In brief: Cloud computing giant Salesforce has announced the creation of the Step Up Declaration, an alliance “dedicated to harnessing the power of emerging technologies and the fourth industrial revolution” as a way of reducing emissions across all economic sectors.
Recent times have seen more tech firms going green. Apple is particularly proud of its environmental initiatives—a fact it mentioned during this week’s iPhone launch—and has been ranked the most environmentally friendly company several years in a row by Greenpeace.
At the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) in San Francisco on Thursday, Salesforce announced that 20 companies had signed up to the Step Up Declaration, which aims to “ensure a climate turning point,” by 2020.
Firms joining Salesforce include ARM, Bloomberg, Cisco Systems, HP, Lyft, Nokia, Uber, Supermicro, Symantec, Vigilent, and VMware.
The declaration notes that tackling climate change isn’t just good for the planet; it’s also an enormous business opportunity worth “trillions of dollars in economic growth expected from investments in climate solutions.”
For its part, Salesforce has committed to achieving 100 percent renewable energy by 2022. The company is also partnering with top suppliers, which make up 50 percent of its supplier-related emissions, to set their own emission reduction targets by 2025, while also expanding its green real estate strategy.
Back in April, Lyft announced that every single ride it provides would be carbon neutral by acquiring over one million metric tons of carbon in "year one" of its initiative. The ride-hailing firm claimed this would be the equivalent of planting tens of millions of trees or taking "hundreds of thousands" of cars off the world's roads.
Following President Trump’s decision to leave the Paris agreement last year, over 1200 companies including Google, Facebook, Apple, IBM, and Amazon signed an open letter pledging their support for climate action that meets the targets set out by the accord.
