On the trail of Dell's carbon footprint

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Dell has declared itself carbon-neutral, but good luck defining and auditing what that means exactly.

Assembling PCs at Dell's Hortolandia, Brazil, facility.

(Credit: Dell)

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story on Dell and its carbon-neutral efforts. In a nutshell:

• There is no standard definition of carbon neutral;
• Purchasing carbon credits is vital;
• But the markets for carbon credits isn't regulated and is also in flux;
• And finally there's debate over whether a vendor should count emissions from suppliers in its footprint.

Those points are notable for companies well beyond Dell. While Dell is certainly early with its carbon-neutral claim, other companies will soon follow. For now, green tech looks recession-proof. Get ready for the carbon neutral audits.

A few key excerpts from the Journal story:

The amount of emissions Dell has committed to neutralize is known in the environmental industry as the company's "carbon footprint." But there is no universally accepted standard for what a footprint should include, and so every company calculates its differently. Dell counts the emissions produced by its boilers and company-owned cars, its buildings' electricity use, and its employees' business air travel.

In fact, that's only a small fraction of all the emissions associated with Dell. The footprint doesn't include the oil used by Dell's suppliers to make its computer parts, the diesel and jet fuel used to ship those computers around the world, or the coal-fired electricity used to run them.

And.

Dell's drive offers an early road map of the thorny questions companies will face as they attempt the massive emission reductions scientists say are needed to curb global warming. In a global economy with so many interconnected players, figuring out who should be responsible for cutting which emissions -- and how to ensure those cuts happen -- is dizzyingly complicated.

Toss in nascent markets for buying carbon credits and you see a lot of confusion ahead. To make matters worse, companies don't have to file carbon neutrality reports that are under generally accepted principles. In other words, you won't find the details of carbon neutrality in an annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In reality, none of this is surprising. Companies like Dell are ahead of the curve and in many respects make this carbon neutrality stuff up as they go along. As more companies start issuing carbon neutrality press releases, however, there will be a need to seriously vet these claims.

[andyengle]

Who gives two craps about Dell's carbon footprint. Their footprint could be ten times it's current size -- how would that affect me? Maybe some goofy eco-Marxist somewhere cares, but I certainly don't. And on that note, I think it's time to quit the constant finger-pointing about who is carbon "righteous" and who isn't.

And, this nonsense about carbon credits is a complete scam. All that is for is to provide a way for people to profit off of something we all emit: CO2. The people who came up with this scheme (Algore and the like) are the ones profiting -- in the billions of dollars -- while they personally don't live up to the standards they preach at us.

[alstatr]

Well said. It is hard to take Gore's message to heart when he lives in a huge house and flies around in a private jet. I know he buys carbon offsets and uses solar power but normal people can't afford to be carbon neutral - we can use try to use less where we can but most of the time I just shake my head at Mr. Gore's hypocrisy.

[ittesi259]

Lets not forget good old Al Gore didn't bother to get those solar panels until someone called him out on his huge usage

[gerrrg]

Sorry, but I think the WSJ needs to upgrade their journalistic values. They're not contributing to the discussion of the issue on Carbon-Neutral, so much as obfuscating the generally accepted principles; think Global Warming. As much proof as we have about Global Warming, Conservatives point to anomalous data and broad climatic data to obfuscate the widely accepted and broadly defined concepts of Global Warming.

Likewise, the WSJ is simply ignoring the current, accepted rules of Carbon-Neutral policies. By confusing readers about the value of being Carbon Neutral, they miss the entire point. And this is the second time in two weeks that we've seen this: the WSJ also attacked Google's Net Neutrality stand by critiquing and obfuscating the principles of Net Neutrality.

The WSJ isn't involved in furthering policy discussions, as much as they are attacking good companies with forward-looking policies, as proxies for their war against Liberal principles.

[patddymac]

I think the article is right on. A company spewing marketing buzzwords, things they think we want to hear, just to out buzzword another company, particularly in the "Green" arena. It's rampid. After a while these words and claims become meaningless to thinking people. Non-thinking people take it all in. I believe companies should be required to back up what they say in order to say it.

[William Crow]

What's the point? The whole carbon footprint thing is a scam unless used strictly for consideration of energy efficiency. And if that's the case why not just use the term "energy efficiency rating" or "increased energy by x%."

The manmade global warming thing is a factless belief system.

[DarkHawke]

Exactly what are these "generally accepted principles"? Is there a site where they're listed? Does it also tell us who came up with these principles, who has "generally" accepted them, with what authority and on behalf of whom? Let's face it: the terms "green" and "carbon-neutral" are the 21st century equivalent of "new and improved." The public has been sufficiently propagandized to believe these qualities to be desirable in the products they buy and the companies from which they buy them, so the only logical response by a company selling a product is to play a little lip-service and an carbon-credit (read: indulgence, in the Catholic church sense of the world) here or there and they too can get on the bandwagon. And once this hysteria is "generally accepted" to be the hogwash that it obviously is, they'll move on to the next set of buzzwords and PR stunts. As they say, it's all in the game.

[gdmaclew]

Well said DarkHawke!

[Penguinisto]

Heh - "carbon credits"... nice scam if you can get a piece of it. It allows anyone (Hell, even an oil company) to "purchase" them, then claim to be "green".

It's crap stunts like that which gives The Gore Crowd a well-deserved rotten reputation.

[GardenLobster]

My hubby & I just bought a Dell. When we got to the end of the configuration, it asks whether to recycle your old system through dell or "Plant a Tree for Me" for $6 bucks. And we just looked at each other and laughed.

Ok, so first they'll waste emissions on recycling the system when I can just drive it to the Goodwill computer parts store on the way to work? LOLworthy in itself.

Then there's the planting a tree for $6. That's just plain suspicious. The draw here is so obvious. People just pay an extra $6 bucks for their computer and then once a year Dell makes some tax-sheltered donation to some charity having something to do with trees. The scary thing is, I fear people may actually believe that $6 goes to planting an actual, singular tree.

First we laughed. Then we were very, very afraid at just how much revenue this scam is generating for Dell. Marketing know-how was obviously involved with the pretty art of a sapling in dirt and the "for Me" added on. That's right out of the textbooks. Sorry Dell, not falling for it, and not buying the whole "carbon neutral" thing. I bet there was plenty of leftover $6 overcharges to buy up those carbon credits.