Addressing the Climate Crisis and Reducing Our Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions
We use different methods to drive investment in emissions reduction activities. These include:
- Internal finance mechanisms: Qualcomm's focuses on energy efficiency, and the positive financial analysis makes a strong case for our investments.
- Compliance with regulatory standards: Qualcomm has complied with California's Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) since January 2010, contributing to a reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions. Our provider is also on track to ramp up to approximately 60% by 2030, in line with California’s RPS goals.
- Dedicated budget for energy efficiency: Qualcomm’s energy efficiency savings across our building space in California and Bangalore, India have realized approximately $7.5 million in avoided costs each year.
- Technology improvements: Qualcomm continues to invest in leading-edge technology. Many of these technologies offer increased capability while, at the same time, attain power consumption efficiencies. Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets are industry-leading in their power consumption optimizations, also enabling longer battery life and Increase renewable energy purchases: Qualcomm continues to evaluate our operations globally, to explore opportunities for increasing our renewable energy purchases. In Bangalore, India we signed a 10-year power purchase agreement in 2018 to increase our renewable energy consumption. We seek to expand our renewable energy purchases across our global portfolio.
We reduced our GHG emissions in India alone by approximately 22,485 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) through the purchase of solar energy for our Bangalore offices. This represents the first year of output from our 10-year power purchase agreement signed in 2018 to increase our renewable energy consumption. We also own and operate several on-site solar generating systems in San Diego and Bangalore, which are helping us achieve our GHG goal.
Assessing climate related risks through Climate Scenario Analysis.
In 2020, we conducted our first company-wide climate scenario analysis (CSA), which included a qualitative evaluation of 1.5°C, 2°C and 4°C warming scenarios. Our analysis included a limited set of risks: price of carbon (transition risk), coastal flooding, high heat days, water stress, extreme cold days, average temperature and air pollution (physical risks).
As we evaluated the impacts to our business under these three scenarios, we focused on the potential for increased operating costs and increased business interruption across our operations. We leveraged standardized, third-party climate modeling data, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), and applied internal data sources such as our global greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and facilities data. For more information on our climate scenario analysis, please refer to our 2020 Corporate Responsibility Report.
Reporting our GHG emissions.
Qualcomm has achieved Climate Registered™ Gold status. We did this by successfully measuring our worldwide Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions according to The Climate Registry’s best-in-class program, having the data third-party verified, and then reporting the data on The Climate Registry’s website.
At Qualcomm, as part of being accountable around our environmental performance and GHG emission reduction efforts, we have been responding to CDP Climate Change survey on an annual basis since 2010. Read our disclosures to the CDP Climate Change surveys.
Beyond GHG emissions.
In addition to tracking our GHG emissions, we track emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic chemicals that are generated as by-products of three cogeneration turbine plants at our corporate headquarters. These highly efficient turbines are fueled by natural gas and enable us to produce some of our own electricity, reducing costs and GHG output. We use heat captured in the turbines to power large chillers in our corporate campus’ air-conditioning system, further saving electricity and the carbon emissions associated with producing it.
