Infosys joins Amazon’s climate pledge to meet Paris Agreement early

This week, Amazon and Global Optimism announced that digital service and consulting company, Infosys, signed The Climate Pledge, making a commitment to meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early. The pledge calls on new signatories to be net zero carbon across their businesses by 2040, whereas Paris Accord’s goal is 2050.

Signatories agree to:

• Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis;
• Implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris Agreement through business changes and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy and materials reductions;
• Neutralize any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent and socially beneficial offsets to achieve net zero annual carbon emissions by 2040.

Infosys is set to turn carbon neutral

Infosys made a commitment in 2011 to become carbon neutral and is on track to achieve it before 2040. Also, Infosys is the first signatory to RE100 from India and has committed to transition to renewables for electricity requirements. This project, along with others, helped contribute to the socio-economic development in rural India.

The company was one of the first to place an internal price on carbon and has an energy efficiency program that has reduced the company’s per-capita electricity consumption by 55% since 2008. Currently, 45% of its electricity is coming from renewable sources including 60 MW of solar PV.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, states, “When significant companies like Infosys join The Climate Pledge, they send an important signal to the market that it’s time to invest in low carbon products and services.”

“The Paris Agreement set out a unifying roadmap for all countries and all people to address the climate crisis by taking action. The IPCC has informed us that we cannot warm the planet beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius.” said Christiana Figueres, the UN’s former climate change chief and founding partner of Global Optimism.

Salil Parekh, CEO and MD, Infosys, said, “We believe that the way in which global organizations responded to this crisis would play a big role in defining how the rest of the world takes up the cause. As a result, we committed to climate action over a decade ago, and since then, the impact on climate and environment have been important considerations in the decisions we make as an organization.”