The plan,
which the owner of photo messaging app Snapchat detailed in its annual
"CitizenSnap https://citizen.snap.com/planet " report on social and
environmental initiatives, comes as climate change debates are increasingly
including tech companies and the energy-intensive process of running powerful
computer data servers.
By making
the company more energy efficient, Snap could not only reduce costs in the long
run, but also appeal to its mostly young user base, who are passionate about
addressing climate change, said Dom Perella, Snap's deputy general counsel and
chief compliance officer.
"They're
going to be living with the brunt of these impacts for many generations,"
he said. "Because it impacts our stakeholders... we want to make a
difference."
By 2025,
Snap plans to reduce emissions generated from its business operations by 25%,
in part by making its buildings more energy efficient and purchasing renewable
energy, Perella said.
The company
also aims to reduce emissions from business travel and from purchased goods and
services by 35% "per unit of value" by shifting to climate-friendly
travel options and pushing vendors to reduce their emissions.
Snap said
it determined the reduction levels by working with the Science Based Targets
initiative, a coalition that advises companies on reducing emissions to meet
goals outlined by the Paris Agreement international treaty on climate change.
The Santa
Monica, California-based company said it is now carbon neutral, helped by
investing in forestry projects across the world to offset its emissions.
It also
calculated its emissions dating back to Snapchat's launch in 2011 and offset
its emissions to become retroactively carbon neutral.
Other tech
companies have also moved to offset emissions retroactively. Alphabet Inc's
Google said last year it had eliminated its carbon emissions history before
2007, when the company said it became carbon neutral. -Reuters
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