireless and wired communications flowing when disaster strikes. Generators also provide support for field operations where power is not available.

In years past, we have used engine run-time estimates to calculate fuel use, which is the basis for our GHG emissions calculation. We are now rolling out a system-based approach to run-time reporting, so we are getting a better representation of actual fuel use. As a result of the increased accuracy, we are seeing that we were conservative in our original estimates, and that we're actually using less fuel than our estimates had suggested. This is a good example of our ongoing efforts to hone in our data sources and increase the accuracy of our measurements.

Scope 2 (Indirect Emissions)

Our scope 2 emissions account for almost 87 percent of our total GHG emissions. These come from purchased electricity and steam, which remained steady in 2010 compared with 2009. Read about our efforts to manage our indirect GHG emissions in the Energy section.

Scope 3 (Other emissions)

For 2010, we continued to measure our business-related travel in our scope 3 emissions. To address these GHG emissions, AT&T has more than doubled its internal deployment of Telepresence from 50 rooms in 2009 to more than 130 rooms at the end of 2010. The company realized savings of more than $4.1 million in travel dollars and more than 2,500 metric tons of CO₂-e emissions avoided in 2010.

In 2011, we will be taking steps to incorporate supplier GHG emissions into our calculations. As part of this initiative, we have joined the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Supply Chain Initiative. Through this, we sent requests to our top suppliers for their GHG emissions information. We have also closely monitored the development of industry standards in an effort to ensure alignment with this increasingly important portion of our inventory.

As we move ahead, we will continue to publish our progress and look for additional ways to reduce GHG emissions and operate more efficiently.

For additional detail about AT&T's GHG emissions, please contact .