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Energy Policy
AT&T has an internal energy policy, signed by AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson. The policy outlines AT&T's commitment to improve and optimize energy efficiency, while maintaining or improving the quality, reliability and competitiveness of our services. It balances the business need for an affordable and continuous supply of energy with integrating alternative and renewable energy solutions for competitive advantage and reduced environmental impact.
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Save Energy Now LEADER Initiative
AT&T was among more than 30 companies to join the U.S. Department of Energy's Save Energy Now LEADER® initiative. The initiative is an ambitious national public-private initiative aimed at driving significant energy intensity and carbon emission reductions across the U.S. industrial sector. Program partners pledge to reduce their energy intensity by 25 percent or more by 2019.
Managing energy, improving efficiency
Responsible energy management and efficiency improvements help conserve natural resources as well as benefiting our bottom line. We connect millions of people every day, and the more voice, data and video content we deliver, the more capacity — and power — is required to run the network. The rising cost of energy impacts our business.
Energy Metric
We're taking active steps to run a more efficient network and explore alternative energy options. We have established an intensity metric to track and measure our electricity usage as related to our growth in terms of the total amount of information transmitted over our network, including our global network, voice and video traffic.
In 2009, we used 498 kWh per terabyte of data carried on our network, which was a 23.8 percent decrease from 2008. We set a goal for 2010 to reduce the electricity consumption of our company relative to data growth on our network by 16 percent as compared with year 2009. We exceeded this goal and used 415 kWh per terabyte of data carried on our network, which is a 16.6 percent decrease from 2009. In 2011, our goal is to reduce the electricity consumption of our company relative to data growth on our network by 17 percent as compared with year 2010.
Internal Energy Management Structure
We have taken some important steps to reorganize the way the company manages its energy use, while maintaining — and improving — the quality, reliability and competitiveness of our services. As part of this effort, we appointed a new energy director to oversee AT&T's company-wide energy management efforts across all business units. He also leads AT&T's Energy Council, which comprises key executives from each business unit that directly consumes energy or handles energy consuming equipment. The Energy Director also supports a dedicated Energy Team to oversee thousands of energy projects, leverage data and track progress and goals.
Tracking Energy Management
As the foundation of our energy management tracking program, we centrally process all of our utility invoices, and extract the energy consumption data from the invoices to manage the program. This energy information is available to all of the internal network operators and real estate managers, and is routinely used to benchmark energy performance. We have also entered more than 900 unique properties in the ENERGY STAR portfolio manager. This includes 461 of our top 500 facilities.
Energy Scorecard
We have developed and implemented an Energy Scorecard to benchmark the energy performance at each of our 500 largest energy-consuming facilities in 2010. The scorecard tracks energy management in each of these facilities and we use this information to set goals for each facility. Quarterly, the Energy Team — headed by AT&T's Energy Director — reviews performance and gives each real estate manager a score for her or his efforts, determined by variables such as projects, savings, electricity usage and training. In 2010, scores improved by 58% compared to 2009. The results have also been incorporated into the annual performance objectives for real estate managers.
This exceeded the internal goal we set at the beginning of the year to generate $35 million in annual energy savings at the top 500 energy-consuming locations.
Training Employees
At each of the Scorecard locations, the real estate manager — or energy champion — is responsible for the energy management of her or his property. In 2009, we launched a policy that mandates that 100 percent of the site energy champions will be ENERGY STAR® trained by the end of 2010 and we accomplished this goal. As part of this effort, we developed and launched an internal ENERGY STAR online training course that is available to the energy champions at any time.
Water Scorecard
In 2010, we committed to calculating our water foot print. We learned that we use 3.4 billion gallons of water across our company. Through that process we also learned that our 125 largest water-consuming facilities account for 50 percent of our total consumption. This set of facilities will be where we spend the most time developing ways to improve water usage since they represent the greatest opportunity.
We're also using the idea of "water stress" to help prioritize our efforts. By layering on information from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development's Water Tool, we've identified that 31 of our top 125 water-consuming sites are in areas of "High" or "Very High" water stress. We'll use this information to further prioritize our efforts and investment.
In addition, we've identified cooling towers as a big source of water use and are embarking on a project in 2011 to evaluate how to increase the efficiency of their water use. Cooling towers assist with chilling the air in some of our large facilities by using evaporation to cool the water that feeds the air chillers. They are often the most efficient cooling solution because the process to reject heat from water through evaporation is more efficient than mechanically rejecting it from air.
Communicating Our Progress
We routinely share information on energy performance across our entire real estate operations through newsletters, e-mail campaigns, meetings and video conferencing. Quarterly, we publish an energy newsletter that highlights the biggest and best energy efficiency initiatives underway and is available to our nearly 270,000 employees.
We have also created an energy progress database — accessible to employees inside the company. This database includes all past, present and potential future energy projects. This database facilitates the sharing of best practices, and creates a spirit of healthy competition across the company, which promotes progressive and effective energy management practices.
